Letters to the Editor

NewCanaanite.com received the following letters recently.

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This letter expresses my unequivocal support for the New New Canaan Library project as currently designed, including the removal of the 1913 library.  It appears to me that the Town is applying two different standards concerning the project, which I find to be highly disappointing.  You know the facts.  There is overwhelming support for the project team’s design, hundreds of financial supporters, and a design that looks ahead to the needs of the Town’s residents for the next century.

The New Library team has gone through an extensive, years-long process, following the direction of the Town and, more specifically, the Planning and Zoning Commission.  The additional bureaucratic red tape of conducting a further, unnecessary assessment due to the eleventh-hour protestations of a small minority of residents, who had every opportunity to participate openly in the process at much earlier stages, is wasteful and damages the integrity of the P&Z committee.

And, the Preservation Alliance’s desire to maintain a non-architecturally significant, dated, and unusable for the 21st-century structure simply because it is old is of questionable judgment, at best. And why hasn’t the Town placed the same standards and requirements on the Preservation Alliance’s proposal?  I am all for preserving the right elements of our Town’s history (I live in a restored 95-year-old home myself).  But this isn’t Grand Central Terminal.  It is an old, falling apart, probably-wasn’t-even-that-great-when-it-first-opened structure.

New Canaan will benefit more from the Library Green that will become a signature of our town.

The P&Z’s actions, supported by some on the Town Council, will derail years of investment and planning with broad community support.

Please do the right thing and stop this ill-informed “save the 1913 library” proposal in its tracks.

Thank you,

Chad Waetzig

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Keith Simpson is New Canaan’s own landscape architect, who has been improving New Canaan, and elsewhere, for many decades. 

Coming to New Canaan from the University of Massachusetts in 1976, and opening his award-winning office here almost 40 years ago, he has been involved in the site planning of several hundred projects in New England, New York and beyond. His work has transformed thousands of acres, both locally and elsewhere, and on many major campuses including that of the Choate School. His work is in evidence here in New Canaan, including at Town Hall, Waveny, Mead and Kiwanis parks, the Lapham Center, many of the schools in town, the Bristow Bird Sanctuary, the New Canaan Museum and Historical Society and on innumerable private properties. 

In 1992, he prepared a study for our downtown, recommending the brick sidewalks and wider pedestrian paving and granite curbs, lower lighting, better signage, seating, planting and the municipal clock. Working with successive administrations, the implementation of those recommendations has raised property values and transformed the look of downtown. Also, the widening out of the Forest Street sidewalk was his idea, and he and Tom O’Dea changed the Town Charter to allow the previously prohibited, but now popular, outdoor dining for restaurants. 

When elected a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2007, the president of the Connecticut landscape architects said, “Keith has put his stamp of creative excellence on landscapes across the country, and abroad. His professional accomplishments make him very deserving of this honor”. 

He is a past President, and Trustee, for Connecticut’s landscape architects and he was a founding member of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy and its vice chairman for its first ten years. He is a past president of both the Rotary and Lions Clubs and was the town’s last representative to the Southwestern Regional Planning Agency. He was a member of the Implementation Committee for the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development. 

Mr. Simpson’s qualifications justify serious consideration be given to any alternative that he may put forward.
Sincerely,
Siobhan Sack 

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Editor,

The New Canaan library design team and the Friends of the 1913 library have far more areas of agreement than one might expect from the letters to the press and messages being exchanged on social media.

Here are some important areas of agreement.

The library has been coping with a building which is outdated and has been subject to leaking, and flooding among other deficiencies, for much too long.

The library administration has long maintained, and introduced new, excellent library services to the community, including throughout this extraordinary past Covid dominated year, for which it is receiving deserved appreciation.

The library administration, building committee and trustees have applied enormous time and energy towards crafting a long-term solution for the library’s needs, also for which there is great appreciation.

Donors have stepped up to support this initiative with extremely generous and civic-minded dimension for which there is also immense gratitude.

The Centerbrook architects have designed a fine new building. There is strong support among the friends of 1913 for the new library building itself, as designed.

All agree that it is the library’s southern modern wing, along Main Street, which is subject to the periodic flooding needs to be removed, and the western wing, along Cherry Street, which has experienced leaking also needs to be removed.

All those joint conclusions appear working most productively and in everyone’s best interests.

How best to handle the area north of the future library building has become the challenge because that is where the 1913 portion of the library, and its 1936 gallery now stand.

Library plans show it removed, but the alternative “Saving 1913” plan shows it kept in place. Both plans deserve scrutiny because there a lot at stake.

The library’s plan has described that area first as a “Town Green”, and then a “Library Green”, conjuring up images of a classic, bucolic, inviting, useable and very spacious New England town green. The library’s computerized renderings have been vividly suggesting such a future space.

The discrepancy and difficulties arise when the library’s technical construction drawings, which are now finally out in public view, present a different picture from the one previously implied.

The library is seeking outdoor space for programs, including large events, on its property and has concluded that complete removal of the entire library, including the 1913 building, is the only way for it to accomplish that.

What still needs factoring into that decision is how much space is actually needed for the library’s programs, plus the very loud Cherry Street/Main Street traffic noise, and overall practicality of that particular location, as designed, and also whether the program goals of the library could, not only still be achieved, but in fact far better achieved, if the 1913 building were to remain in place.

It could well turn out that the suggested event stage area, which would need to be re-built whenever needed, being so close to noisy Cherry Street, and next to the unnecessary, and problematic, storm water detention area, would be found so unsuitable for any musical, theatrical or other event, that the area would remain completely unused. If ever built, I believe, the library’s “Green”, as advocated for so long by the library, and as imagined by so many, would turn out to be a massive disappointment, along with the tragic loss of the town’s most appreciated historic building, which could never be re-built.

Right now, the historic, readily preservable 1913 building, is at risk of being completely removed, in favor of an unsightly detention basin and unusable area of noisy lawn. In contrast, the “Saving 1913” plan shows the 1913 building remaining in place, serving as a very effective and sturdy buffer against the noise of Main and Cherry Streets. That plan shows that the stage area for any event could, instead, be on the large terraces and under the covered porch on the west side of the 1913 building. Those areas would be stage-ready and permanently in place, with changing areas and bathrooms close by in the building itself. Also portions of that plan show areas with a firm, attractive wheelchair friendly pavement and when the entire area is calculated out, including the paved surfaces, it is very close to the same size as the area shown on the new library’s own lawn plans. In fact, the large 80’ X 50’ tent recently shown on library plans fits very comfortably in the lawn area west of the 1913 building. Therefore, I believe that the “Saving 1913” plan, would offer a shielded, quieter, and more protected event area, which would likely be used much more than any temporary stage down near Cherry Street.

It is my firm conviction that, once retrofitted, and left in place for its new life, the 1913 library will be a sought-after space by many of the public service organizations, and others, who could make good, responsible use of it as tenants, and they could allow continued public access into this building which has been accessible to the public for more than one hundred years, and is well capable of contributing another century plus of appreciation and use to the New Canaan community.

The library has suggested that modifying its application to accommodate leaving the 1913 building in place, would take many months and be enormously expensive, but with the extensive detail shown on the alternative plan already submitted, that suggestion is unconvincing. The library has top-notch legal representation and access to its very capable design team who could accomplish such a change in very little time, and therefore at minor cost, if so directed.

Accordingly, I have asked the Planning and Zoning Commission to encourage the library to reconsider its current application position and to either amend or resubmit its application, with not only the new library building fully in place, but also keeping the 1913 building.

Keith E. Simpson FASLA