Thomas Breen file photo
Frank Redente, Jr. (right), with Lombard's Ruben Mallma, on the 2023 campaign trial: "Still a lot to do."
Frankie Redente just turned 50, he just bought a house two blocks from his grandma’s old apartment, and he just filed to run for a second two-year term as Fair Haven alder — with a promised focus on keeping neighborhood parks clean.
Redente, a Democrat, is one year into his first two-year term as alder for Fair Haven’s Ward 15.
On Jan. 4, he became the first alder to file for reelection this municipal election year. (The only other local candidate so far to file to run this year is Mayor Justin Elicker, who is seeking a fourth two-year term in office.)
There’s “still a lot to do,” said Redente, a Fair Haven School youth development coordinator, CT VIP violence prevention professional and high school basketball referee, when asked on Wednesday why he’s running for reelection. “Quality of life is always number one for me.”
In particular, he said, he plans on focusing his aldermanic energies this year on Ward 15’s parks — including Chatham Square and Dover Beach. Keeping those parks cleans is a priority, he said. “The Chatham Park area is special. There was once a time when it was held to the same standards as Wooster Square. I just want to get it back there.”
He also singled out the underpass by Middletown Avenue and Front Street as a popular area for dumping and for encampments, and in need of sustained attention from the city and the neighborhood. He described a cleanup he recently organized with a Yale student and military veteran named James Hatch, who helped bring out dozens of people to Dover Beach to cleanup the area.
Redente, a Fair Haven native, said he’s also planted even deeper roots in the neighborhood by buying a house at the corner of Downing Street and Chatham Street. (He most recently rented an apartment on Poplar.) Redente closed on that single-family house in November, the same month he turned 50 years old.
Redente said the house was “run down,” the porch was falling in, paint was chipping, the grounds were in bad shape when he bought it. It had been owned by the same person since the mid-1980s; she was reluctant to sell to a corporate investor, Redente said. After a year of building a relationship with her, he was able to buy the property, move in, and has been at work fixing it up.
The house marks his return to the Chatham Square area he still remembers fondly from being a kid and visiting his grandma at her apartment two blocks away. “Not only does Fair Haven mean a lot to me, that Chatham Park-Front Street area [does too]. That’s where I grew up.”
And that’s where he now lives again, and from where he’ll be running for a second two-year term as alder.
Ward 15.