Wooster Square

Alders Advance $500K For Long-Delayed Youth Shelter

by | Nov 27, 2024 2:07 pm | Comments (35)

Might this one day be built at 924 Grand?

Laura Glesby Photo

Youth Continuum's Tim Maguire (right), with city Homeless Services Director Velma George: Looking to create "a one-stop shop for unhoused youth."

A proposal for a peer-led youth homeless shelter in Wooster Square is back on the table — with a higher price tag and a new design prioritizing privacy and public health.

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A Nightmare On Chapel Street

by | Nov 12, 2024 6:20 pm | Comments (9)

Thomas Breen photos

Is that NYPD Blue... in Wooster Square?

And who's the lady in white?

Ohh, it's a film shoot! For "The Monster."

In front of large computer screens and a focused film crew, a woman in a white dress walked up to a Wooster Square brownstone pretending to be New York City. 

She reached the top of the entrance. Before she could open the door and walk inside, she stopped, turned, and walked back down the stairs — ready to repeat those moves again and again, as part of a new horror movie being filmed in part in New Haven.

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Metro Teacher Earns Top State Honor

by | Oct 16, 2024 3:08 pm | Comments (7)

Laura Glesby Photo

Students Destiny Lugo and Makayla Kidd with CT Teacher of the Year Julia Miller.

She lets her guard down with us. She’s human with us,” Metropolitan Business Academy Senior Makayla Kidd told a room full of students, educators, and city leaders.

Kidd was talking about her civics teacher, Julia Miller — who is now Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year.

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The Word On Chapel & East: Swirling Colors Hit The Wall

by | Sep 30, 2024 4:13 pm | Comments (22)

Paul Bass Photo

Jessie Unterhalter at work Monday.

Beautiful!” a passing motorist called out while heading downtown Monday on Chapel Street.

Thank you!” Jessie Unterhalter said for the tenth? 20th? time of the day.

Unterhalter didn’t want to be rude. People passing by the once-blank warehouse wall at Chapel and East Streets have brightened to see the swirling bright colors Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn have been painting there for the past three weeks. Unterhalter appreciated their appreciation.

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$1M In Homelessness Aid OK'd

by | Aug 7, 2024 1:27 pm | Comments (24)

Laura Glesby photos

Kiki Moreno and Fernando Morales: Formerly homeless, currently calling for better shelter hours.

Upon This Rock to revive the Grand Avenue shelter.

One of the city’s go-to homeless shelter contractors is slated to revive a shuttered 65-bed facility on Grand Avenue, with case management and healthcare services on site. 

Alders voted to allocate $500,000 toward that effort — part of just over $1 million approved on Monday evening for helping people with nowhere else to go.

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Sunday Dinner Served For Weekday Lunch

by | Jul 11, 2024 11:18 am | Comments (5)

Asher Joseph photos

Rudolph Ford, serving up Jamaican culinary "classics" ...

... including rice, peas, cabbage, jerk chicken, fried plantains, and oxtail, at Sunday Dinner Everyday on Grand.

Fifty-two years after arriving in New York City at the age of 16, Rudolph Ford has helped his wife, Dorma Bryan, achieve the American dream” — with a Jamaican twist, as one of the newer culinary outposts of a fast-growing local immigrant community.

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Jitter Bus Coffee Opens, Officially

by | Jul 9, 2024 9:10 am | Comments (12)

Arthur Delot-Vilain photo

At the new Jitter Bus cafe's grand opening.

While patrons celebrated the grand opening of Grand Avenue’s Jitter Bus Coffee, in the back corner of the café stood a framed coffee-stained page torn out of a notebook, tucked on a shelf.

It read: This letter of correction serves to prove that Darlene A. Miconi sold a 1999 Chevy G30 Express to Daniel Barletta on February 6th 2015 for a sum of $3200.”

