Business

‘I Love This Place’: The Strength Collective Opens Friday on Vitti Street

By |

Fanni Loosz, a native of Hungary who launched her career as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor about 10 years ago in New York City, had long envisioned having her own dedicated space for a strength training studio. Loosz, a competitive powerlifter who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and criminology from St. Joseph’s College and two master’s degrees from the CUNY Graduate Center—in international migration studies and public health nutrition—had been renting out and sharing space with other trainers in the city, and then starting two years ago, in Stamford. “I was bringing my clients into someone else’s space,” Loosz recalled on Wednesday morning. “And I wanted to have space, not necessarily only to train people, but to educate.

Business

Former ‘Silvermine Market’ Owners Seek New Space in New Canaan

By |

The longtime former owners of the Silvermine Market in New Canaan are seeking a commercial space to set up shop again. Mainly serving breakfast and lunch, Lou Aloupis—who ran the market along with chef Scott Kaluczky for 20 years through 2025—told NewCanaanite.com that the pair are “trying to find a new location to do what we did there somewhere else.” (A new restaurant is planned for the space at 1032 Silvermine Road following the building’s sale earlier this year.)

“After 20 years, the building’s old and it was time for us to go,” Aloupis said during an interview in New Canaan on a recent morning. “We love what we do, we’re passionate about what we do, we’re committed and convicted. Now it’s just a matter of finding the next location.”

Through the economic downturn of 2008, Hurricane Sandy and the pandemic, Aloupis said, the Silvermine Market kept reinventing itself to accommodate its customers and, as a result, forged deep ties with the Silvermine and wider community. That’s the main reason they’re seeking to reopen.

Business

New Restaurant Planned for ‘Silvermine Market’ Space

By |

Closed since November, the Silvermine Market—located across the street from an established art gallery and school bearing the same neighborhood name—is to relaunch this year as a more upscale bistro, the property’s new owner said. With a hopeful opening this fall—following a sorely needed and extensive renovation—the new restaurant will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and is designed to be “calm and nice,” according to Pavel Jansa. 

“It will be a small, cozy restaurant,” he told NewCanaanite.com. The new restaurant will incorporate the word ‘Silvermine’ into its name and likely will feature live piano-playing, Jansa said. Style-wise, “it’s going to be pretty much the same” though there will not be a bank of fridges such as seen in “a regular deli,” he said. “It’s going to be more, more upscale, cleaner,” said Jansa, a Weston resident.

Business

Adirondack Store: ‘We Plan To Continue To Expand and Build Our Brand’

By |

The owners of a popular store in downtown New Canaan say they’re working with their landlords, as they have in the past, amid a highly seasonal retail environment to ensure continued investment in the community. When it began fitting out its space on Elm Street, The Adirondack Store “invested in a 10-year commitment to New Canaan,” owner Christopher English said. “And we just wanted to put it out there that the blurb of what was put in, the court documents, is really not represented correctly because it says that the rent is $11,250 a month—that was the rent the first month that we opened,” English said, referring to this news article. “Our rent is actually $23,416.67 a month and continues to go up. So we have invested over $1 million in rent since we have been in New Canaan.

Business

‘Part of Our Family’: Ann Cheney Retires from Walter Stewart’s After 20 Years

By |

Ann Cheney remembers her first day at work at Walter Stewart’s Market, an August morning 20 years ago. An art history major out of Fairfield University who had worked briefly in that field prior to having children, she heard about the job in New Canaan from a recruiter after leaving a part-time job with a food service provider. 

“The store was slow, but I was getting to know the team—Alex, Doug and of course, Bailey—and I’ll never forget the first thing that Alex said to me was, ‘Look around at our customers—this is a place to connect,’ ” Cheney recalled. “And it absolutely has been. It is a local gathering place.”

For two decades, Cheney, longtime store manager at Stewart’s, has greeted customers and co-workers with a smile, overseeing multiple departments in a business that staffs nearly 70 people. Friday will be her last day at work.