A series of entries designed to capture the ongoing adventures of NINA! See how we came to be where we are today, and follow along as we enter the new century of social media!
Page: 76
The remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea dumped a lot of rain on Hartford during the end of last week, maybe as much as two inches, and unfortunately Kent Pizza sustained significant damage as the rain caused the ceiling in the restaurant to collapse. That’s sort of a long story, but the basics are that a ventilation shaft went straight up to the roof, giving the rain an unimpeded path right into the kitchen.
While that’s bad news for Kent Pizza, it’s good news for our project. We’re working with the owners to renovate their space rather than later, as originally scheduled. Since they’re closed anyway, this is working out all the way around, and we should be able to keep them closed for a much shorter period of time than originally planned.
A look at last year's gardens, this year.
Things are moving along nicely at 1 Imlay. The new bay window is taking shape, and the rest of the house is gradually returning to its original footprint.
At some point in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’re going to re-create this desolate parking lot as a historically accurate, brand new owner-occupied home. Meantime, we’re letting our friends at Habitat use it as a parking lot for volunteers working on Habitat’s project just up South Marshall Street from here. Sadly, we noticed today, their sign has been battered.
This is a large part of what city living is all about. ConnDOT is moving ahead with the Sigourney Street station for CTFastrak, which is right across the street from 1 Imlay Street. The future homeowners will be able to walk to the busway, which can take them quickly downtown to Union Station, from which they can catch an Amtrak train to NYC or Boston. Now if ConnDOT can only manage to get its act together on the commuter rail line!
Even though we can never be sure what the original façade looked like, we think we can be forgiven for thinking we probably got it pretty darn close!
A couple more houses wanted some work done, so we organized some volunteers (and ourselves!) and got down to it.
Susan Campbell invited me to post about NINA’s work in Asylum Hill on the blog of the Partnership for Strong Communities. I was more than happy to do it, but they wanted a photo of me to go with it. I’m not a fan of photos of myself – and to make matters worse, they even got me to take the photo! Okay, not me, Mary, but still.
The blogpost is available as of today, and this here is the full photo that they used. At least I think it's this photo. Lord knows whey they went in for a close-up.
Sold! We officially closed on 156-158 Sargeant Street today, and we're looking forward to our new neighbors moving in.
