Government

Selectmen Approve $34,700 Contract for Outdoor Wall Repairs at Waveny House

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Town officials on Tuesday approved a $34,700 contract with a Warren, Conn.-based company to repair stone walls around Waveny House. The Board of Selectmen voted 2-0 to approve the contract with Meduri Masonry, a company that Public Works Director tiger Mann said “has done some very good work for using the past on various projects throughout town.”

“This is for wall repairs in and around the house itself,” Mann told the selectmen at their meeting, held at Town Hall. “These will be comprised of the one existing wall that is adjacent to the parterre garden that is being replaced right now, and the wall to the north of it has actually collapsed over time.”

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectman Kit Devereaux voted in favor of the contract, which includes $30,200 plus $4,500 in contingency. Selectman Nick Williams was absent. “This is a town-funded project, this is not a partnership with the [Waveny Park] Conservancy, and the funds are currently available,” Mann said.

Around Town

PHOTOS: Christopher Lloyd Regales Waveny Park Conservancy, Supporters Ahead of Dec. 2 ‘Golden Gala’; Lloyds To Serve as Honorary Chairpersons

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Christopher Lloyd on Wednesday night stepped toward the limestone fireplace in the grand hall of his childhood home in New Canaan, turned and told about 50 town residents gathered there that returning to Waveny House reminds him of his past. On this evening—a cocktail party hosted by the Waveny Park Conservancy to honor the organization’s founders and supporters, and kick off fundraising plans for 2017—the actor said he found himself thinking about “one particular incident” involving his father, Samuel R. Lloyd Jr.

“My father liked to have a cigar from time to time, and there was a humidor in that room, the billiard room,” he said, pointing past the staircase that New Canaanites for decades have climbed to reach the Recreation Department’s offices. “There’s still a billiard table in there, though for some reason it’s kind of dark. And there’s a humidor, and when I was seven, eight, nine years old, I became aware that it contained cigars, and I experimented. I kind of secreted one, went outside, lit it up.

Around Town

‘A Marvelous Destination’: Waveny Park Conservancy Pursues Project at Cornfields; Tailgate Fundraiser To Be Held Saturday

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An unsightly clearing in the southeastern corner of Waveny, laden with an invasive grass species grown out of the dredged material that in recent years has been piled there, is to be transformed into a newly landscaped and inviting destination, according to a nonprofit organization that’s taken on the restoration and beautification of the park. Known as “the cornfields”—a name that recalls Waveny’s pre-Lapham agricultural roots—the long-untouched area in recent years and until last summer had served as a sort of storage and staging ground for what had been dredged from Mill and Mead Ponds. Under a new plan developed by the Waveny Park Conservancy—and backed financially by a foundation established by a generous, recently deceased New Canaanite—the area “will become more of a meadow,” said Bob Seelert, chairman of the conservancy’s board. “It will be a marvelous destination spot, and in that regard, quite frankly, when you talk about continuing to inspire and serve the people of New Canaan forever, this is a transformational kind of destination spot.”

One of the first five projects taken on by the conservancy—projects that undergo the required town approval process prior to any physical work, though they’re funded through the nonprofit organization—the reimagining of the cornfields complements and is tied inextricably to a major plan to restore and beautify the Waveny Pond nearby (at the bottom of the sledding hill). In order to do that work, the conservancy is relying on New Canaanites who enjoy Waveny to support the organization through donations—see details below of its first major fundraiser, to be held Saturday.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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One of New Canaan’s most prominent, historic and beloved homes has hit the market. The 1897-built Colonial at 299 South Ave.—a favorite home of many New Canaanites who walk and drive along the main corridor into town—is being advertised by Christine Saxe, sales vice president at William Raveis Real Estate in New Canaan (see photos above). A lovingly restored and preserved three-story home, it originally was a tuberculosis hospital established by Dr. Myron Brooks (known as ‘Brooks Sanatorium’), who gave his name to a side street alongside it. ***

Members of a Town Council subcommittee said Tuesday that they’re hearing the new cell tower erected on Silver Hill Hospital property is not, at this point, improving service for residents of eastern New Canaan in any measurable way. ***

Brother kittens, likely abandoned, were found under a bush on Millport Avenue on Monday, according to Officer Allyson Halm of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control section.

Around Town

‘It Was An Amazing Place To Live’: Actor Christopher Lloyd Returns To Waveny House

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About 12 years ago, Christopher Lloyd, the actor, re-visited Waveny House, his childhood home in New Canaan and centerpiece of the sprawling property, now a beloved park, that his mother Ruth Lapham Lloyd conveyed to the town in 1967. It was a Fourth of July weekend, Lloyd recalled, and he was “sitting out in the field, and the fireworks were going off down near the parkway and I looked back and I saw all those faces and the people and they had a band playing and all kinds of barbecues going on.”

“And I thought, if my mother could come back and see that, she would feel that her dream was coming true,” Lloyd recalled from the Great Hall at Waveny House on Sunday afternoon, standing a few feet away from the recently restored floor-to-ceiling limestone fireplace that has greeted generations of New Canaanites entering the 1912-built structure. “That Waveny hadn’t been turned into gas stations and mini-malls—not that we don’t need those—but something that was preserved ‘in perpetuity’ so to speak, where the people who live in this area can come and enjoy what it offers. That’s a great pleasure, to come back and see that.”

He got a good dose on Sunday, attending the sold-out launch of a children’s book, “Waveny: New Canaan’s Treasure,” written by town resident Arianne Kolb and illustrated by Nicole Johnson Murphy. A max-capacity crowd of more than 150 picked up copies of the book, mixed and took photos with Lloyd, learned about the work of a nonprofit organization that co-presented the event with the town, the New Canaan Preservation Alliance, and perused contemporary photographs of the Waveny grounds by New Canaan artist Torrance York, while New Canaan Music owner Phil Williams entertained the crowd with live music from his band, Scavenger Trio.