Downtown New Canaan on Sunday will host the extremely popular classic and specialty automobile gathering Caffeine & Carburetors—the second installment of the grassroots event this year—though it isn’t clear just whether or where the rest of the 2014 season will take place.
Officials have roundly praised the architects of what has become a multi-state draw that brings upwards of 5,000 people to the heart of New Canaan on a Sunday morning: town resident Doug Zumbach (owner of the eponymous gourmet coffee shop at Pine and Grove Streets) Peter Bush and Todd Brown.
Yet with its growing popularity, town officials have said questions on logistics, safety and town resources must be addressed before issuing more Special Events permits for Caffeine & Carburetors.
“We’re kind of reaching a point where this wonderful idea—and it’s worked out great, I could not have been happier the way it worked out the first Sunday it happened—we’ll see how it goes this time and I’m cautiously predicting that it might be difficult to pull it off six times a year,” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said.
“It might not be fair to the entire town of New Canaan to have it take place in that venue, our whole downtown, six times a year. It may be perfectly appropriate at Waveny, it may be perfectly appropriate five times a year at the high school parking lot or somewhere else, but six times a year taking up our whole downtown may be extremely ambitious and my heart of hearts tells me it’s going to overtax the system and probably isn’t fair for all parties.”
Caffeine & Carburetors, April 6, 2014, New Canaan.
Following this Sunday’s event—and it will start at 8 a.m. and runs for about 3.5 hours—Mallozzi said he will convene an “after action review,” a public meeting where various sides can give their perspective on Caffeine & Carburetors, including neighbors, police, businesspeople and CERT volunteers.
The events organizers in an email blast this week indicated that they’re eager to work with all parties to keep the popular event going.
“We will continue to listen to suggestions and make adjustments,” an email from Todd Brown said. “C&C is what it is thanks to you, your participation and ongoing support.”
After just four years, it grew popular enough at last year’s sixth and final event (it runs on six Sundays between April and November, skipping July and August), police, business and town officials this year worked with Zumbach to expand it from Pine to include a portion of Elm Street as well. That will be the case this Sunday, too, with a “Ferraris on Elm” lineup planned (F-40, 250 swb, lusso, dino).
The Police Commission, which oversees on-street parking and street closures in New Canaan, said at its most recent meeting that the event should be town-run, and with more formal planning and execution (pre-registration with mapped parking plans, closely monitored spectator parking, and Port-A-Potties made available, for example).
Police Commission Chair Stuart Sawabini said the event has been “tremendously successful” both for attendees and many downtown merchants who opened their doors specifically to welcome the heavy foot traffic.
“The only concerns raised are that it is becoming such a large event and that it needs more oversight and the question is whether anyone is interested in providing that oversight,” Sawabini said.
Zumbach declined to comment on the matter.
Mallozzi said that the willingness of CERT volunteers to give of their time, many of them working in parking lots removed from the fun event itself, likely will wane if the full schedule of six events downtown goes forward.
“We want to see where all of this goes and bring in Doug—and Doug has been a fine partner, Doug and Peter and Todd—and let’s really take a look. In my opinion, six a year on that scale is really stretching it in terms of what volunteers can deliver and quite frankly, I think the police may be having trouble even having police officers sign up for the event.”
Here’s a video from the April event: