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The road to the 2026 FIFA World Cup is coming through Connecticut when the U.S. Men’s National Team takes on Turkey this weekend and a Connecticut native will be taking part.

The USA will host Turkey on Saturday at Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

It will be a homecoming for one player on the U.S. men’s team, Patrick Agyemang, who grew up in East Hartford.

"You have these dreams as kids, and you're playing and you're growing up and you're watching games that are played in the stadium and you're like 'oh, I want to be a part of it,'" Agyemang said earlier this week. "To be there and be in, literally be in my hometown, it's something I can't really put into words, but I know the day is going to be amazing."

His former teammate, Jordan Koduah, will be cheering for him in the stands.

They grew up together and went on to play together at the University of Rhode Island.

“We were super competitive. It was to the point where, like, if you were a stranger and you probably saw the way we played against each other, you would think that we all hated each other, but we just played with like, this, like extreme passion,” Koduah said.

He said Agyemang was a nightmare for defenders.

“I knew he was going to go pro. I just didn't know what capacity and I think he’s exceeded expectations,” Koduah said.

He said seeing this full-circle moment with Agyemang coming back to East Hartford and playing professional soccer should be an inspiration to other aspiring athletes.

“No matter what club you come from, your background, there's a chance that you can make it,” Koduah said. “I'll be at the game and I'm sure the atmosphere is going to be electric and just in support of Patrick and the team as well.”

Goalkeeper Matt Turner also has local ties. The New Jersey native played soccer at Fairfield University.

This match is ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches, which are happening in three countries for the first time, including in the United States.

The matches in the U.S. will be held in Boston, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Kansas City, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Kickoff for the match at Pratt & Whitney Stadium is set for 3:30 p.m.

Thousands of people will be in East Hartford for the match and stay in hotels and eat at nearby restaurants.

“The World Cup is coming up and so, so many people are not only building excitement, but building awareness for it. And I think for Connecticut, you know, this spot that is most often times described to people as a drive-through state it really makes us a drive to state,” Anthony Anthony, the state’s chief marketing officer, said.

East Hartford's mayor said they are excited to bring a large number of fans to the stadium for a big event.

Pratt & Whitney Stadium has hosted the U.S. Men’s National Team eight times since 2005.

Tickets are still available and you can watch it on Telemundo and Peacock, which are both owned by NBC Universal, the parent company of NBC Connecticut.

As Connecticut legislators drove through a bill this spring to boost the supply of affordable housing, the state went into reverse with fewer permits for apartments and houses filed by developers.

Developers received permits for less than 1,650 units of housing in the first four months of the year in cities and towns tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau, a 10% decline from the start of 2024.

That ranked Connecticut 40th among the states for housing-permit momentum to start 2025, coming off three straight years of annual increases. At just over 400 permit approvals a month in 2025, Connecticut permit approvals remained well behind the pace of last year, particularly May onward when Connecticut averaged more than 500 permits a month.

As of Friday morning, Gov. Ned Lamont had yet to sign the legislature's housing bill, but told reporters on Thursday he was not inclined to veto it. Among other measures addressing affordability, development and homelessness, the bill would prioritize state funding for some towns over others if they establish new zoning districts that encourage housing development.

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"People want to be in Connecticut — that wasn't always the case — and I got to make sure there's a place for them to live," Lamont said Thursday in Hartford. "You take the lead — you show us where you want that housing to go. It's important for your community, it's important for our state."

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Builders nationally were handed a huge question mark on development costs in recent months, after President Donald Trump initiated tariff demands on Canada, Mexico and China, which are major exporters of construction materials to the United States.

But despite the tariff uncertainties, permit totals were up in a number of states to kick off 2025. That included Maine which led the Northeast with a 20% boost between January and April from a year earlier, and Alaska which led the nation with a 56% surge. Permits were up 10% in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and down only slightly in Florida.

Connecticut's 10% decline was in line with New Jersey, with both states easily besting New York where permits were down by nearly half over the first four months of 2025 as tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau. Permits were down 28% in Massachusetts, where lawmakers passed a massive package last year designed to spur more housing development, and were lowered 23% in Rhode Island.

The Census data omits some towns from its count, which can distort comparisons, and totals in smaller states can fluctuate significantly month-to-month, as large projects get approved. The Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development publishes a fuller list of statewide annual totals each year, with DECD having yet to release 2024 totals.

Lamont referenced "pushback from my friends in Fairfield County" on the housing bill during a Thursday press conference in Hartford on the state budget and legislative outcomes. Lamont said he was not inclined to veto the housing bill, and asked towns to "lighten up on regulations" in the interest of drawing more developers.

