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With schools closed today for the holiday, many families lined Park Street to watch the small parade. The “three kings” riding camels were the highlight.
The parade began near SAMA (Spanish American Merchants Association) at 95 Park Street. Here, people could pose for photos beside the camels while waiting for festivities to get moving. Continue reading 'Feliz Día de Reyes'»
Some activists will be using November 5th as an opportunity to loudly and visibly protest Bank of America, but those behind Bank Transfer Day want less talk, more action.
Bank Transfer Day organizers write:
no actions scheduled at banking institutions are organized or condoned by this movement or its organizer. Please close your accounts in the manner they were opened: independently, with respect, without signage
Route for Saturday's march, courtesy of Occupy Hartford
In Hartford, activists will begin marching at 10 on Saturday morning from the Occupy Hartford site to several Bank of America locations. In a press release, Rebecca Burton from Occupy Hartford, states,
Bank of America has refused to use the money taxpayers ‘loaned’ them to help small businesses and homeowners here in Connecticut. We think that’s wrong, and we hope our protest against this bank’s selfish policies will help in the nationwide campaign to get everybody to move their money out of Bank of America–and the other ‘too big to fail’ banks.
Occupy Hartford says that this is a “solidarity action,” and that Occupy Wall Street and offshoot Occupy groups endorse Bank Transfer Day.
But, Bank Transfer Day organizers do not return the endorsement. Continue reading 'Occupy Hartford: Bank Transfer Day'»
Not fatigued yet by all these development meetings? Here are four more to add to your schedule then:
June 22: Handel Performing Arts Center on the corner of Albany Avenue and Westbourne Parkway will host the discussion pertaining to Asylum Hill, Blue Hills, Parkville, and the West End.
June 23: Metzner Recreation Center at 680 Franklin Avenue. This meeting is for the Barry Square, Behind the Rocks, South End, and Southwest neighborhoods.
June 27: Hartford Public Library will host the meeting for Downtown, Frog Hollow, Sheldon/Charter Oak, and South Green.
June 29: Parker Community Center at 2621 Main Street will host meeting for Clay Arsenal, Northeast, and Upper Albany neighborhoods.
The meetings about Livable & Sustainable Neighborhoods are described as opportunities for the public to learn about how the One City One Plan projects are being implemented. Literature sent from the City of Hartford says this will pertain to “infrastructure, community development, and anti-blight projects” happening “over the next two years.” A press release from the City indicates that this is part of the One City, One Plan. The One City, One Plan — the Plan of Conservation and Development through 2020 — was developed after receiving input from NRZs and the public. The projects vary from neighborhood-to-neighborhood. All of these meetings run from 6-7:30pm.
The “oh, hell no!” heard throughout Hartford today was in response to the Historic Preservation Commission’s agenda item:
I Historic Review
a. 77 Wadsworth Street — Demolition of building for the purpose of repaving the property as a surface parking lot. Applicant– Jeffrey Dressler, Owner- 77 Wadsworth Street, LLC
Let’s look at a few of the problems with this.
1. Hartford does not need more surface parking
2. This particular area does not need more surface parking. Though technically in the South Green neighborhood, it is considered by some as part of South Downtown.
View 77 Wadsworth St in a larger map
3. The City of Hartford’s adopted Plan of Conservation and Development is pretty clear about reversing the trend of creating surface parking. The part of the adopted POCD dealing with Downtown directly states, the need to “rationalize Downtown parking” by “Encourag[ing] removal of surface parking.” Not a single section of the plan under the “neighborhoods” category suggests creating surface parking.
4. In nearly every discussion that has happened involving the direction of Hartford in the last two years, sustainability has been part of the conversation. There is nothing ecologically sustainable about surface lots.
