New Haven Independent

Visitors filled an inner courtyard of the housing complex Friday, praising the culmination of two years’ work gathering money and staff to revamp the Anne Sellers Learning Center and Recreational Community Center. The center, which holds a police substation but was otherwise barely used, opens with help from the city Housing Authority, Empower New Haven, the Community Action Agency, Yale University Office of New Haven and State Affairs and the city’s Adult Education program.

(Click here, here and here and here to watch Tom Ficklin’s videos of the event.)

Sitting in the shade on her second-story stoop, Marian Davis, 60, looked out over the festivities. In the 35 years she’s lived at Farnam Court, she said she’s barely used the “community center,” except for receptions after funerals. Now she’s hoping to take a G.E.D. or computer literacy class: “I don’t know anything about computers, but I want to learn.”

Michael Smart, the Wooster Square alderman, walked into the center one day and saw that “all they had was crayons.” “What the hell is this?” he wondered.

The housing complex, which now houses about 650 people, “never had a community center.” The building has been used from time to time, but the place was “dilapidated” and “underutilized.” Smart spearheaded a renovation effort two years ago.

He sees the reopening as a “positive answer to youth violence.” For the youth, the center offers games like pool, foosball, and ping pong, tutoring, job readiness classes and computer. In the mornings, the city’s adult ed program will cater to the post-grade school crowd with job training, G.E.D. and English as a Second Language classes.

“It’s about time,” said long-time tenant Jocelyn Diaz, vice president of the tenant organizing group. The last improvement she remembers to the complex was when the city added gates to a rear courtyard to stop crime-breeding foot traffic. She’s excited for the change: “A lot of people are looking forward to participating in the classes.”

The hours-long ribbon-cutting ceremony drew half a dozen aldermen, two state legislators (state Sen. Martin Looney and state Rep. Toni Walker) and a host of higher-ups in social services, including Amos Smith (pictured below at left), the new CEO of the CAA. U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman stopped by to deliver a headlining speech and drop off campaign flyers that focused on the elderly.

In his speech, Lieberman (pictured at right) emphasized the importance of affordable housing and made an effort to distance himself from President Bush: “Unfortunately, the administration in Washington constantly seems to be cutting back on funding for housing.”

Does the senator and Westville resident remember when he last visited Farnam Court? “No,” Lieberman replied, walking back to his car mid-ceremony. “I was in Quinnipiac Gardens a year and half ago,” he said, referring a different apartment complex in Fair Haven, or perhaps to Quinnipiac Terrace.