"There are a lot of other states — particularly red states — that are being far-more aggressive in their approach to housing, and they're going to reap the benefits of that," said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, speaking a day earlier to reporters in Hartford.

Cities like Stamford, New Haven, Norwalk and Danbury have added significantly to their housing stock in recent years. Some smaller towns like Trumbull and Bethel have seen success as well, though not without opposition from some who fear new apartments and subdivisions will change the character of neighborhoods or increase pressure on school budgets.

It will take years for Connecticut to see any results from the 2025 housing bill if signed into law, as towns debate whether to pursue zoning changes to encourage more development. Connecticut needs the housing now, said Michael Barbaro, president of SmartMLS which oversees state listings and other real estate data.

"We still have historically low inventory," Barbaro said. "I personally don't see any relief on pricing coming soon."

Some lawmakers’ attempts to pass two bills spurred by a scandal sparked by alleged child sex abuse at a town-run camp in Bethany came to an end this week when the legislative session came to a close.

Senate Bill 6, which would have required camps operated by towns and cities across Connecticut to be regulated by the state, had received support in the Senate, but efforts to move that forward came to an unceremonious end when the House failed to take it up on the last day of the session. House Bill 6952, which would have required a more limited set of safety measures for those camps, was never voted on by either chamber.

“It’s very unfortunate, disappointing,” Sen. Jorge Cabrera, D-Bethany, told The Connecticut Mirror on the Senate floor this week. “I hope that we’ll get the chance to try again next year.”

Cabrera said he thinks that confusion over S.B. 6 and its impact stood in its way. In addition to other unrelated provisions on food assistance, disconnected youth and the Early Start program, that bill would have required municipal camps to be licensed by the Office of Early Childhood in the same way that private camps are.

Municipalities overwhelmingly voiced opposition to the legislation, citing concerns about the financial impact of complying with regulations like ratios of bathrooms to the number of campers. They said that such changes could close camps and shut low-income families out of an inexpensive child care option in the summer months. Advocates argued that these concerns were overblown and that it was possible to get to a middle ground that would have assured the safety of campers with only modest increases in cost.

The bill gained traction after a scathing report was released on May 15 that detailed the findings of an internal investigation into how the town of Bethany and its first selectwoman, Paula Cofrancesco, handled allegations of sexual abuse by an employee who worked with children at the local school and in the town-run summer camp. Cofrancesco’s last day in office was June 6.

After Cofrancesco learned of those allegations, the report alleged that she deceived Bethany residents and failed to protect local children from an alleged abuser — then resisted efforts to make those programs safer. More than a year later, no arrest had been made despite findings by experts at the Yale Child Advocacy Center and the state Department of Children and Families that the allegations were credible, and in that time an additional victim alleges she was abused.

The report also found that Bethany’s Parks and Recreation Department was poorly run. According to the report, the department “had no filing or record-keeping system, written safety policies, or documented training protocols for its staff.”

According to an interview in the report with Cofrancesco’s assistant, no background checks were conducted until 2024.

Cofrancesco was among the voices of opposition back in 2023 when the legislature took up a similar bill that attempted to create oversight for town camps. At the time, she argued that municipal camps already received enough oversight, including from elected leaders like herself.

Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, who is co-chair of the Committee on Children, had championed the bill’s passage on the Senate floor. She said that licensing municipal camps is an equity issue, because many low-income families rely on town camps and should be able to count on them to be checked for safety, on par with the way the state regulates private camps.

Maher said she believes there is a pathway forward to come to an agreement in the future and had hoped to carve out a middle ground that would have satisfied the concerns of municipalities. She had hoped to develop a task force to bring stakeholders to the table to discuss the best path forward.

“The most important thing to me is that municipal camps are taking care of our children, that our children are safe, that parents know that their child is safe in the summer,” she said. “Most parents drop their kids off and have no idea that they are not licensed and there’s no oversight except through the municipality. So, we want to make sure that there’s first aid training, that there’s mandated reporter training, that they have staffing ratios that make sense that keep kids safe.”

H.B. 6952 was an attempt to carve out a more modest set of regulations based on safety concerns. That bill would have required prospective employees age 18 and older to submit to comprehensive background checks, which many municipal camps say that they already do but which is not required by the state. It would also have required at least one staff member over the age of 18 for every 12 children, mandatory reporter training for leadership, and that such programs, because they are exempt from camp licensing, would not be allowed to call themselves “camps.”

Many municipal Parks and Recreation departments took issue with the bills. In written testimony, Stephanie Crane, the recreation director for Bolton, said the S.B. 6 “could result in reduced program registrations, the loss of high school employees, and potentially force the closure of many recreational programs due to staffing shortages.”

Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, also spoke out in opposition to the bill on the Senate floor.

“I think it’s a great thing that you want to feel better, but I can tell you that you are not going to protect children with a piece of legislation that will not stop someone from putting hands on children,” Osten said on the Senate floor. “The only thing that stops people from putting hands on children is to put them in jail, to incarcerate those people, to make sure they stay there a really long time. And when they get out to follow them and make sure they get the treatment they can. And our bills today don’t address that issue.”

Rep. Mary Welander, D-Orange, said she hoped to come to the table next year, and was encouraged by testimony submitted by municipal camps.

“The good news is that through the public hearing we did learn that the overwhelming majority, if not the entirety of municipal camps are already doing the vast majority of what was being asked for,” she said.

Welander said that while background checks would not have prevented the Bethany case, since that counselor did not yet have a record at the time of the alleged abuse, the internal investigation did raise concerns and questions about what else could be done to prevent a similar case in the future.

“It’s not just about background checks, it’s also about best practices,” she said, emphasizing that there should be measures in place to ensure that concerning behavior is addressed, “and that the people that work with the children are taught to recognize the signs that something might be going on that is unacceptable.”

But for Acting Child Advocate Christina Ghio, background checks are still the major focus.

“From our perspective the core of the issue is that background checking, so I hope there is a way to make sure that, at a minimum, we can get background checks for all of those settings even if we can’t get full licensure.”

GRANBY, CT — The timing of the latest Gem is perfect for a warm June weekend as schools are getting out.

Located in a nook off the Granby Town Green at 4 Park Place, Grassroots Ice Cream & Street Food offers over 100 artisanal ice cream flavors and an eclectic menu of salads, wraps and tacos.

If you can't find it, just look for the line.

There are also locations in Simsbury and New Milford.

Grassroots features mainstays like vanilla, chocolate and butter pecan, but it is perhaps best known for unique creations like goat cheese blackberry, blood orange chocolate chip, salted caramel and honey lavender. The ice cream is made the Granby creamery in small batches.

Find out what's happening in Granby-East Granbyfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Most of Grassroots' mix-ins such as like jams, brownies and cheesecakes are also made from scratch.

Grassroots also features street food, described as "fast-gourmet."

Grassroots has been family owned and operated , since its opened in 2013 at the former Granby General Store.

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The Hidden Gems series, created in 2019 by Patch editors Chris Dehnel and Tim Jensen, features out-of-the-way mom and pop restaurants, small specialty stores you may have never heard of, little-known historical markers or beautiful nature spots that may be a bit off the beaten path, all located within Hartford and Tolland counties. Do you have a favorite Hidden Gem in the area that you wish to see featured in this column? Email your ideas to Chris.dehnel@patch.com. Other Hidden Gems in the series:

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2023 and earlier

The new operation is contracted to provide cannabis for a product brand by the legendary heavyweight boxing champion.

HARTFORD, CT — A once-empty industrial building in Connecticut's capital city will soon become a massive cannabis cultivation operation later this summer, one serving a former boxing legend.

The Goods THC, a minority, woman-owned, and family-led cannabis cultivation company, has completed development of its 32,000-square-foot micro-cultivation facility at 275–287 Homestead Ave. in Hartford’s Upper Albany neighborhood.

According to The Goods THC, the company holds exclusive cultivation rights in Connecticut for two nationally recognized brands: “Cookies” and Mike Tyson’s “Tyson 2.0."

Tyson is a boxing hall-of-famer and former heavyweight champion in the 1980s and 1990s. He is now in the legal cannabis business.

The company anticipates its first product launch in late July or early August 2025.

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The facility features 10,000 square feet of grow space across seven climate-controlled flowering rooms.

It is the maximum canopy permitted under Connecticut’s micro-cultivation license.

The facility is located in the historic Hartford Specialty Machinery Co. building, the 80,790-square-foot industrial site that was acquired in December 2022 by Eros I LLC for $1.7 million.

The Goods THC is one of the first Social Equity applicants licensed by the Connecticut Social Equity Council and has received full cultivation permitting from the Department of Consumer Protection.

The company is led by Hartford native Gloribel Diaz.

"As a victim and survivor of the War on Drugs, Diaz has experienced firsthand the lasting harm inflicted on communities like Upper Albany," reads a company release.

“This isn’t just a cannabis business, it’s a homegrown movement,” said Diaz. “We chose to build in Hartford because this is our community. We’re creating opportunities for local residents, launching premium products, and working with nationally recognized brands, all while staying true to the purpose of cannabis reform: justice and reinvestment.”

According to the company, the site will employ 20-30 Hartford area residents "with a focus on hiring from Social Equity backgrounds through a formal workforce development program."