5. Tearing down an historic building entirely to create parking is shortsighted.
The Historic Preservation Commission will be meeting on Wednesday May 18th at 4pm in the conference room at plaza level — 260 Constitution Plaza. If you can not make that meeting, you can email the Director of Planning, Roger O’Brien, at obrir001@hartford.gov or send the message to him via Lynda Crespo, Administrative Assistant. at cresl001@hartford.gov
Photo by abejo // sxc.hu
It’s not quite time for the annual Greater Hartford Puerto Rican Day Parade, yet people are asking about it.
Here’s what we know. On June 5th, the parade starts at 11am at Wawarme and Wethersfield Avenue and continues down Main Street, ending near the Gold building.
The Festival del Coqui will be happening in Bushnell Park after the parade. Last year it was at the Riverfront.
If you are wondering about parking for this event, or at all, you can find more information here and here.
This week’s featured residence is located on a main street in the South Green neighborhood. This house is located in spitting distance of both Frog Hollow and Downtown.
The South Green neighborhood has only about 9.45% of its housing units occupied by their owners; one of the ways to fight blight is to increase owner occupancy. This building, at least from the front and the outside, looks to be in good shape. There are eight rental units in this building.
On the top floor you can see a person looking out the window. When I took this picture, the Three Kings Day Parade was happening directly in front of the building. This is a busy street in general, as it hosts many small businesses: auto repair and hardware stores, jewelers, cafés, furniture shops, a half dozen clothing stores, a dozen markets, over a dozen beauty salons and barber shops and about fifteen restaurants.
Mayor Segarra waves hello as the parade wraps up in Pope Park.
Photo: stock.xchng
Three Kings Day (or El Día de Reyes) — January 6th — is celebrated as the day that the magi brought gifts to baby Jesus. There’s more to it than that, which, if you celebrate, you already know; however, for the non-Christians, there’s something in this we can celebrate too– camels! Hartford Public Schools are closed for this holiday, enabling families to gather along Park Street to watch the parade which will gather around 9:00, begin around 10 in the morning near the Spanish American Merchants Association (95 Park Street), and end in Pope Park.
On Monday we looked at what residents are concerned about in the Upper Albany, Clay Arsenal, North East, Blue Hills, West End, and Parkville neighborhoods; yesterday, we examined the data from Downtown, and from South Green, Sheldon/Charter Oak, South Meadows, South End, and South West neighborhoods. Today, we’re going to look at the rest: Behind the Rocks, Barry Square, Frog Hollow, and Asylum Hill.
Behind the Rocks’ three most frequent 311 cases are related to pesky trees, graffiti, and housing concerns. Housing concerns were the major cause of complaint for folks in Barry Square — almost three times as many as the next highest item of concern, trees. The top two issues for Frog Hollow right now are housing complaints and bedbugs. There are 28 cases related to housing in Asylum Hill; all other 311 cases in that neighborhood currently total in at 28. Continue reading 'The 311 Data Dump: What Do Hartfordians Worry About? (part 3/3)'»
Asylum Hill, Barry Square, Behind the Rocks, Blue Hills, Clay Arsenal, Frog Hollow, Hartford, North East, North Meadows, Parkville, Sheldon/Charter Oak, South End, South Meadows, South West, Upper Albany, West End, access, blight, commentary, community, downtown, neighborhoods, quality of life, south green
Yesterday, we looked at 311 data for most of the city’s North neighborhoods. Today, we’re going to look at two separate sets of data: Downtown; South End, South West, South Meadows, South Green, and Sheldon/Charter Oak neighborhoods.
Downtown is a creature unto itself. There are only 31 active 311 cases for downtown, and many were issued by the same person. What’s interesting about the downtown data is what’s not on the list: parking. Since there are items listed as “active” that were submitted months ago, one would expect that something that is discussed daily as a problem would have appeared on the complaint registry at some point.
The complaints get more diversified and interesting when one adds more people to the mix. In the South End, someone was irritated by a person parking his/her vehicle on the front lawn. Continue reading 'The 311 Data Dump: What Do Hartfordians Worry About? (part 2/3)'»
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