As 2025 comes to an end, We-Ha.com looks back at West Hartford’s biggest stories of the year.

By Ronni Newton

Happy New Year, and a hearty welcome to 2026!

Each year at this time I like to take a look back at which stories and topics were the most popular with our readers. I review our stats on Google Analytics every day, but when I take a look back at a full year’s worth of data, I’m still often surprised by some of the stories that make the top-10 list.

I’m very happy to see that this year’s most-read story is a celebratory one! Readers are always interested in food, and not surprisingly several restaurant-related articles are high on the list. Also not surprising is that multiple Business Buzz columns were among the top-10 – actually half of the true top-10 list based on the analytics. The public is drawn to articles about tragic events, and this year was no exception, but also included are a feature and some political stories.

Animal stories are often at the top of the list, and an article providing advice for dealing with bears was among the top stories of the year. I do love a good animal story, and am hoping we have some fun ones in 2026!

We-Ha.com celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2024, and as we enter our 12th year of existence inm 2026 I am so proud of continuing our growth in readership, and continuing our mission of keeping the West Hartford community informed – as thoroughly and accurately as possible. Since our inception, more than 28,000 articles have been published on the We-Ha.com site.

We’re very appreciative of our Business Buzz and sports sponsors (NBT Bank and Keating Agency Insurance), and we hope readers also enjoy a sponsored content feature “By Design: Stories from the West Hartford Design District,” that launched this year and highlights the businesses in the Design District’s New Park Avenue neighborhood. If you’re interested in the details of sponsorship, contact [email protected] or [email protected] for more information.

Classified ads, games, and West Hartford-themed merchandise were incorporated with recent updates, and we hope readers continue to enjoy those additions to the site.

This year our readership was again well over 3 million page views, from nearly a million unique visitors. While some people access We-Ha.com from our Monday/Wednesday/Friday morning newsletter (roughly 25,000 emails are sent out each week), others are engaged through social media posts, and others find us by going directly to the home page or searching for news stories. Although the algorithms continue to create challenges, Facebook continues to be our busiest and most engaged social media platform, and as of late December we had 16,809 Facebook followers, an increase of 4.4% from this time a year ago. I am not a very frequent poster on X, but we do share our sports stories there and repost items relevant to West Hartford, and we now have 4,395 followers. And despite my [still] not doing a very good job posting regularly, we have done some collaboration posts and now have 5,315 followers on our Instagram account (@westhartfordite), and that’s 1,231 (30.1%) more than we had at this time last year!

In collaboration with 2020 Media we launched a podcast in 2023 and we have continued to record podcasts throughout this year. You can find those episodes here and on the bottom of our homepage, as well as on your favorite podcast platform (Spotify, Apple, etc.).

Our regular columns continue to be very popular, including Jeff Murray’s “From the West Hartford Archives” and Harlan Levy’s “Consumer Diary.” I continue to be extremely grateful for the unique voices these West Hartford residents bring to the We-Ha.com site.

I am also thankful for the continued contributions of sports reporter Paul Palmer, and the great work over the summer by interns Mia Jaworski and Roz Green, as well as Bridget Bronsdon who was able to return for a third summer and contribute multiple articles. I also appreciate the work of Savannah Cote and various other freelancers, and many thanks also to photographer Craig Rosenberg, the students involved in the Conard and Hall internship programs, and other contributors for their fantastic work over the past year.

We-Ha.com is a small, locally-owned business. The site is primarily advertiser supported and we remain committed to providing our content without a paywall. And while I try to personally stay away from that side of the business, I firmly believe that an ad on We-Ha.com is one of the best ways to get exposure in the local market (there are a lot of eyeballs on the site, and the ads appear on all pages).

Because it’s tough to survive on the advertiser-supported model, three years ago we added a way for readers to provide direct support for our mission, and we thank those who have already contributed through PressPatron.com. At the bottom of this article, and at the bottom of every article (or in the top righthand corner of the home page), there is a blue “Become a Supporter” button. If you are able and so inclined, we welcome your support.

Also, please don’t ever hesitate to email your suggestions or comments to me at [email protected].

Thanks for reading!!

Here are our Top 10 of 2025:

• Topping the list of most-read stories, with 25,672 page views, was West Hartford Ready To Celebrate!: What You Need to Know About the 38th Annual Festival – a complete guide to the town’s annual festival. After 38 years, Celebrate! West Hartford remains a fun and vibrant, relevant, and very well-attended event. I’m particularly proud to see this article in the top position, not just because it’s a totally positive story, but also because I have been personally one of the volunteer members of the event committee for the past dozen years. Mark your calendars now, because the committee has already had our first planning meeting and Celebrate! will be returning on June 6 and 7, 2026! And, in 2027, Celebrate! will celebrate its 40th anniversary!

