Arnold Karp

Merritt Village: Two of Four Buildings Now Framed Out, Ready by Year’s End

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Two of the four residential buildings at the widely anticipated Merritt Village development on the edge of downtown New Canaan are now framed out, and should be ready for move-in by the end of this year, the project’s developers say. A total of 59 apartments will be available between the two buildings now nearing completion, and 40 condominiums will be available on the other two nearer to Park Street, according to Arnold Karp and Paul Stone of New Canaan-based Karp Associates Inc. The condo buildings will be ready by the spring 2021, they said. “We are on time, we are on budget and the buildings are as attractive as I thought they were going to be, with all the extra time and effort that we spent on design, materials and quality of workmanship,” Karp said Monday morning, standing with Stone in an area amid the buildings that is to become a wide green of open space that wends through Merritt Village, flanked by terraces with benches and fire pits for residents. 

“I think when you ask neighbors, I think the general view from the town is that they have digested the project,” Karp said. “They see that it’s not looming over anybody, that it’s well-planned-out and well constructed. We are not going to make everybody happy, but I would say that overall we have gotten only favorable comments, especially in the last several months.”

Located south of Maple Street and east of Park Street, the landmark project received final approval from the Planning & Zoning Commission in November 2016 after several months of emotionally charged public hearings.

Arnold Karp

‘Merritt Village’ Developer: First of Four Buildings To Start Going Up This Week

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Construction is progressing apace at the ‘Merritt Village’ redevelopment, and the frame of the first building in the apartment-and-condo complex will start to go up this week, according to the project’s owner. The widely anticipated 99-unit project on time and on budget, Arnold Karp of property owner M2 Partners LLC said Monday during a walkthrough of the site at Park and Mead Streets. “As developers that’s always the part that you worry about,” Karp said. “With the weather we’ve had different issues but we’ve luckily figured all that into our timing.” When the complex is completed in 2021 it will consist of four buildings, Karp said.

Arnold Karp

Newfound Praise for ‘Merritt Village’ Retaining Walls As Landscaping Goes In

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Once assailed by certain neighbors, passersby, zoning officials and opponents of the landmark building project, the Merritt Village retaining walls fronting Park Street now are drawing praise. In the three days since long-planned plants, ivies, shrubs and trees have materialized—hiding the retaining walls as well as breaking them up and distracting from their poured concrete appearance—the developers of the 110-unit condominium-and-apartment complex say they’ve seen a dramatic shift in tone. “The sun is shining, people have three meals a day and everybody has housing,” Arnold Karp of Karp Associates, developer of Merritt Village, told NewCanaanite.com when asked about reactions to the newly landscaped area. “It amazes me now much people have commented and that they actually feel free to comment on something on our project,” he added. “It is absolutely amazing to me.”

They’ve been commenting since last fall, when the first retaining wall appeared along Park Street.

Arnold Karp

P&Z, Merritt Village Developer Reach Accord on More Robust Landscaping To Hide Retaining Walls

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The developer of a widely discussed 110-unit condo-and-apartment complex to go up on the edge of downtown New Canaan is earning praise from town officials after agreeing to pursue a more robust landscaping plan that will effectively hide a series of retaining walls that some have criticized as unattractive. The retaining walls fronting Park Street will see a combination of plants that will hang down over a lower wall—itself to receive a treatment that will develop moss and so break up its monochromatic appearance—and ivies that will grow up other walls, as well as junipers and other trees, according to Arnold Karp of Karp Associates, developer of Merritt Village. “What we are going to look at it is things that cascade down over the wall that is against the sidewalk and things that will grow up on what is the second wall,” Karp said Tuesday night during a regular meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission, held at Town Hall. 

“There has been some confusion about those walls. Those walls have always been in the design. The only change was that after the hearing was closed, one of the 65 conditions was that we put in a sidewalk, but it was always considered that we would leave space, so there was always a question about the height on those walls.

Government

‘They Missed It’: P&Z, ‘Merritt Village’ Developer at Odds

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The developer of an apartment-and-condo complex on the edge of downtown New Canaan is at odds with municipal officials about whether he’s building what they approved. 

Though members of the Planning & Zoning Commission have said that at some point a set of plans for Merritt Village specified that retaining walls would be finished with a “fieldstone veneer,” local builder Arnold Karp of property owner M2 Partners said final approved plans make no such specification. 

“They are making it seem that we didn’t follow plans,” Karp told NewCanaanite.com in an interview after Tuesday night’s regular meeting of P&Z. “The truth is that plans in Town Hall, stamped and approved, did not show a fieldstone veneer. They are going to something prior to that.”

He referred to a set of plans submitted to the Commission and town planner in August of 2016, five months before P&Z approved the 110-unit complex at Park and Maple Streets. According to Karp, an updated final set of plans went into the town the following month, prior to when the public hearing on the Merritt application closed. 

Officials appear not to be able to find those plans, he said. “The best I can say is they missed it,” he said.