New Canaan’s highest elected official last week indicated that the town is eyeing properties north of the Locust Avenue Lot as part of its effort to increase the number of parking spaces there.
Though plans to deck Locust have been scuttled in favor of a project at the Lumberyard Lot, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said the town remains interested in creating more parking at the 155-space Locust Lot.
“If you are not going to go up, you go laterally,” Moynihan said Thursday during a media briefing at Town Hall.
He continued: “It is pretty obvious over there, there are properties that are” right for razing.
“They are blighted properties,” Moynihan said. “They are 100-year-old buildings.”
The first selectman mentioned Husted Lane though he declined to get into more specifics.
“There are obviously opportunities around and there are only two directions to go, north or east,” Moynihan said. “I’m not going to be more detailed than that.”
Husted Lane is a short dead-end road of eight residential structures—most of them multi-family dwellings—that runs off of the east side of Heritage Hill Road, curling in behind the back of Locust Avenue Lot.
It isn’t clear just which parcels on Husted could be in play. Three of the properties appear to be owned by the same local man, tax records show. Two years ago, Thomas Sanseverino purchased two of adjacent multi-family buildings there for a combined $1.9 million.
The new Post Office sits directly east of the Locust Avenue lot, and a mixed-use development that includes new townhouses recently was approved for the former Bank of America building on the corner beyond that. A few other residential properties with Forest Street addresses also are east of the Locust Lot, toward the rear.
The Board of Selectmen’s proposed capital budget for next year includes a $250,000 line item in the Department of Public Works for “parking expansion” (see page 46 here).
Moynihan said the town is “working on three different” potential projects now, at the Lumberyard, Locust and Talmadge Hill Lots. The Board of Selectmen last month approved a contract with New York City-based engineering firm for “design concepts” of a new parking structure at Lumberyard. It isn’t clear what steps the town is taking to expand parking at the Talmadge Hill Lot, though officials at a recent Parking Commission meeting mentioned that the first selectman had been eyeing a residential property near there for acquisition. Moynihan has declined to comment on it.