Town officials this week approved about $83,000 to improve a downtown sidewalk along one of the most well trodden stretches in New Canaan.
The town is prepared to replace this sorely needed stretch of sidewalk, at the moment nearly at grade with Oenoke Ridge Road/Main Street just below God’s Acre. Credit: Michael Dinan
Utility workers since midsummer have been working along the sidewalk from God’s Acre—at the corner of the St. John’s Place extension at Main Street—down to Vine Cottage. The Board of Selectmen at its Tuesday meeting approved $82,841.20 to replace it with a new concrete sidewalk with granite curbing.
“If anyone has seen it over the last six years, it is woefully in need of this,” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said at the meeting, held in the Training Room of the New Canaan Police Department.
Tiger Mann, assistant director of the New Canaan Department of Public Works, said the sidewalk there is at grade with Oenoke Ridge.
“So any car coming down the hill leading into town, it’s almost an extension of the pavement,” Mann said.
The sidewalk extension between Main Street and Kiwanis Park is nearly complete. Credit: Michael Dinan
Selectman Beth Jones asked how quickly the work could begin (Mann: straightaway) and said, “It will be nice to have that done for the ribbon cutting at Town Hall [next spring].”
On the topic of sidewalks, Mallozzi—who takes a midday constitutional down South Avenue and Farm Road, then back up Main Street and to the temporary first selectman’s office at NCPD—said he came across one resident recently who was very grateful for the newly installed sidewalk extension down from Main to Old Norwalk Road to Kiwanis Park.
Mann said just a bit of cleanup is needed, and then a final sidewalk extension to the front of the nursery school in Kiwanis, to complete the project. That final extension will be completed in-house, Mann said, and will connect with the trailhead of a footpath through the woods above Kiwanis (which footpath includes an outlet to a proposed crosswalk at Old Kings Highway).