• A delicious story comes in second for 2025, and the article The Laurel Brings Unique ‘Globally-Inspired, Locally-Sourced’ Menu to West Hartford about the opening of the new restaurant in January 2025 garnered well over 20,000 page views! The prequel to that story – the news that The Laurel would be taking over the former Corner Pug space – was actually one of our top stories in 2024. Ashley Flagg, chef and co-owner (with her wife, Rebekah) of The Laurel, was also recently honored as the top chef in the state at the Connecticut Restaurant Association’s CRAZIES Awards – news that was featured in one of the top Business Buzz stories of the year. I recently went to check out the newly-opened event space at The Laurel, and enjoyed a fabulous dinner!

• In third place, Market Hospitality Group Unveils Plans to Transform Former West Hartford Center CVS to Mixed-Use was the announcement in July 2025 that many had been waiting for – the follow-up to Market Hospitality Group‘s $5.25 million purchase in September 2024 of 976-978 Farmington Avenue, the location formerly occupied by CVS, which had closed the previous fall (can’t believe it’s been that long) and Max Zeller Furs. While initial indications were that Market Hospitality Group would use the space to open one or two of its award-winning restaurant concepts, and then in December 2024, co-owner Eli Hawli confirmed to We-Ha.com that from among MHG’s eight existing restaurant concepts, they had chosen Blu Pointe and Mercato to occupy the space – when the complete plans were revealed in July 2025, Hawli shared that MHG had been working closely with the town to expand their plans beyond just the restaurants, adding a 10,435-square-foot second story with five “meticulously appointed” apartments, each with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, without altering the existing footprint of the building. Since then, Max Zeller Furs vacated their store at the eastern end of the building and relocated across the street to the lower level of 977 Farmington Avenue, and the interior of the future mixed-use building has been gutted. A few permits have been filed with the town, and hopefully we will see some visible progress soon. Hawli and his business partner in MHG, Sam DeVellis, were honored at the Connecticut Restaurant Association’s 2024 CRAZIES event in December 2024 as Restaurateurs of the Year, and the new restaurants should be great additions to the Center.

• The weekly Business Buzz that highlights our Monday newsletter has consistently been the overall most well-read feature on the We-Ha.com site – and added together the weekly columns account for more than 500,000 page views in 2025! While I am lumping them all together, this year there are actually six Business Buzz columns that on their own made the top 10 – led by West Hartford Business Buzz: March 3, 2025 – which was overall the fourth-most-read article of 2025. The Business Buzz column with the most views in 2024 also featured this same business … can you guess??? … Park Lane Pizza which finally reopened that week. The iconic pizzeria was closed for well over a year for renovations that began as a repair of damage to the ceiling resulting from a January 2024 storm, and jokes abounded about “just two more weeks” as the reopening time frame, but now that everyone has been reunited with their “tiny corners,” it seems like Park Lane never missed a beat. Most Business Buzz columns garner about 10,000 page views, but those that received as many as 15,000 page views and reached the top-read list were the January 20, 2025 edition (featuring the new ownership of Salt + Lime), the December 15, 2025 column (featuring a photo of Le Mazet and highlighting its being named Restaurant of the Year for Hartford County, and Ashley Flagg being named Chef of the Year at the 2025 CRAZIES Awards), July 21, 2025 (renovations to Big Y and the façade of the entire Crossroads Plaza shopping center), January 13, 2025 (The Cafe by New England Coffee Guy becoming a permanent part of WeHa Brewing & Roasting), and April 14, 2025 (West Hartford resident, chef Rui Correia, opening Piri Piri Q at 2074 Park Road, just over the West Hartford town line in Hartford).

