Business

‘It Should Be Called Bank of Somalia’: Papp Slams Bank of America for Unkempt Property on Elm

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The Bank of America property opposite the Playhouse on Elm Street is unkempt and unsightly, and New Canaan should have some mechanism—in its Town Code, budget or Zoning Regulations—to either force the bank to spruce up the area or empower the town to fix it promptly, officials say. If New Canaan doesn’t have the authority now, then the Town Council should adopt an ordinance that would force the Bank of America and other businesses whose properties front public sidewalks downtown to “do a decent job,” Planning & Zoning Commission member Laszlo Papp said Wednesday at a meeting of the Plan of Conservation and Development (or “POCD”) Implementation Committee. “The area in front of Bank of America is atrocious,” Papp said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “Bank of America doesn’t even deserve the name—it should be called ‘Bank of Somalia.’ That is the way it looks.”

The criticism emerged during a wider discussion of improving aesthetics downtown, among members of the committee—an advisory group of elected and appointed officials, municipal employees and residents, charged with seeing through relevant recommendations of the recently updated POCD (see especially Section 4, starting on page 29 here). The parcel occupied by Bank of America is owned by a company, care of a separate company whose principal is a Danbury woman, according to records on file with the town Assessor and Connecticut Secretary of the State.

Government

Beautification League Offers $50,000 for Town Hall Landscaping Plan; Tree for Ben Olmstead Proposed

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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. 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.

Around Town

VOTE: Advocates To Propose Keeping Pop Up Park in Place All Summer

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The creators of the Pop Up Park downtown will apply to keep the gathering space set up continuously from Memorial Day to Labor Day—a move they expect will further boost its usability and visibility while creating an opportunity to upgrade to sturdier furniture. Launched on a test basis in the summer of 2012 and evolving each successive year into a more regular fixture, the “park” occupies the final block of South Avenue. It includes tables, chairs, a water fountain and often special set-ups from local musicians, businesses, nonprofits and community groups that create family-friendly entertainment and activities. Last summer saw the Pop Up Park set up each Friday and broken down again late Sunday so that the block reverts to accommodate motor vehicle traffic for the workweek. It “brings people into the downtown area in a recreational manner,” said Keith Simpson, a longtime New Canaan resident who owns a landscape architectural design firm and serves on the Pop Up Park Committee.

Around Town

Keeping Up the ‘Gold Star Walk’: Citizen-Led Campaign for Little-Known World War II Memorial Path at Mead Park

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Standing at what is perhaps the least-traversed edge of Mead Pond on a recent morning, town native Jim Bach, a 1947 New Canaan High School graduate who served as a U.S. Army sergeant from 1952 to 1954, picks lichen from the branch of an apple tree whose trunk is twisted in prickly weeds. “I don’t know what this stuff is, and you see how the vines have grown up?” Bach said on this cool, clear December day. “That shouldn’t be. That is the lack of maintenance, and a lot of those lower branches should be taken off and also, you know, it has gotten spindly too. That’s the attention that these types of trees need.”

Dedicated at the close of World War II to the 38 New Canaan men who lost their lives while serving during the war, the area dubbed “Gold Star Walk” starts just inside the gate at Mead Park’s entrance and runs along the eastern and northern edges of the pond.

Government

Antique Gates OK’d for Entrance to Former Huguette Clark Property

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A set of antique, wrought iron gates may soon grace the entrance to the famed former Huguette Clark estate in New Canaan. Saying the uniquely large size of the 52-acre lot and fact that the gates themselves are to be set back a good 75 feet from the road at 104 Dan’s Highway (well out of the front yard building setback), planning officials on Monday night approved an application for a Special Permit allowing the gates, which otherwise would be too high, under New Canaan’s Zoning Regulations. Local landscape architect Keith Simpson, in presenting to the Planning & Zoning Commission, said part of the work going on at the property—which includes a 1937 mansion undergoing a complete interior renovation—is restoring that main house and part is to “enhance the property in a responsible way” with “a request that we replace the current gates which are certainly failing and replace with some gates that owner have found.”

The gates are nearly nine feet tall and are translucent, so they do not obstruct a view of the property from the road, Simpson said. The gates are “simpler” than some on the west side of town that Simpson cited, saying at the hearing, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center, that he was “hoping the commission may consider the scale of the property and the sort of simple-ness and attractiveness of gates may be something suitable for a Special Permit.”

It isn’t clear whether the gates actually will be added to the property, since the owner of the estate—it was sold in April for $14.3 million and the new owners quickly moved to dissolve an approved 10-lot subdivision of the lot—has not yet purchased them, Simpson said. “The owner would like to buy them before someone else does,” he told P&Z.