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Library Seeks To Set Up Temporary ‘Mirror House’ As Visitors Center for Rebuilding Project

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New Canaan Library is seeking permission to install a “mirror house” at South Avenue and Maple Street where people could preview the organization’s widely anticipated rebuilding project. 

The temporary 230-square-foot structure would use “interactive 3-dimensional tour from inside,” according to an application filed with the Planning & Zoning Commission. 

“From the outside the look of the structure is that of a ‘mirrored glass house’ due to the fact that it has very highly reflective surfaces on three sides running the full height,” owner’s agent Paul Stone of Karp Associates said in a Special Permit application filed on behalf of the library. “Essentially, it’s a mirrored box, no gables. From the interior one can see out as though it’s clear glass, but from the outside it appears as a mirror.”

P&Z is to take up the application during a regular meeting Tuesday, one week after the library won a key signal of support from New Canaan’s legislative body. 

The Town Council on March 24 voted 10-2 to deny a motion that would have effectively halted the library’s project for one year so that preservationists could figure out a use for the original 1913 building building and fundraise for its restoration and maintenance. The library is seeking a $10 million contribution from the town toward its overall $30 million project and is fundraising the balance. Those in favor of the delay—preservationists as well as Councilmen Tom Butterworth and Cristina A. Ross among them—argued that the century-old building is a rare architectural and historic gem of New Canaan that lends to the look and feel of the downtown.

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

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.

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‘It’s an Iconic Place’: Bank Clears Sale of Deteriorating Antique Home on God’s Acre

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A long-vacant, prominent antique home on God’s Acre is poised after years of holdups to transfer to a new owner, officials say. The ca. 1780-built Greek Revival at 4 Main St., tied up for more than six years in foreclosure proceedings, is expected to be transferred this month to Arnold Karp, according to Paul Stone, chief operating officer at New Canaan building firm Karp Associates. “It’s an iconic place,” Stone said of the home, located in New Canaan’s Historic District, next to St. Michael’s Lutheran Church.