Business

‘The Impact Is Staggering’: Downtown Merchants Make Case for Controlled Sandwich Board Allowance

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Chris Kilbane, owner of downtown mainstay New Canaan Toy Store, first placed a sandwich board outside his Park Street shop after earning “Best Toy Store” honors from Moffly Media. The main idea, Kilbane told town planning officials Tuesday night, was to promote the Best of the Gold Coast designation. What he quickly discovered, however, was that the sandwich board helped steer foot traffic into New Canaan Toy Store—something that’s become increasingly important and more difficult for mom-and-pop retailers. “It seems so small, but the impact is staggering,” Kilbane told the Planning & Zoning Commission at the group’s regular meeting, held in the Douglass Room at Lapham Community Center. “You have to understand how it is to run a business in New Canaan at this point, or any brick and mortar store.

Government

Town Attorney’s Advice on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries’ Plans: Wait and See

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Though local planning officials may want to position New Canaan so that the town can control whether a medical marijuana dispensary can set up shop here can do so, the best strategy for now may be to deal with an application if and when it arrives, the town attorney has said. Connecticut has licenses six dispensaries in the state so far—including one in Fairfield County (Bethel)—and in each case the municipality where they’re located readily agreed to the new business’s arrival, Town Attorney Ira Bloom said at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission. Though there is no indication that the state will grant more licenses any time soon, “that could happen at any point in time,” Bloom said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center. “So I think so some degree we are in a wait-and-see period in the state of Connecticut, in trying to assess what is going to happen, whether more licenses are granted or there is a change to the law or whatever,” Bloom said.

Government

Officials to Neighbors Concerned about Proposed ‘Greenway’: ‘There Is No Back Door to Crossing the Wetlands’

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Concerned that a proposed 3-lot subdivision on Weed Street—and, separately but related, a planned public footpath that’s part of what open space advocates envision for the site—could negatively impact wetlands and aesthetics in the area, neighbors on Monday night urged officials at a public hearing to proceed carefully with approvals. Strictly speaking, the only proposal before the Inland Wetlands Commission now is for a moderately expanded driveway into the 9-acre lot just north of the intersection at Wahackme (and on the east side of Weed), beneath which new utility lines would be installed, for the two additional lots. That said, the overall site plan—which will require its own applications and hearings—calls for subdivision of the lot , as well as a conservation easement for a strip of land that open space advocates including the New Canaan Land Trust would like to use in order to create a new walk-able trail from the Nature Center to Weed Street in the area of Irwin Park. One neighbor on Weed Street, Dan Radman, told the commission during Monday’s hearing that he wanted “to be sure that if there is an approval to make, it is not the domino effect that it is already the first stepping stone into ‘understood subdivision’ and ‘understood pathway,’ which it should not be.”

Commission Secretary George Blauvelt assured him: “There is no back door into crossing the wetlands.”

“When they [members of the Land Trust] get to a point where they are actually ready to begin the approval process, they will have to come back to this commission and they will have to submit plans,” Blauvelt said at the public hearing, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center. “And the public will be invited to hear them and they will have to make their case as to why, if in fact their plans require crossing wetlands, why it would be a good thing, and it would be another opportunity for everyone to take a look.”

Ultimately, the commission decided not to take action on the driveway application, for two main reasons.

Business

Disused Shopping Carts at Mrs. Green’s Remain a Visible Eyesore, P&Z Says

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Though parking at Pine and Park Streets appears to be just fine despite worries about an influx of customers at Mrs. Green’s, the store’s makeshift corral for disused shopping carts isn’t satisfying town planning officials. Since opening in mid-April, Mrs. Green’s has been lining up the carts along the eastern side of the building (facing Park). That wasn’t part of the original site plan, and the Planning and Zoning Commission last month instructed Mrs. Green’s to create a shrubbery-enclosed corral so that the carts wouldn’t be visible from the street. Commissioner Dan Radman during Tuesday’s regular P&Z meeting called what’s been created there a “lame attempt.”

“What power do we have to make them screen properly?” Radman said during the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center’s Visitors Center. “They still haven’t satisfied what we approved them for, because they did something that wasn’t approved in the first place,” he added.

Business

Parking, Traffic Concerns Arise as Forest St. Construction Nears

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As the start of a major construction project along the narrow, one-way stretch of Forest Street draws near, planning officials are urging those in charge to coordinate and communicate with police and merchants on matters of parking and traffic. Construction will start this summer of a three-story mixed residential-and-retail complex at 21 Forest St. The project will see two commercial spaces, seven residential units, a pocket park and 48-space parking lot go in where The Farmer’s Table (now across the street), Forest Street Deli and a long-vacant parking lot have been located for years. The street will be “shut down for hours at a time,” Planning and Zoning Commissioner Dan Radman said Tuesday at the group’s meeting. “You’re going to be staging, bringing steel in, and cement trucks and everything else,” Radman said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center’s Visitors Center.