Home Care In Burlington, CT

While some things have changed at the hatchery since 1923, a lot has remained the same.

BURLINGTON, Conn. — It is a century's worth of fish stories in Burlington and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) has reason to celebrate.

This month, the Burlington Fish Hatchery is turning 100.

Mike Beauchene, a supervising fisheries biologist at CT DEEP said while some things have changed at the hatchery, a lot has remained the same.

“Largely everything you see here is in the same place that it was 100 years ago – there might be things “duct taped” that weren’t here 100 years ago, but largely, everything is in the same place, functioning as it was in 1923," said Beauchene.

Tom Chairvolotti who is the Connecticut DEEP’s supervisor of fish culture and fish health said, “We’re providing fish for people to catch, that was our main goal then (in 1923) and that’s our main goal now, nothing has changed."

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Chairvolotti added that the blue-ribbon status of the Farmington River as a trout fishing destination is partly because of the fish they raise at the Burlington Hatchery.

“I think the best part of this is that we make a lot of people happy,” Chairvolotti then said, “we just want to keep the tradition alive of trout fishing in New England.," said Cahirvolotti.

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Jimmy Altman is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him onFacebook, X andInstagram.

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State environmental officials halt burn permits during extreme fire danger.

BURLINGTON, Conn — It’s that time of the year. The trees have not yet leafed out and lots of sunshine is beating on the forest floor, drying out winter brush and starting to heat it up. But what does that mean for fire conditions? It means they are extreme.

Spring moving in like a lamb carrying end-of-the-week record heat.

“Just this year we started doing it. We bought a little backyard fire pit,” said Maureen Miele of Killingworth while on a stroll around Hammonasset State Park Tuesday.

But come nighttime, Miele plans to hold off on firing up her spring toy.

“I’ve been getting notices on my phone for the past two weeks about fire danger. As much as we would like to sit outside and do it again this week, we of course wouldn’t do that because it’s too dangerous,” she said.

Smokey the Bear on a board outside of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) headquarters warned of extreme fire danger Tuesday. The same day fire crews in Burlington scrambled to extinguish a brush fire started by what Chief Michael Boucher described as reckless burning.

“Even though we put out on social media no burning today and what the conditions are, we still have these incidents occur,” Boucher said. “Wind was pushing it to the north, so we were kind of concerned that it was going to get away, get to some houses. The guys worked hard and aggressively to contain it.”

Burlington Fire was forced to call in help from surrounding towns and spend more than an hour working to keep flames from spreading to surrounding homes.

Boucher added, “Ground’s dry. There’s low humidity and winds all of those together is the perfect recipe for what happened here. Cause of this fire was a neighbor burning recklessly under these conditions.”

A resident in Burlington burned brush which caused the fire, a scenario that should require a permit. In Madison, fire crews tell FOX61 they have seven open burn permits but residents are supposed to call dispatch and get the green light before lighting fires. State environmental officials said it’s best to hold off altogether in times of elevated fire danger.

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“The type of permits that folks are issued for routine open burning outdoors can be restricted by the municipal officials or by the state here during these types of conditions,” said Frank Cervo of DEEP’s Division of Forestry.

Officials said extreme conditions will continue until Connecticut gets significant rain. Whether it’s a fire pit or simply tossing a cigarette—you are encouraged to be cautious during fire danger season.

“The trees have not yet leafed out so all the sunshine that’s starting to beat down goes directly to the forest floor, hits all those leaves, small branches, grasses, all that kind of stuff. Dries it right out and starts to heat it up,” Cervo said.

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Samaia Hernandez is a reporter for FOX61 News. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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A Burlington man spent thousands of dollars on Taylor Swift tickets for his girlfriend.

They looked forward to the show for months.

But just days before the event, he was told his tickets didn’t exist, so he reached out to NBC CT Responds.

“On the Monday before the concert, I received an email basically saying they didn’t get their tickets, so I wasn’t going to get my tickets,” explained Scott Stanhope.

In November, Stanhope paid $2,600 total for the two Taylor Swift seats during what he says was called a “pre-sale.”

He purchased the tickets online from “Event Tickets Center,” which is a secondary ticket marketplace where individual sellers can post and resell their tickets.

Six months later and just five days before the concert, he knew he was in trouble when he got an email saying, “Due to the unanticipated development of the ticket marketplace for the Eras Tour, the ticket provider was unable to complete the delivery of the tickets…”

“What was that like breaking the news to your girlfriend?” asked NBC CT Responds Consumer Reporter Caitlin Burchill. “I didn’t want to,” said Stanhope.

To add insult to injury, Stanhope had booked a non-refundable $450 dollar hotel room near the concert.

The couple still decided to make the trip from Connecticut despite the bad news. Instead of the concert, they went to a go-cart entertainment center that is down the road from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

“It wasn’t the Taylor Swift concert that we’d been banking on for six months,” said Stanhope.

In a statement, Event Tickets Center CEO Adam Young said in part: “My company, Event Tickets Center, has a commitment to 100 percent fulfillment of sales made through our marketplace. This seller has been blocked from using the marketplace in the future as they failed to meet our standards.”

Stanhope doesn’t understand why he wasn’t informed that the tickets weren’t available sooner. “Basically [I gave them] a $2,600 interest free loan for six months,” he said.

While it’s unclear who was holding on to Stanhope’s payment for months, he did get a refund from Event Tickets Center for the tickets and he initially was also offered a 50% voucher for future purchases through Event Tickets Center.

“At first, I actually thought that that was fair, but the more I thought about it being six months and letting me know right beforehand and also the hotel that I wasn’t going to be able to cancel, it starts diminishing that $1300 voucher pretty quickly,” Stanhope said.

There’s no question the demand to see Taylor Swift has been sky-high.

But to this day, Stanhope still just can’t believe the company didn’t just offer him other seats that were still for sale on its website the day he was told his tickets weren’t available. “They did have comparable seats, seats that I would have been more than happy to sit in and actually get the concert that we had booked,” he said.

It wasn’t until NBC CT Responds reached out to the company that Stanhope was offered a flight, hotel, and comparable tickets to see Taylor Swift anywhere across the country by Event Tickets Center.

He took a $4,300 voucher for future ticket purchases from their website instead.

While Event Tickets Center wouldn’t tell NBC CT Responds exactly what happened in Stanhope’s situation, consumer experts tell us one possibility is that it was a speculative ticket sale by the individual seller.

“What that means is that the person who was selling the ticket didn't actually have it in hand,” said John Breyault, the vice president of public policy, telecommunications, and fraud for the National Consumers League (NCL).

Breyault says speculative ticket sales are common, but a controversial practice in the secondhand ticket industry and are tough for consumers to spot, which is why the NCL has been advocating for better legislation, specifically the "Ticket Buyer's Bill of Rights."

NCL says there's not currently a standalone bill for it, the organization is supporting the "BOSS and SWIFT Act" and the "Junk Fee Prevention Act."

Breyault says, “We think that consumers deserve a consistent experience so if you are buying a speculative ticket, you should know upfront, have it prominently displayed that the person you're buying it from does not have it in hand and they may not be able to get it in hand before the event happens."

Right now, NCL says while some ticket exchanges disclose this, others don’t.

Stanhope said he didn’t read any warning about this on the website during his purchase.

Event Tickets Center’s terms and conditions say, “Some listings on SITE may only be representations of available tickets or an offer by SITE to obtain tickets and not actual seat locations or currently available tickets.”

“I always thought when you booked tickets, they were your tickets,” said Stanhope.

“Now that this has happened, it’s going to be a worry of mine whenever I book tickets: is this going to fall through?” he added.

What should you look out for when buying tickets online from a resale site?

Breyault says you should:

BURLINGTON, Conn — They’ve been crushing it since 1912, that’s what they say at Hogan’s Cider Mill in Burlington.

The more than century-old cider mill is primed for business to pick up as the calendar turns to autumn.

“Fall is in the air, apples are being crushed, and that’s where I come in," said Chet Dunlop, who has owned Hogan’s for the past 33 years.

Dunlop said the word has gotten out about the unpasteurized style of cider he makes.

“Authenticity is a good thing, we can say that about our cider, it’s been made the same way for a long time," said Dunlop.

“We have people driving five, six hours to come try our drinks, to try our cider, so we’ve become a destination of sorts,” said Dunlop's daughter, Margaret Borla, who runs the popular social media pages, among her other jobs at the mill.

“I’d say a third of the cars in our parking lot are from out of state,” Dunlop added.

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As the fall season is about to come into full force, Dunlop said they will be busy at Hogan’s, but he welcomes the business every year.

“Just the beauty of things, the freshness of the air, the apples, the crushing of the apples, just the whole ambiance of it,” he said.

