THE INNER-CITY NEWS - April 26, 2023 - May 02, 2023
911 Crew Bulks Back Up by PAUL BASS
New Haven Independent
National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week came and passed — and Joy Dunston and Justin Augustine and their colleagues continued answering the call day and night to keep New Haveners safe and alive, with more help than they had a year earlier. Duston has worked for the past 12 years as a police and fire dispatcher at the city’s 911 call center, officially called the Public Service Answering Point (PSAP). Augustine, a fellow city native, has seven years on the job, where he currently works as a supervisor, helping everyone stay calm amid daily life-and-and death pressures. The two took some time out as Public Safety Telecommunicators Week ended to join their boss, PSAP chief Joe Vitale, to discuss how they keep their composure to get quick, essential information from people reporting shootings or assaults or in-progress burglaries in order to funnel it instantly to first responders. They spoke of the importance of patience, on their end and the concerned callers’ end, in order to get those basic questions answered in order for the right help to arrive at the right place. They also urged people to remember to dial the main police number — 203 – 9466316 — rather than 911 for parking complaints or any other matter that fails to fall under the definition of “dire emergency.”
PAUL BASS PHOTO PSAP’s Joe Vitale, Joy Dunston and Justin Augustine at WNHH FM.
The center, based on the top floor of 1 Union Ave., is now handling 131,000 emergency calls a year; just two years ago officials put the annual number of calls at 100,000. Amid the growing demand, PSAP has made strides in the past year since Vitale, a retired Yale police captain (who did a stint running that department’s emergency communications operation), took the helm. Thanks to the pandemic and a general labor shortage, PSAP was down
14 dispatchers out of the 55 budgeted positions. That meant that dispatchers like Dunston were regularly working two or three 16-hour shifts a week at a highpressure, high-stakes job. Since then most of the slots have been filled, with the last bunch of needed hires currently undergoing training, Vitale reported. Dunston is back to working 40hour weeks at a job that she continues to see as a way to strengthen and give back to her community.
Ground Broken On 166 New Apartments by THOMAS BREEN New Haven Independent
One hundred and sixty-six new marketrate apartments — and at least one sauna — are en route for Chapel Street thanks to two new now-under-construction buildings slated for two long-vacant lots downtown. City officials and representatives from the Chicago-based developer CA Ventures celebrated that latest example of New Haven’s market-rate apartment boom during a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday afternoon outside of 808 and 842 – 848 Chapel St. That’s where the general contractor Haynes Construction is busy building up a new five-story, 46-unit building with groundfloor retail at the southwest corner of Chapel and Orange Streets, as well as a new seven-story, 120-unit building with groundfloor retail on Chapel midway between Orange and Church Streets. CA Ventures New Development Specialist Sarah Maxson and Executive Vice President of Development Brian Brodeur said that the new mixed-use buildings — which have caused two eastbound lanes of Chapel to close to through traffic during construction — will be called “The Archive.” They should be finished and open to resi-
dents in 16 months. They said the two-building development should cost north of $50 million to build, and that all of the studio, one‑, two‑, and three-bedroom apartments will rent at market rates. What those rents will ultimately be should be determined later this year. Maxson added that the new mid-block building will include a host of amenities open to residents in both the corner and mid-block structures. Those will include the sauna, a gym, and a rooftop courtyard. “We are thrilled to be investing in this community,” Maxson said as she praised the development sites’ location as close to so many restaurants, shops, bus stops and train stations, and other cultural landmarks. This is a “vibrant and dynamic city,” she said. City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli recalled working in the city’s transit department back in 2007 when a fire destroyed the Kresge department store that used to stand at this very Chapel Street site. He described the “anxiety that came with that and the uncertainty of what would come next” for this stretch of downtown. Fast forward this decade and a half later, this project is now under construction — and is one of four new housing proj-
ects within walking distance, including the ex-Coliseum site a few blocks south, that are bringing 550 new apartments to the area. Piscitelli also spoke about a 2019 walking tour of the Ninth Square and downtown that his department led looking forward to so many of these new developments. “How far we’ve come,” he said. Devil’s Gear bike shop co-owner Johnny Brehon agreed. “It’s about time,” he said with a smile, alluding to the many years these properties sat vacant. The sites were long owned by local developer Paul Denz, who won various approvals from the City Plan Commission and the Board of Alders to build up the site before selling the various Chapel properties to CA Ventures for $6.75 million last year. “We welcome you to the neighborhood,” Brehon added. And, while the eastbound car lane and sidewalk closures on the block are an inconvenience, he’s not complaining too much. Because the sidewalk on the north side of the street where his and many other shops stand is still open. And he’s already seen a bump in foot traffic — one that hopefully will be sustained when the lanes and sidewalk reopen, along with 166 new apartments and hundreds of new residents.
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