New Canaan Nature Center officials on Tuesday sketched out a new use for a neglected town-owned building on their Oenoke Ridge campus.
The front entrance of the Audubon House located at the New Canaan Nature Center on 144 Oenoke Ridge. Credit: Natalie Lopez
Located across from the organization’s Visitor Center stands a 15-by-30-foot rectangular building known as the ‘Audubon House.’
Untouched for more than a decade, the structure could be turned into a classroom for NCNC’s preschool program and house the Little Explorers summer program, according to Bill Flynn, executive director of the Nature Center. The building has its original electrical and plumbing systems, including a bathroom, he said.
Within the past two years, its roof collapsed, raising safety concerns, Flynn told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting.
“It’s either renovate or it has to be taken down,” Flynn said at the meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference. “At this point it’s a safety issue. I’m here to express that we’re interested in keeping it.”
“It requires significant renovation,” he added. “The building is still salvageable.”
Flynn’s comments came during a presentation about the Nature Center to the newly elected Board of Selectmen—First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll. The presentation proposed new uses generally though it’s unclear how much a renovation would cost and how that cost would be divided between the Nature Center and the town.
The Board asked Flynn how big the building is (15-by-30) and how many hours the 2-year-old program runs (about 2.5 hours per day).
The building originally served as a laundry facility for the late Susan Dwight Bliss, a New Canaan resident and philanthropist. In 1959, she gifted the town 40 acres of green space, and soon an agreement was reached with the newly formed New Canaan Nature Center Association Incorporated.
Officials over the past several years have talked about rehabilitating the long-disused structure. However, with a 40-family waitlisted preschool program, it could be the home for two classes serving 16 two-year-olds, according to Flynn.
“We’re trying to connect people of all ages to the natural world,” Flynn said. “And no one’s connected more than our preschool.”
Flynn also said the building could be a perfect home for the Nature Center’s Little Explorers summer camp, a mommy-and-me immersive environmental program.
Officials estimate that the two programs could net about $70,000 annually at 100% capacity, and $60,000 at 85% capacity, “which is how we would budget it,” Flynn said.
“We have a need,” he said. “It would generate revenue. Again, this is part of the larger discussion when it comes up to a capital improvement and whether the town agrees to do that. But now you all know that for the Nature Center, we would like to see it saved. We have a use, and that’s our hope. If the town decides on something else, we’ll go on to plan B’s and C’s, but the one thing is we don’t have any more licensable space on the property, we’ve filled it. Throughout all the buildings, every room that we can, so we are out of licensable space.”
Flynn said he plans to present to New Canaan’s other funding bodies, the Board of Finance and Town Council, at their meetings next week.