“We have our cider donuts, the pumpkins are out; we’re ready for fall here,” Borla said.

To learn more about Hogan’s Cider Mill, click here.

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Jimmy Altman is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him onFacebook, X andInstagram.

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Don Oakes had a familiarity with Connecticut's "Gold Coast" retail enclaves back in 2015, having worked early in his career in Darien. But when it came time to expand his nautical tote bag chain to Connecticut, he followed the footsteps of another New England brand to the opposite side of the state — to Mystic, where The Black Dog's logo was already a downtown fixture.

Sea Bags has since outstripped The Black Dog's growth to become one of the faster-expanding retailers in New England, adding its 50th store this year and having since tacked on a second Connecticut location at the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlets heading into the holidays.

"I remember driving into town and parking in front of The Black Dog's store and looking around and saying, 'Yup — this is where I want to be,'" said Oakes, CEO of Sea Bags. "We can be pretty flexible on our store size, and Mystic's a good example."

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If storefront leases are the surest currency for the vitality of any retail destination, heading into Black Friday weekend Connecticut offers a rich array of shopping options for residents and visitors, with a number of malls and downtown districts near capacity. But for every chain like Sea Bags looking to expand here, there are plenty more that take a pass on Connecticut, despite the state ranking among the highest nationally for household income.

That includes at least a few that have a strong familiarity with Connecticut. The Wilton-based toy designer Melissa & Doug chose The Westchester for its first retail store. Timepiece manufacturer Breitling, which oversees U.S. distribution from a Wilton office, has no Connecticut boutique today, despite several in the Northeast otherwise including its newest location planned for The Westchester mall in White Plains, N.Y.

The luxury holding company Tapestry has yet to announce a Connecticut toehold for its Stuart Weitzman shoe brand based in New York, despite the fellow Tapestry brands Coach and Kate Spade New York having locations in Connecticut. Tapestry is in the process of acquiring Capri Holdings, which has a similar profile in having multiple Connecticut locations for its Michael Kors brand, but none yet for its Jimmy Choo and Versace boutique chains.

Luxury giant LVMH has likewise been hit and miss in affluent Connecticut, with a Louis Vuitton store at the Westfarms mall in Farmington, but other retail "houses" owned by LVMH having locations in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Some continue to see Connecticut as the best springboard to the U.S. market, to include The Frenchie Co.which chose Westfarms recently for its first U.S. accessories shop. And outside of the boutique world, a number of chains on the National Retail Federation's list of the 100 largest continue to expand in Connecticut, including TJX which has been opening Marshalls and HomeGoods stores in Connecticut; and Burlington, which had the biggest percentage increase in U.S. stores of any traditional retailer on the NRF list.

Burlington added about 85 stores in all last year for a 10 percent increase from 2021, including a new Cromwell store in a former Kmart location. Burlington could see a similar jump on Kantar's updated ranking for 2023, after taking over more than 60 leases from bankrupt Bed, Bath & Beyond including at Ridgeway Shopping Center in Stamford. Burlington also opened a new store in Port Chester, N.Y., about a half-mile across the Greenwich line.

The Burlington expansion is occurring despite the company admitting last summer it is anyone's guess how consumer spending will go for the 2023 holidays and the year ahead, given the hit they took during runaway inflation that is now showing signs of easing.

"This economic cycle has been unusual in that while low-income shoppers — our core customers — have been impacted by inflation, ... higher income groups have been relatively unscathed," said Burlington CEO Michael O'Sullivan, speaking with investment analysts in August on a conference call. "Coming into 2023, we thought it was possible that if the overall economy slowed down then we might see more trade down traffic in our stores, and this could potentially offset some of the weakness among our lower income customers."

Back at Sea Bags, Oakes said inflation has affected revenue and that the company plans to offer markdowns for the holiday season this year on its tote bags and other products fashioned from sail cloth, including a "Love Lewiston" line that will benefit victims of last month's mass shooting in Maine.

Oakes can point today to having more stores in Maine than the state's legendary retailer L.L.Bean, where Oakes worked before joining Sea Bags. Sea Bags beats out L.L.Bean's store count as well in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Michigan — but not in Connecticut, where Bean's has stores today in Danbury, New Haven and South Windsor.

"We got to get more stores in Connecticut," Oakes said.

Includes prior reporting by Christine DeRosa, Robert Marchant and Luther Turmelle.