Bishop Woods/ Q Meadows

NHPS Food Chief Seeks Shorter Cafeteria Lines

by | Jan 8, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (9)

Maya McFadden photo

NHPS Food Services Director Baron Young: Backing up student ID numbers will avoid cafeteria traffic jams.

Faster lunch lines. More student feedback. Less wasted food. 

New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Food Services Director Baron Young has these goals in mind as he learns and works to resolve a myriad of food-related concerns six months into the role.

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It's Official: City Buys Ex-Hotel For $6.9M; Housing Authority Buys Ex-Church Street South For $21M

by and | Nov 27, 2023 4:32 pm | Comments (16)

Thomas Breen file photos

270 Foxon Blvd., newly acquired by the city ...

... ex-Church Street South land, newly bought by the housing authority.

The city has officially purchased a Foxon Boulevard hotel for $6.9 million, and is now busy converting it into a non-congregate homeless shelter that the Elicker administration said it hopes to open before Christmas. 

And the housing authority has closed on its $21 million acquisition of more than eight acres of Union Station-facing vacant land that used to house the Church Street South apartment complex, and is about to embark on a year-long planning process to determine how best to transform that empty expanse.

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Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Plan OK'd

by | Oct 3, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (54)

Thomas Breen photos

City Director of Community Resilience Carlos Sosa-Lombardo, with Community Services Administrator Eliza Halsey: This is a "game changer."

Thomas Breen file photo

Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes: Not the right plan, not the right place.

The Board of Alders overwhelmingly approved the Elicker administration’s plans to spend $6.9 million in mostly federal funds to purchase the 56-room Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard and convert it into a non-congregate homeless shelter.

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Another Ocean Tenants Union Forms

by | Aug 31, 2023 8:11 am | Comments (10)

Laura Glesby Photo

Fair Rent Director Wildaliz Bermúdez meets Hope.

Fed up with waking up to the rancid stench of flooded sewage in her apartment building’s basement, Hope started knocking on some of her neighbors’ doors at 1275 – 1291 Quinnipiac Ave.

Within six weeks, Hope had joined with other organizers with the Connecticut Tenants Union to gather 21 signatures from residents of the building’s 20 units. They officially filed the paperwork to become New Haven’s third and fastest-to-form tenants union on Wednesday afternoon.

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City Eyes Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Conversion

by and | Aug 1, 2023 10:25 am | Comments (35)

Thomas Breen file photos

The Foxon Boulevard hotel might soon become a homeless shelter.

The Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard will become New Haven’s first non-congregate homeless shelter to serve both individuals and families by this upcoming winter, if an Elicker administration proposal comes to fruition. 

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Lights, Camera ... Childcare! Previewed

by | Jun 7, 2023 8:56 am | Comments (1)

Lisa Reisman photos

In the ex-theater's, future childcare center's front lobby ...

... and refurbished screening room.

Voices lifted in exuberant song outside a movie theater overlooking Middletown Avenue?

Just a few years ago, a scene like that might have been unthinkable at the scruffy but beloved Cine 4 theater that closed last year after 51 years in operation.

The occasion was a sneak peek of Friends Center Flint Street — named for the pitted drive that leads up to the familiar flat-top white building where a local childcare nonprofit plans to build a new early education campus.

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Cinema-To-Childcare Campus Plan Detailed

by | Mar 23, 2023 2:08 pm | Comments (6)

Rendering of proposed new childcare campus at ex-Cine 4 site.

Allan Appel photo

David Symond, Jr., Allyx Schiavone, Margo Early, and Karin Patriquin on Wednesday.

The corn will keeping popping at the central ticketing-and-candy counter of the old Cine 4 movie theater — even as that entryway fixture is converted into a reception desk for a planned new early education campus now in the works on Middletown Avenue. 

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Donations, Prayers Pour Into Turkish Mosque

by | Feb 10, 2023 4:33 pm | Comments (1)

Hulya Elevli: “I’m not changing my clothes because I’m thinking, 'They can’t change theirs over there.'”

Some of the donations ready to be boxed and shipped to Turkey.

Hulya Elevli has spent every day this week sorting through donations at the Diyanet Mosque in Quinnipiac Meadows while coordinating with earthquake refugees to help them find shelter in a house she owns in northern Turkey.

On Friday morning, the end of a restless week and the mere beginning of a coordinated response to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that ravaged parts of Turkey and Syria and that has caused at least 23,000 fatalities, Elevli joined members of the mosque at 531 Middletown Ave. and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal to speak up about the need that exists abroad and offer guidance to locals about how to help.

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Sunset Ridge Becomes Eviction Central

by | Feb 9, 2023 9:21 am | Comments (26)

Laura Glesby Photo

Jake Sr. and Jr.: Moving soon out of Sunset Ridge after a canceled Notice to Quit.

Laura Glesby photo

A real estate investment firm filed 26 eviction lawsuits in just one month against tenants in a single low-income Quinnipiac Meadows apartment complex — cementing that landlord’s status as one of the most aggressive evictors in the city. 

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New Tutoring Site Focuses On Phonics

by | Nov 14, 2022 11:46 am | Comments (4)

Maya McFadden file photo

Shelley Smith tutors second grader Maite at Bishop Woods Thursday.

Bishop Woods second grader Maite paused and took a deep breath as she looked at the word: Dent.”

She knew what it meant. The spelling was the hard part. So she decided to sound it out — at the suggestion of a tutor from a successful New Haven nonprofit that has been called in to help the city’s public schools up their reading game.

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Free Cuts Send Students Back In Style

by | Aug 23, 2022 9:44 am | Comments (3)

Maya McFadden photos

Tamya celebrates new back-to-school hairstyle on Middletown Ave ...

... as Tanya Solomon's grandsons pick up books on Valley St. Monday.

Tamia Massey usually spends more than $200 getting her two daughters’ hair braided at the start of every back-to-school season. 

This year was different — thanks to one of a host of community-led events focused on helping families cut costs as students prepare to return to the classroom.

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Cine-4 Closes, Becoming Early Ed Campus

by | Aug 11, 2022 1:44 pm | Comments (29)

Thomas Breen Photo

Farewell, flicks: Middletown Ave.'s Ciné 4, now shuttered.

Start the early ed: Friends Center's Schiavone, who plans to convert cinema into childcare campus.

The lights are off and the popcorn’s all gone from a decades-old independent movie theater on Middletown Avenue — which new nonprofit owners aim to convert to a bustling campus for affordable early childhood education.

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A New Day Sought For Tenants

by | Jun 9, 2022 1:29 pm | Comments (24)

Thomas Breen photos

City officials join Quinnipiac Gardens tenants and tenant union organizers for Thursday press conference. According to LCI, Quinnipiac Gardens has no outstanding housing code violations.

(Updated) The mayor and top City Hall housing officials traveled to an apartment complex on the east side of town to promote a newly proposed law empowering tenant unions — and to encourage renters to band together to advocate for fair rent and safe living conditions.

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