A nonprofit organization dedicated to making New Canaan beautiful is offering to fund $50,000 in plantings to the grounds around the newly renovated Town Hall, and wants separately to help plan for a prominently placed sugar maple dedicated to the memory of a beloved man and municipal employee who died following an accident last summer.
Town Hall on the evening of March 30, 2015. Credit: Michael Dinan
The New Canaan Beautification League feels that “this is a special opportunity to make a large contribution not only financially but also visually to the town,” one of its members, landscape architect Keith Simpson, said at Monday’s meeting of the Town Hall Building Committee.
Part of the landscaping plan that Simpson unveiled (it already has been shown to the DPW chief and first selectman, among others) involves the planting of a tree that would be dedicated to Ben Olmstead. A well-loved town DPW worker for 37 years who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the town, Olmstead died July 24 at age 71 after he was struck by a car near the intersection of East Avenue at 123. (Olmstead knew so much about the town that the DPW in making its fiscal year 2016 budget request put in for a full-time person to try and fill his part-time shoes.)
In reviewing landscaping plans from a colleague for whom he has great respect, Norwalk-based Eric Rains, Simpson said it was difficult to find a tree location that would indicate it was planted for a specific, special reason.
Eventually one emerged, in a pocket of green space outside a new entrance to the addition on the north side of Town Hall, Simpson said—far enough away from the building itself so as not to block light designed to flow into the structure.
“We got a very good location for a major tree, and we’d like it to be a sugar maple,” Simpson said at the meeting, held in the Lamb Room at New Canaan Library. “Eric Rains and I, we feel that a sugar maple, being a native New Englander, it’s a tall, handsome, colorful tree and with the sweetest disposition—every kid in New England knows how sweet sugar maple is—so there are a lot of ways that it can remind us of Ben.”
A landscaping plan for the newly renovated, expanded Town Hall that’s been supported by the New Canaan Beautification League. The nonprofit organization is willing to pay up to $50,000 to see the plan materialize. Specs by Keith Simpson Associates
Town Hall is weeks away from reopening, following an estimated $13 million renovation of the 1909 structure that features an addition out back that’s done purposely in a different brick from the original building. The overall price tag for the Town Hall renovation project is closer to $18 million, given costs such as rent for temporary offices during construction, officials say.
As municipal departments return to 77 Main St. next month, occupying first the main floor and then lower floor starting in early May, Town Hall will reopen to the public. Officials said during Monday’s meeting that the Town Clerk’s office likely would close for one week during the move.
Officials with the construction firm Whiting-Turner said during the meeting that fire glass to be installed in the upper level of Town Hall will not be available until early summer, delaying full occupancy the building until then.
About $40,000 in contingency funds remain for this final home stretch, against about $1.3 million in construction costs remaining as of the end of February, officials said. The contingency, buoyed from time to time as funds budgeted for other parts of the renovation have been freed up, likely would be boosted again by the approximately $47,000 that had been earmarked for landscaping. First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said during the meeting that he’s eager to ensure the committee brings in the renovation on budget, saying items such as an approximately $30,000 table to be used in a new conference room for public meetings, must be examined closely.
Meanwhile, the Beautification League’s plans call for additional plantings near the “new” entrance round side of the building.
Though an area designated now as ‘lawn’ only may seem sensible, “I think if you were thinking as member of a garden club or Beautification League, if you are walking into Town Hall and you have an opportunity for a lot of color and a lot of interest, [with] a lot of attractive plantings on the right-hand side going up, there are pockets and places where with the right budget and right energy and interest, you would have a great place make a really terrific front lawn.”
The league also would like to see new grading in the front, Main Street-facing portion of the Town Hall grounds, particularly if a large tree on the left-hand side as you face the building were to come down, and to install benches out front of the building where people could gather.
Simpson also floated the idea of installing a brick walkway in lieu of the concrete one that now is installed between Main Street and the front entrance to Town Hall. However, making the change now would be cost-prohibitive and plans long have called for the original concrete walkway, officials said.