New Haven Independent

Some three dozen people gathered at Lee Cruz’s Clinton Avenue house Wednesday night to share mushrooms au gratin, chocolate covered strawberries and other tasty home-cooked fare.

As they ate, Cruz, a philanthropic officer with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven (CFGNH), announced that anonymous donors had offered the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association (CSNA), through the foundation, a $5,000 matching grant.

“People endow schools, galleries, funds for girls or the blind,” said Cruz. “Even the Quinnipiac River. So why not a neighborhood!”

CSNA members must come up with another $5,000 by the end of the year. Tthen that $10,000 becomes a dedicated fund at the foundation. The community forms a committee to decide how to spend the funds; they spend the interest, and the fund grows over time.

Of the foundation’s some 700 funds, this appears to be the first dedicated to a neighborhood, said Cruz (pictured with his English Street neighbor, Zac Riegelman and a CSNA leader, Hope Metcalf, in the background).

“And the incredible thing is that these people, it’s a couple,” Cruz added, “don’t live here, don’t really have a connection to Fair Haven. They just love the model of community that’s being developed here.”

The same couple gave a similar amount in 2005 when CSNA was launched, with Cruz in the lead, to organize the area around Chatham Square Park based on the promotion of homeownership.

Between 2005 and 2008, Cruz and others received funds from the GNHCF to hire community organizers, create summer events, intergenerational art shows, kid activities, and undertake traffic calming studies while also offering funding for local and in-coming homeowners to purchase and improve property.

In 2008, foundation funding ceased. The group became more decentralized and independent of the foundation, but no less active. Now CSNA meets monthly at the Mary Wade Home to plan events, do economic development, and the like. Click here and here for previous articles.

It was at a recent meeting that people suggested the business meeting should alternate with a monthly moveable potluck feast in order to promote the social bonds, the basis for successful work meetings. So Cruz volunteered his home to host the beginning of the tradition.

“There are so many people who love this area,” Cruz said, “I don’t see why we should limit ourselves in this fund to reaching out only to those who live here. We should find those who were born here and left and who are still attached. The area has been around for a long time.”

Among people long time attached to the neighborhood are Pat Bissell and local Alderwoman Erin Sturgis-Pascale. Sturgis-Pascale brought a tasty eggplant, squash, and broccoli casserole. Bissell brought a salad and news that 50 athletes from local colleges are coming down to her neck of the greater Chatham Square area, namely Dover Beach Park, along the Quinnipiac River, to do a massive clean-up in April.

Newer arrivals included Daniel Butler (pictured at the top, with daughter Evie) and his wife Jennie. Three years ago they were passing through Fair Haven as missionaries on their way to South Africa for a Christian organization called Youth With a Mission. They fell in love with the Chatham Square area and eventually bought a house on Atwater Street, where they got involved in the block watch.

Shirley Canfield (pictured), on the block watch, just happens to work at the Mary Wade Home, where CSNA has its meetings.

Now Butler is the treasurer of CSNA.

“Hey,” said Butler as he fed his daughter some unidentified potluck goodies, “there’s a lot of work that needs to be done right here in Fair Haven. We decided we didn’t need to go to South Africa.”

He’s a stay-at-home dad while he pursues urban studies at Southern. His wife is director of child care at Life Haven. Butler said he wants to serve on the committee that will decide how CSNA’s unique endowment income will be spent.

First, of course, it has to be raised. Although Cruz had said the potluck dinner was for socializing only, $200 was raised toward the $5,000 total before the last donuts were consumed. Those interested in supporting the effort further should be in touch with Lee Cruz at the foundation.