• As noted above, the public is drawn to articles about tragedy, so it’s not surprising that news of a fatal pedestrian crash was one of the most-read stories of 2025. West Hartford Police Investigating Fatal Pedestrian Crash Sunday Night, was updated the next day when police identified 63-year-old Stephen Mendelsohn of New Britain, CT, as the victim who was fatally struck while crossing New Britain Avenue near the intersection with South Main Street shortly before 10 p.m. on Sunday night, June 1. A vigil was held at the site several days later, and tragically, just days after that, another pedestrian was struck – this time in a hit and run incident on South Main Street. Police quickly identified and arrested the driver, but sadly the victim, 44-year-old John Marczak of Plainville, ultimately succumbed to his injuries. At a vigil on June 18, town leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the short- and long-term goals of the Vision Zero Action Plan. Indeed there have been many elements of the plan implemented over the past 6 months, and the stretch of South Main Street in the vicinity where Marczak was struck is one of the locations identified for an automated speed management camera in the plan just approved by the Town Council in December.
• I consider obituaries to be the most difficult articles to write, and seriously consider each word when I craft a final tribute to someone’s life. The difficulty is greatly magnified when it’s someone I know, and that was the case with when I wrote the following: Tracey Wilson, West Hartford Historian, Retired Educator, Activist, Has Died. Wilson, who passed away on Feb. 23, taught both of my children at Conard, and I grew to know her well through her work as town historian as well as her countless other contributions to the community, including many articles written for We-Ha.com. She is still very much missed, but the Noah Webster House the “West Hartford History Center” has been named in her honor, and her legacy will never be forgotten.

• It’s no longer a novelty to see a bear in West Hartford, but articles about bears still resonate with readers and coming in at seventh place in our top stories for 2025 was Town of West Hartford Provides Advice for Dealing with Bears. Perhaps it was the featured photo – taken by my friend Jeannette Dardenne of her daughter, who had just gotten off the school bus and was crossing the road as a lumbering black bear crossed right in front of her. West Hartford has had the most reported bear sightings of any municipality in the state, according to DEEP, which chose the town as the location of one of four “bear management listening sessions” held in December. The number of sightings (now more than 1,000) doesn’t mean West Hartford has more bears than other towns, but just more reports made. I’m one of those who gets very excited to see a bear (the second photo is a bear I spotted on the Trout Brook Trail), and it’s important to heed the advice on how we can co-exist with the magnificent creatures.

• While I consider West Hartford to be a politically-savvy community, I can’t recall another year when there were political stories in our top-10 list, and this year there were two! The report of the results of the 2025 municipal election – All 6 West Hartford Democratic Candidates Win Town Council Seats, 3 New Republicans Elected – was very popular with our readers, who were likely very curious about who would win on the Republican side since all but one were first-time Town Council candidates.
• Back in February, shortly after the new Trump administration took over in Washington, an overflow crowd showed up for an event at Duffy Elementary School in West Hartford, featuring U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Passionate Crowd Engages with Connecticut Senators Murphy and Blumenthal at Citizen Meeting – which chronicles that event – comes in ninth on our list of top stories of the year.
• And finally – and I really love that this feature is among our top stories – comes West Hartford Family Starting Third Year of ‘1,000 Hours Outside’ Challenge. Noting that there would be 8,760 hours in 2025, West Hartford resident Jackie Manento told me at the beginning of January that she and her husband, and their three young children, planned to spend at least 1,000 of those hours outside – no matter what challenges the New England weather may bring. This was their third year participating in the “1000 Hours Outside” challenge, and I plan to follow up as the year comes to a close and see how they did!

I spent more than a decade as a features writer and lifestyle magazine editor prior to making the move to hyperlocal news in 2010. When I think back on my favorite stories from the past year, it’s definitely the positive stories and features that top my personal list, including covering the opening of new restaurants, activities involving our local nonprofits, and events that strongly incorporate photojournalism such as parades, the Morley Red Wagon Food Drive, and graduations.

When I looked back at the top stories of 2024, I noted that several months earlier I had counted up all of the stories I had written about the former UConn campus property, dating back to 2012, when I covered (for another media outlet) the announcement by UConn of their plans to move out of West Hartford. By the end of 2024 there were more than 75 stories, and I predicted eventually reaching 100! I’m not there yet, but who knows what the future may bring.

In 2025, the Town Council approved plans for rezoning and a Special Development District for Heritage Park on the 1800 Asylum Avenue portion of the former UConn campus property, and most recently (Dec. 17) I reported on the awarding of a brownfield grant that will assist with the remediation of the PCBs, asbestos, and other environmental hazards as those plans move forward. I’m ready to report on the demolition of the remaining buildings – likely to begin in January. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to report on the groundbreaking and progress of the construction of Heritage Park, as well as the status of The Residences at Heritage Park across Trout Brook Drive.

And as I say every year, we continue to try to find as many as possible positive “silver lining” stories to share, along with covering the difficult news, and I’m sure there will be plenty of great stories to tell in 2026.

I look forward to another year of bringing hyperlocal news to West Hartford!

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