Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The Planning & Zoning Commission during a special meeting on Monday night reviewed some 65 yet-to-be-released conditions that it is considering as part of an approval for the closely followed Merritt Village proposal. Though still in draft form and therefore not public, the approval P&Z discussed appears to land on 105 total units at the proposed development. The specter of an affordable housing application looms over the project, should property owner M2 Partners and the town fail to reach a compromise. During an interview after the P&Z meeting, New Canaan resident and would-be Merritt Village builder Arnold Karp said he and his partners “have sat through six months of hearings.”

“We went from 160 to 140 to 123 to 116 to get 105? That doesn’t sit that well with myself or my partners, because it’s way too arbitrary and capricious,” Karp told NewCanaanite.com.

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District Officials To Expand Dunning’s Capacity to 4,000-Plus for Turkey Bowl

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District officials say Dunning Stadium will have capacity for about 4,200 attendees for Thanksgiving morning’s Turkey Bowl, and that New Canaan High School as the home team in this year’s rival game will sell 60 percent of the tickets, Darien 40 percent. Asked about a major change in the logistics of the hugely popular football game—under which only advanced, not game-day, tickets will be sold (details below)—NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan said the district has been keeping “very close accounts this year of comped tickets, student passes and the whole nine yards, so we know how many people are in [Dunning] Stadium.”

The 4,000-plus capacity figure represents 2,000 in regular seating, 1,000 in standing-room, and another 1,000-plus between larger bleachers and smaller units from baseball and softball facilities that are being brought in, Egan said. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi, asked about the plans during a presentation before the Town Council on Wednesday night, noted that Boyle Stadium (capacity 10,000) was not available this year for the Rams-Blue Wave game. While the FCIAC has done away with its own conference championship game, the league has preserved the Thanksgiving Day rival games. This year’s Stamford High School-Westhill High School game is to be played at Boyle, home of the SHS Black Knights.

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PHOTOS: 13 NCHS Seniors Sign Early Letters of Intent To Play Sports in College

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Thirteen New Canaan High School student-athletes signed early Letters of Intent on Wednesday to play sports in college starting next year. The gallery above includes photos from a signing ceremony overseen by NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan, held at in the auxiliary gym at New Canaan High School. We also asked each student about how their experience doing youth and/or high school and varsity-level sports in town helped prepare them for college. (The Ivy League-bound seniors’ letters could be called “likely letters” in that those schools, though they offer no athletics scholarships per se, can issue an agreements signifying that they’re committed to admitting a recruited athlete.)

The tally of 13 marks the largest ever group of NCHS student-athletes signing the early letters, Egan said.

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New Canaan To Honor Town’s Olympic Athletes During Sept. 16 Rams Football Game at Dunning

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Locals will help celebrate the milestone installation of new artificial turf at Dunning Field with a special ceremony honoring three outstanding athletes who call New Canaan their hometown. On Friday, Sept. 16—the night of the New Canaan High School varsity Rams football team’s home game, at 7 p.m. versus Ridgefield—Olympians Andrew Campbell Jr., Charlie Cole and Thomas Dunstan will be recognized for making it all the way to Rio de Janeiro in rowing (Campbell and Cole) and water polo (Dunstan). Conceived and organized by New Canaan resident Tucker Murphy, with coordination from others including NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan and First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, plans for the 16th include a proclamation read by New Canaan’s highest elected official and possibly video clips of the athletes in action on the scoreboard screen. “We had three kids from New Canaan, Connecticut go to the Olympics and do very, very well—just getting there is a huge feat—so why not come together and show them how proud we are of them and all they’ve accomplished?” Murphy said.

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‘A Milestone For This Town’: Residents Form Private Group To Support New Canaan’s Athletic Facilities; Dunning, NCHS Track On Radar

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Faced with a pressing need to re-turf New Canaan’s premier sports field prior to the start of the fall season, 20 town residents six weeks ago formed a new nonprofit foundation focused on that project and several others. In that very short amount of time, thanks to generous donors representing a wide cross-section of the community, the New Canaan Athletic Foundation (here on Facebook and here on Twitter) not only raised more than $500,000 needed to replace the aging turf at Dunning Stadium, but also sketched out a long-term vision for supporting athletic facilities in town. “It is going to be a community organization, so we are contemplating all sports—not just, say, football, soccer and lacrosse,” said Mike Benevento, chairman of the NCAF board of directors. A New Canaan resident for 13 years and professional asset manager with four kids ranging in ages from 3 to 12, Benevento added: “It’s for athletic projects that can benefit the community as a whole, and athletic facilities. It’s a broad initiative.”

News of the newly formed organization broke Tuesday during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen, when a $554,490 contract was approved for Rockland, Mass.-based R.A.D. Sports to replace the artificial turf at Dunning.