Op-Ed: Deceit on Weed Street

By |

I didn’t expect to be back so soon, but if the horrors persist, so, I guess, must we. If you missed the first installment, you’ll find it here. 

Last weekend, Arnold Karp and his team posted billboards at the corner of Weed and Elm Streets that claim to give passersby some choice in what gets built there. Protected by the same free speech laws that protect this Op-Ed, the signs also bully the site’s intervenor neighbors and make a crucially deceptive argument in support of the enormous condo building Karp has recently said he wants to construct there. First of all, please understand that the Town of New Canaan did not post these billboards, nor are they asking for you to vote on this project. That’s not how this works. 

Let’s talk about what’s actually going on.

Opinion

Op-Ed: Proposing a Task Force on Parking

By |

As suggested in a recent comment thread on the New Canaanite, setting up a task force of town officials, business owners and citizens is a logical next step to address New Canaan’s downtown parking situation. Yes, in hindsight, it may have been a great first step, but we are here today and need to look forward. I drive down Elm Street every day and while my business is not located on the one-way section of Elm Street, I do feel the merchants’ pain. I also know that the current downturn in shopping is not totally the result of parking rules changing. Besides the meters, we have lost many spaces over the past five years due first to a compliance issue with state of Connecticut ADA compliance around cross-walk safety and most recently the installation of curb bump-outs (which actually reclaimed about five previously lost spaces).

Footer Featured Widget

Letters to the Editor

By |

NewCanaanite.com recently received the following letters. Send letters to editor@newcanaanite.com to have them published here. ***

To the Editor,

As organizations dedicated to the preservation and sustainability of our town, the New Canaan Garden Club, New Canaan Nature Center, and Planet New Canaan are writing to advocate for a common-sense solution to a growing environmental and financial challenge: implementing food waste composting within the New Canaan Public Schools. Currently, food waste makes up at least one-third of our municipal trash. When this organic matter is sent to landfills, it decomposes anaerobically, releasing methane—a greenhouse gas which is more damaging to our atmosphere than CO2​. 

Connecticut is currently facing a waste disposal “tipping point.”

Opinion

Letter to the Editor

By |

NewCanaanite.com received the following letter to the editor. Send letters to editor@newcanaanite.com to have them published here. ***
I think it is time call an audible and reverse the decision to charge for parking on Elm and South. The Town Council has already stopped the expansion to Main Street. I, for one, am not bothered with the app nor paying and have done so often since the start of the project (although the one time I ran in for coffee at Dolce and forgot, I got a $30 ticket – so what).

Op-Ed: Was it Ever About Affordable Housing at Weed & Elm?

By |

Last week it emerged that, after his four-year crusade for affordable housing at Weed and Elm streets, developer Arnold Karp has cooked up an alternative set of plans to build a 62-condo building that will contain precisely zero affordable units. Three neighbors currently serve as holdouts, refusing to greenlight this version of the project. If these neighbors capitulate, the 62-unit, market-rate building will move forward. If they don’t, the 30% affordable, 102-unit rental structure whose grimly generic renderings we first laid eyes on in 2022 will be built. 

To add to the intimidation tactic of Karp’s op-ed, bulldozers and land-clearing machinery have been active on the lot all week. I think we’ve all known for some time that this wouldn’t end without an eye-gougingly inappropriate building doing its best to blot out the sun at Weed and Elm streets.