New Haven Independent

It was a sign of community-building in action: After a meeting is adjourned, people who might not have known each other months or even weeks ago linger and socialize and exchange phone numbers and agree to serve on committees together.

Such signs were everywhere in evidence Wednesday night at the Mary Wade Home in Fair Haven. By turns low-keyed, amiable, organized and focused on achieving results, it was the regular monthly meeting of the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association (CSNA), a year-old experiment to stabilize the community around Fair Haven’s gorgeous Chatham Square Park. The group aims to foster home improvement and home ownership and build grassroots leadership that will endure beyond the inputs of the Greater New Haven Community Foundation, whose grants have launched the effort.

Here’s an anatomy of the meeting, an evening in the life of community building that appears to be working:

From 5:30 to 5:40 there was delicious pizza provided for all. But before you devoured your slice, you entered the comfortable social hall at the Mary Wade Home by taking a sticky blue dot and placing it on a map of Fair Haven. Why? Each dot indicated the location of your house or apartment, so the growing dotted map was an ongoing reflection of the increasing participation of the community. While Cruz, a philanthropic officer with the Community Foundation and a moving force behind CSNA, held Brynia Sturgis-Pascale, daughter of the local alderwoman (who had previously dotted her dot and could now use two hands to eat her pizza), Rahkiya Davis smiled. She didn’t dot because she lives in the Hill and was at the meeting as part of special program she’s helping to bring to the area.

More on Rahkiya later in the meeting. And more on Brynia, as well. Children are critical. Cruz argued that one of the keys to enduring community cohesion is when people learn about each others’ children, know their names and begin to care about them. So child care is provided at these meetings, as needed, and adorable and even cranky presences are embraced.

From 5:40 to 6:00 the 25 participants (there are often 35 to 40) were asked to turn to someone they didn’t know and introduce themselves, with reference especially to the area. So Andy Horowitz, a relative newcomer to Front Street, got to know Jacqueline Melendez, who lives on Pine Street and has for longer than Horowitz is old. They got to mentioning Criscuolo Park, at James and Chapel, which they both like. Melendez told Horowitz of her memories living in housing, no longer there, on the park’s edge by the Quinnipiac River. “I grew up there,” she said, “and I remember the buildings were up for the GIs away fighting in World War Two.”

This delighted Horowitz, in no small part because he was at the meeting not only as a neighbor but also as director of the New Haven Oral History Project. Through the work of nine CSNA members, his project is documenting the neighborhood in photographs, the show to be unveiled on May 2 at Mary Wade.

From 6:00 to 7:00, on time, the heart of the meeting began with the introduction of Kevin Ewing, CSNA’s newly hired organizer. A former cop and self-described beachcomber, former organizer with Mutual Housing, and soon to be a graduate of Yale School of Divinity, Ewing will be the go-to guy to keep the many CSNA projects going.

After applause, the meeting moved right on to working on one of the main goals, home ownership. The group is inviting different realtors to each meeting, so they can get to know the area. This night it was Jeff Granoff, who lived on Front Street for 30 years and already loves the area.

“In this room how many people,” Granoff (pictured with Paula Walker) asked, “bought their house or condo through me?” More than a half dozen hands were raised. People want to know what’s for sale and how much; Granoff told them. The idea was to bring in buyers who one knows, your family, your friends, colleagues at work who are new in town.

Erin Sturgis-Pascale, who was now running the meeting — different participants take the lead in running the meetings — reminded everyone that CSNA is giving other invited realtors tours of the neighborhood, so they get to know it. Three dates are scheduled, and people sign up to participate.

This genial self-described old-timer John Bontatibus, who was born on Clinton Street, told Granoff that an outside investor came to the house of his neighbor, offered a price, and bought the house on the spot. “I really would prefer it if the chance to the buy the place,” he said, “would first have been circulated among the neighbors.”

“That’s exactly the kind of thing we want,” said Cruz. Granoff said he also heard recently of outsiders coming in and flipping properties. Market this beautiful neighborhood, was the mantra, to people we know will make good, enduring neighbors. To accomplish this, and because houses are not cheap around Chatham Square ($200,000 and up) one of the foundation’s grant programs, set up through CSNA, is to match, dollar for dollar, up to $10,000 toward a downpayment.

