Town residents soon will see a pocket park with benches and wireless services go in on the corner of South Avenue and Maple Street, New Canaan Library’s director said.
New Canaan Library is planning a pocket park for this lot, on the corner of South Avenue and Maple Street. Credit: Michael Dinan
The library last April bought the .27-acre lot and razed a house on it. It isn’t clear whether or how the flat, cleared area will figure into the rebuilt New Canaan Library, still a nascent project in its planning stages. (Right now, the library is getting an idea of how much money can be raised in private donations for a capital campaign—a figure that will inform, at least in part, what type of building will go up.)
New Canaan Library Director Lisa Oldham. Credit: Michael Dinan
In the meantime, a committee of the library is “very keen on creating an attractive, nice and usable” pocket park there for New Canaan, said Lisa Oldham, director of the downtown facility since July.
“We would like—and we will see if we can do this—to put in some WiFi capability,” Oldham said.
New Canaan Library. Credit: Michael Dinan
With that, and a device called LibraryBox that the library already has in hand—a combination router, USB drive and software that acts as a low-powered Web server, according to its creator’s website—park-goers with mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets could get free downloads of copyright-free material, Oldham said.
“We have the device and we are waiting for an opportunity to use it, and the park could be the perfect opportunity,” Oldham told NewCanaanite.com.
As with a refreshed teen area inside the building, the library views the creation of the pocket park as a chance to make the existing area as nice as it can regardless of a rebuilding project that could still be several years away, Oldham said.
Looking at the are that'll get the pocket park from the library side. The old Center School lot (still a sore point for many alumni of the beloved old school) can be seen across Maple Street, on the left. Credit: Michael Dinan
Oldham said that the uses of LibraryBox could go beyond the pocket park’s boundary.
“Take the Farmer’s Market during the summer [in the old Center School lot across Maple],” she said. “You could put a whole lot of copyright-free recipes on it and you could be over there looking at fresh produce and downloading recipes from LibraryBox.”
The precise address of the pocket park-to-be is 56 South Ave. The library paid $785,000 for the lot and house last year, according to a property transfer recorded in the Town Clerk’s office. With that acquisition, the library owns all but two properties on the block: 48 South Ave. and the Gulf gas station on the corner of South and Cherry.