Abby Dymond

Residents Call on BOE To Find Sustainable Solutions in School Cafeterias

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Town residents during Monday’s Board of Education meeting called on the public schools to pursue more sustainable ways of serving food and discarding food waste. Margot Bright Thorsheim, a board member and secretary of Planet New Canaan, said that the district ranks among the best in the nation “primarily due to our financial resources, and the vision of the people on this Board and in our administration and its faculty.”

“However, many believe that one educational component is missing in this town, and I would also like to advocate for greener schools in the New Canaan district,” Bright Thorsheim told members of the Board of Ed during their regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “We have yet to show our youth some basic principles of caring for their home and the planet that their children will inherit,” she continued. “Even while we as parents teach our kids to be environmentally respectful, they are going to school and learning that we live in a disposable economy where convenience rules the day, regardless of the long-term cost. And even though we know what is wrong, we have used disposable cafeteria supplies for decades and throw away all of our food waste.

Government

Town To Advise on YMCA Landscape Screening After Neighbor Complains

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Town officials are reviewing the landscape screening between the New Canaan YMCA and a neighbor, after the latter filed a complaint that the South Avenue organization is out of compliance with its Special Permit requirements. Putnam Road resident Roger Williams said in an Aug. 23 letter to the Planning & Zoning Commission that in nearly 30 years he’s seen the Y grow its program and facility significantly. “What was a successful local YMCA when we moved in has become a very large regional YMCA, especially with the closures of the Stamford YMCA and Norwalk YMCA facilities,” Williams said in the letter. “Each time the Y has requested its expansions, they promised to install landscaping and screening and to maintain both to lessen its impact on the neighbors.

Around Town

‘An Enormous Addition to the Town’: New Canaan Museum & Historical Society Unveils Plan for ‘Special Collections Museum’ with Reassembled Millar Studio

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Representatives of the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society last week unveiled plans for a striking new barn-like structure at their Oenoke Ridge campus. The glass-enclosed “Special Collections Museum” will have attached at its rear one of the last–if not the very last—original art studio of a founding member of the Silvermine art colony, according to Nancy Geary, executive director of the NCM&HS. 

Addison Millar’s lean-to-like painting studio—which remains in place on Mill Road more than a century after the artist himself, and his wife, were killed in a railcar accident (1913)—has been generously donated to NCM&HS by the Borglum family, Geary told members of the Planning & Zoning Commission during their March 28 regular meeting. “It is a very rustic building,” Geary said during an approximately 30-minute pre-application presentation to P&Z during its meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “It uses the bark from the mills at the turn of the century when it was built. And we have a plan to disassemble it and rebuild it, and it will be partly enclosed and partly attached to this new building. It will give us space also to have permanently on display rotating paintings by the Silvermine artists.

Dan Radman

P&Z Approves Final Preservation Plan for 1913 Library Building

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The Planning & Zoning Commission at its most recent regular meeting voted unanimously to approve New Canaan Library’s plan to relocate salvageable portions of the original 1913 building to the western border of its downtown campus. P&Z at its Nov. 15 meeting voted 10-0 in favor of a text amendment allowing the legacy building to be relocated within five feet of the property line that the library shares with the Gulf station—originally set out in the proposed text amendment as 20 feet—as well as to allow the height of the building to stand at 25 feet in lieu of 15 feet. 

The Commission also voted in favor of an amended site plan presented by the library regarding the preservation project, with conditions on use of the legacy building as a public space, specifics on landscaping approved by the town planner, preservation of existing frescoes and resolving stormwater drainage issues flagged by the town engineer. “I would see this as being helpful in preserving the remaining 1913 building on site and also assisting in maintaining larger open space on the library site which will provide benefits to the town,” Commissioner John Kriz said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. P&Z Chair John Goodwin, Secretary Krista Neilson and commissioners Kent Turner, Dick Ward, Dan Radman, Kriz, Claire Tiscornia, Arthur Casavant and John Engel voted in favor. 

Two commissioners—Ward and Radman—said they were “reluctant” in their votes.

Dan Radman

P&Z Approves New Canaan Library Rebuilding Plan by 6-3 Vote

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Saying a new New Canaan Library will benefit residents, businesses and the wider community, the Planning & Zoning Commission on Tuesday night voted 6-3 to approve the organization’s rebuilding plan. The proposed new library also is consistent with many tenets of the major document that guides development in town, P&Z Chair John Goodwin said during the appointed body’s special meeting, held via videoconference. The approval includes a condition that the library return to P&Z in four months with a proposal for appropriately commemorating the original 1913 building and a 1936 addition—a requirement that is a “risk” with respect to the structures but also an “opportunity” for the library to be creative, Goodwin said. “It’s a creative team over there,” Goodwin said during the Commission’s 4.5-hour meeting. “Now is it 120 days from now, we get options we don’t like?