Ex-Jazz Club Encampment Cleared

Wynter and two fellow Ocean Management workers hauled a mattress, a bicycle, two shopping carts, a frying pan, a wicker chair, a pile of clothes, and a host of other belongings and debris from a Dixwell Avenue homeless encampment Thursday and into the back of a U‑Haul.

The truck was parked on the sidewalk in front of the decrepit former Monterey Jazz Club — a long-vacant building that the Elicker administration tried to buy two years ago, but that still remains rundown and under megalandlord ownership.

Wynter and his colleagues spent 20 minutes in the early afternoon cold clearing the encampment, which Livable City Initiative (LCI) Neighborhood Specialist Taylor Munroe said has been occupied by a single individual for several months.

The encampment was set up in a narrow alley located between the former Monterey building at 265 Dixwell and a vacant ex-deli, also owned by Ocean, right next door at 269 Dixwell. It was partially hidden from public view by a tan canvas hanging on a string that separated the sidewalk from the privately owned property. 

Munroe said that LCI had struggled for months to get in touch with Ocean about the encampment. As community members and SeeClickFix complaints identified the encampment as ​“increasingly unsightly,” on Feb. 3, he and a city homeless outreach worker made contact with the man who lived there. They provided him with information about the city’s warming shelters, community health centers, public libraries, the municipal ID program, and other local resources that might be of help for someone with nowhere else to go.

Since then, Munroe had tried in vain to make subsequent contact with the man.

And so, on Thursday, Munroe coordinated with city police and Ocean Management workers to clear the encampment, after Ocean reportedly posted a 72-hour notice on Monday letting the camper know that he had to move his belongings or else risk having them thrown out. COMPASS workers were also briefly on scene but left before the encampment was cleared.

The man who lived at this encampment was not present on Thursday morning to watch his belongings trashed.

All of this took place, meanwhile, right outside an ex-jazz club that used to be a Black cultural epicenter, bringing such luminaries as Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald to Dixwell. As recently as 2020, Ocean had planned on constructing new apartments at this site — a plan that never panned out. 

Because of this dilapidated building’s cultural historical significance, the Elicker administration won Board of Alders approval in February 2023 to buy the ex-Monterey club site at 265 Dixwell, the ex-deli property at 269 Dixwell, and two two-family houses at 262 and 263 Dixwell for a combined sum of $1.3 million. A year later, that deal fell apart when Ocean reportedly found a private buyer and LCI botched some anti-blight liens.

That private deal, meanwhile, appears to have fallen apart as well — based on Ocean’s continued ownership of the empty buildings. On Thursday, Wynter told this reporter that Ocean has lined up prospective buyers for these properties several times. But, time and again, those deals have fallen through. 

City spokesperson Lenny Speiller told the Independent that LCI has issued new blight violations and fines of $38,500 for each building, totaling $77,000. ​“It is incumbent upon Ocean Management to maintain these properties, and the city will continue to enforce compliance accordingly,” he said.

He also said that, ​“while the city is not currently in talks with the property owners, we remain open to the possibility of revisiting the question of city acquisition — and, regardless of who the property owner is, we are eager to see them redeveloped and restored as true assets for the Dixwell community.”

Munroe arrived at around 10:52 a.m. He and Sgt. Jarrell Lowery and two fellow police officers waited for more than an hour as an Ocean Management office worker, who’s also a Southern Connecticut State University student, named Olivia called and called for maintenance worker colleagues to come. 

As he waited, Munroe said this wasn’t the first time in recent memory that someone had slept at this particular Ocean-owned blighted property. He said that two people had been sleeping in the back of the former Monterey building, until Ocean cleared them out and boarded up the ex-jazz club’s facade.

At around 11:40 a.m., Ocean-hired contractor Sergio Gonzalez showed up with a truck filled with plywood. Gonzalez, who runs his own construction business out of West Haven, said he was on the scene just to board up the alley after the encampment was cleared. ​“Every day,” Gonzalez said when asked how frequently he sees homeless people living outdoors in encampments or squatting in vacant buildings over the course of his work in New Haven and West Haven. ​“There’s a lot of people breaking into these houses” to sleep. ​“They break in and they destroy everything.”

Then, soon after noon, Wynter, a maintenance technician for Ocean, arrived with a U‑Haul truck and two colleagues assigned to clear the encampment. He pulled the truck into a driveway near the Monterey, and drove backwards up the sidewalk to get as close to the encampment as possible.

He and his two colleagues then spent the next 20 minutes lifting, carrying, throwing everything piled in the encampment into the back of the U‑Haul. Wynter said that all of this stuff would be thrown out in a dumpster. 

“I’m not proud of this,” Wynter said about his work clearing the encampment. ​“It’s a job.”

When just about all of the contents of the encampment had been piled into the U‑Haul and Gonzalez had begun to install the plywood barrier at the end of the alley, Dixwell neighborhood leader Sean Reeves walked by to find out what was happening. 

He said he doesn’t know the name of the man who lived here, but said everyone used to call him ​“Bam.” He walked across the street to try to find out where ​“Bam” was at the moment, and then told Munroe he’d let ​“Bam” know he had to go to City Hall to find out what happened to his belongings.