Introducing the ‘Grace Farms Hub’: Interactive Timeline, Articles, Letters

Grace Farms in a thick, complex application now before the Planning & Zoning Commission is seeking to change its operating permit.

To help our readers navigate the organization’s complicated history and public record, we’ve published a ‘Grace Farms Hub,’ complete with an interactive timeline that’s expandable and includes embedded videos of meetings, transcripts and minutes, as well as news articles and letters submitted to the New Canaanite from members of the community.

TIMELINE    *    ARTICLES    *    LETTERS

If approved as proposed, Grace Farms would have broad latitude among New Canaan organizations to host programs and events across the wide range of topics covered by its “core initiatives” of faith, arts, community, nature and justice.

Since opening to the public in the fall of 2015, Grace Farms has drawn both high praise from visitors using its facilities, attending its programs, walking its grounds and admiring its architecture and fierce criticism from neighbors and their supporters who worry about non-permitted, robust, intense uses of its campus.

Those who have voiced concerns about Grace Farms say it won P&Z approval in early 2013 to put up its multi-structure ‘River’ building on the strength of promises that the organization would pursue only ancillary uses to a church. Claims that Grace Farms had misled P&Z during public meetings four years ago about its intentions have sent New Canaanites back to the public record of those hearings.

We will add to each of the Grace Farms Hub’s three sections—timeline, articles, letters—through the next several months as P&Z holds additional public hearings and new filings and letters (send them to editor@newcanaanite.com) come in.