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LEAP's Pool To Open This Summer, Too

by | Jun 28, 2024 9:14 am | Comments (3)

Maya McFadden Photo

LEAP Aquatics Director Oscar Rodriguez at the soon-to-be-filled-with-water Jefferson Street pool.

A privately owned pool will be open for free public access on Friday evenings — and for low-cost swim lessons throughout the summer — thanks to a youth athletics and tutoring nonprofit’s commitment to keeping the community in the water.

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Wooster Square Lines, Worlds Apart

by | Jun 18, 2024 2:09 pm | Comments (6)

Laura Glesby photo

Waiting for a pie from Sally's on Wooster St. ...

... as, right around the corner, Mykala Grace grabs two iced teas for maximum hydration at DESK's drop-in center.

Two lines that never meet form around lunchtime on one Wooster Square block: one for Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen’s drop-in center, the other for the world-famous Sally’s pizzeria.

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Monument Unveiling Sees "La Via Al Futuro"

by | Jun 10, 2024 10:21 am | Comments (26)

Jabez Choi photos

At Sunday's ceremony in Wooster Sq.

Four years to the month after hundreds of people filled Wooster Square Park to cheer and jeer at the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue, neighbors and politicians and dignitaries returned — to applaud the installation of a new monument honoring the city’s Italian-American immigrant experience. 

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Opinion: A Time For Healing

by | Jun 9, 2024 1:37 pm | Comments (27)

The statue of Christopher Columbus that for many years stood on a stone plinth in Wooster Square Park was a source of Italian-American pride, an affront to Native Americans and others, and a flashpoint for conflicts over fallen heroes of the past.

Today, hopefully, a new era of peaceful coexistence and mutual respect will begin with the official dedication of a new monument in Wooster Square. 

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Zoning Q: More Housing, More Parking?

by | May 6, 2024 12:47 pm | Comments (58)

Clockwise from top left: Up to 64 new apartments eyed for Hamilton St.; developer Yoon Lee; the 63 Hamilton parking lot; Lost in New Haven's Rob Greenberg.

A bid to provide lots more places for people to live on Hamilton Street has prompted pushback from some neighbors over where current and future residents and visitors will be able to put their cars.

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Creative Circle Asks Community To The Dance

by | Apr 29, 2024 9:42 am | Comments (0)

"Addiction."

The arts and sciences, the movement and stillness, the rhythm of breath and step: on Saturday afternoon, all came together in the performance space at St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church on Olive Street for Creative Circle, a delightful dance and music performance that saw two dance companies — the New Haven-based kamrDANCE and the New York-based SYREN Modern Dance — engage each other as well as the audience in their latest works in progress.

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Spinnaker Partners On Fair St. Apts.

by | Apr 1, 2024 9:17 am | Comments (29)

Thomas Breen file photo

20, 34 Fair St. (right): Recently sold, to be built up into 185 new apartments.

One of the city’s busiest builders has teamed up with a Wooster Square luxury apartment developer to bring 185 new rentals to Fair Street — now that the duo have acquired two service garages and a surface parking lot for $3.45 million.

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Early Ed Center Rebounds From Pandemic

by | Mar 15, 2024 3:36 pm | Comments (4)

Thomas Breen photo

Chloe (bottom right) with site director Michelle Reyes and teacher Lauren Safady at Friday's classroom reopening.

Wearing a unicorn-decorated shirt bearing the message Kindness Is Pure Magic,” 3‑year-old Chloe danced through the ribbon-cutting for a reopened toddler classroom on Olive Street — as a leading childcare provider recovered from a pandemic-imposed setback.

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Health Dept. Move Centers "Wellness"

by | Feb 1, 2024 5:26 pm | Comments (1)

Nora Grace-Flood file photo

City Health Director Maritza Bond Thursday at her department's new HQ: Wellness the new "holistic approach."

City officials cut the ribbon on a health and wellness” center — and hoped the fresh color scheme and branding strategy could sell STI tests, school physicals and flu vaccinations to the public as presents rather than punishments.

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