The other program, supporting current houses/neighbors through home repair funds also provided through the foundation, was in full swing. This program offers up to $2,000 in outright grants for houses around the square. All people have to do is sign up; call a company called HRI (Housing Rehab Institute), which makes an assessment; and, when the work is done, take care of payment.

Cruz announced that eight people in the neighborhood had signed up to improved energy use or conservation in their homes. Three had signed up for exterior repair or beautification, such as roofs and driveways. Eight other houses have been designated as needing to take one of the slots in the HRI program, but the owners were not responding. (Several people volunteered to be in touch with those owners.) Finally, no one had signed up for the other category of eligible support, using the $2,000 to ready a unit to be used as a rental property. Still, there was lots of action.

The campaign to calm traffic in the area, also a centerpiece of CSNA’s activity, championed by Sturgis-Pascale, was also moving apace, with $1,700 in total raised. The alderwoman said she was advised after her election that she should not ask residents for money towards the goal of $5,000 to trigger a city study of the issue, dear to the heart of Fair Haveners. Kevin Ewing and another neighbor said they would take charge of the fundraising.

Finally, Horowitz announced the May 2 “Chatham Square: Portrait of a Neighborhood” exhibition. Rahkiya Davis (in the photo at the top) was introduced as a young digital storyteller, who had made a video of her Hill neighborhood. She would likely be working with her Chatham Square peers (she’s 15 and a student at Eli Whitney High School) in doing documentary digital storytelling in a project this summer. All these activities are not art or history-recording for art or history-recording’s sake alone. They are activities advancing the goals of marketing Chatham Square, increasing its beauty and cachet, and letting the world know about it.

7:05 A half dozen other activities were announced, including a Chatham Park clean-up on Saturday, a free “repairing a fixer-upper workshop,” and how to access some “bridge” funding for home repairs through the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund. Miguel Cartagena (in the middle of the photo) said he wanted to participate and also wanted to speak as the owner of the building that houses the liquor store facing the park. He’s lived in the area for ten years, is an employee with the city’s public works department, and has owned that building for four. To some residents it’s a problems, to others not so. Cartagena’s presence was appreciated. “I want to do my best to clean the place up,” he said. “Make it look nicer.” It was his second time at the meetings. “I’m going to fix up the sidewalk, but I’m not quite sure what else to do, though, ” he said.

“Plant flowers,” replied Leslie Flowers (yes, on the right), who has lived on Downing Street for 20 years. She founded a block watch there years ago, and plans to restart it. “I’ll help you,” she said.” Then she added a sentiment common in the room: “This effort (CSNA) is wonderful. It’s different from, and far more than a block watch. It’s like four block watches, and all plugged into the foundation and to the city, so its effectiveness goes up exponentially.”

7:12. Finally Rafael Ramos (also pictured above, left) announced a slew of other activities that CSNA participants should know about: Two theater workshops for 13- to 18- year-olds in the area; and Camp Big Turtle, taking 8 to 12-year-olds out of the city, along with counselors from Yale’s Forestry School and other wilderness experts. There was also Yale’s summer camp, conducted at the university gymnasium for which area kids are eligible. And in June, as part of the Festival of Arts and Ideas, famous architect Louis Kahn’s 195-foot musical barge will be anchoring in the Quinnipiac giving concerts, that will be a huge draw for the city, on June 22 and 23. CSNA participants will have river-side seats.

7:15, and ahead of the scheduled 7:30 adjournment, the meeting ended with a touch of self-evaluation. How was the meeting? Lee Cruz asked. If you have an opinion you’d like to express privately, he said, please do so, to Kevin.

It also takes this form: For the concert that we think we should put on at Chatham Square Park, said Cruz, we have a list of problems to solve first. We need lights, toilets, and a big clean-up. We can do this one of two ways, he said. We can go to the city and ask them to do the fixing up, and nudge and complain when it doesn’t happen on time. Or we can do it ourselves, take charge of these things, and get them done. Then we invite the mayor and let him take pleasure and a touch of credit.

Which approach? The group universally said the second. Cruz passed around the sign-up sheet, which brings us back to Walker and Cartagena divvying up the work, chatting, and finishing up the good pizza.

For past stories on CSNA, click here and here. The next meetings are May 16 and June 20.