Government

The Playhouse: Feb. 9 Public Hearing Scheduled for New Operator’s Lease

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New Canaan’s highest elected official said this week that municipal officials have interviewed all parties interested in operating The Playhouse movie theater and the town “will be ready very soon” to take next steps. 

“We were encouraged by The Playhouse RFP responses,” First Selectman Dionna Carlson told members of the Board of Finance during the appointed body’s regular meeting, held Tuesday night at Town Hall and via videoconference. “We’ve had so many people interested in the RFP, [Department of Public Works Superintendent of Buildings] Bill [Oestmann] has been taking potential applicants through the building regularly,” Carlson said. The comments came during Carlson’s general update to the finance board. The following notice of a public hearing before the Town Council—scheduled for 7:30 p.m on Feb. 9 at Town Hall—appeared this week on the Elm Street movie theater: “To consider, hear public comment upon and take action on a proposal to lease the building known as The Playhouse, located at 93 Elm Street, New Canaan for a theater operator.

News

Felony Charge for Connecticut Man, 49

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Already in custody on multiple felony charges, a Connecticut man was arrested by warrant on Tuesday for criminal violation of a protective order. New Canaan Police served Joseph Rotelli, 49, of Gaylordsville, on the active warrant at about 12:10 p.m. on Jan. 20. It stemmed from an investigation after a complaint was reported to police in December, officials say. An additional $125,000 was added to his bond, according to Connecticut Judicial Branch records.

Duncan Chisolm

Podcast: New Canaan’s ‘Midnight Run’ into NYC

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In this installment of 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Duncan Chisolm. A New Canaan resident, Chisolm helps organize the United Methodist Church’s Midnight Run program, which sees a wide swath of community volunteers collect and deliver food, clothing, blankets and personal care items directly to New York City’s homeless poor. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Government

Locals Push for Midblock Crosswalk at Cherry and Cross Streets

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Saying it would improve public safety, dozens of property owners and residents in the area of Cross and Cherry Streets are calling for a new crosswalk there. In a petition signed by 43 people, the group is calling for the town to create a midblock crosswalk that runs across Cherry Street from the western end of Cross Street, with a pedestrian-activated flashing beacon, while removing what they describe as a hazardous crosswalk just up the street, at Locust Avenue. “The installation of a crosswalk at Cross Street traversing Cherry Street, together with the installation of a blinking crosswalk light, will provide a safe way for pedestrians and the like to cross the street, rather than the current mode, which is to jaywalk,” one of the residents, Susan Whitney, told members of the Police Commission during the appointed body’s regular meeting, held Wednesday night at police headquarters. 

She continued: “An added bonus of installing a crosswalk at Cross Street, together with the installation of a blinking crosswalk light, may very well be that flow of vehicular traffic and high speeders may in fact be forced to slow down, making a safer neighborhood for everyone.”

The owner of an apartment building on Cross Street, Arnold Karp, said that the neighborhood has filled out and “we now have enough of a pedestrian area that nobody seems to go all the way to East Avenue or to Locust Avenue. He added, “Everybody crosses somewhere between the two, either at Cross, on either side of Cross, or some place midblock.”

Linda Silvestro said that motorists traveling on Locust Avenue take the turn onto Cherry “at a high rate of speed” and “it’s very, very dangerous.”

“You have to run” to get across the street, she said. Asked how quickly the group could expect a response from the Commission, Police Chief John DiFederico said the matter must be studied, possibly by a professional traffic study consultant.

News

Warrant: Man, 36, Assaulted His Aunt at Apartment Complex

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Police last week arrested a 36-year-old New Canaan man by warrant after surveillance footage at his apartment complex showed the man getting physical and acting aggressively toward his own aunt, who also lives there. The altercation unfolded at a Lakeview Avenue complex on the morning of Dec. 28, the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s, according to an arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com. At about 10:37 a.m., police responded to a report of an assault “that had just occurred,” according to the affidavit of Officer Michael Schnell that forms the basis of the application, signed by a state Superior Court judge. 

There, officers met with the victim, who said that her nephew had “shoved her and spit on her during an altercation in the parking lot of the apartment complex,” according to the application,

The man told police a different story, saying that he and his aunt had been arguing recently because she disregarded “his request not to bring her boyfriend to visit [his] father in the hospital,” Schnell said in the affidavit. In the parking lot that morning, the man told police, his aunt “confronted him, yelled at him, bumped him with her chest and grabbed his face with her hand,” the application said.