Finance officials on Thursday voiced support for a proposed walkway in Waveny that’s designed to take distracted and baby stroller-pushing pedestrians out of the busy access road to Lapham Community Center.
Plenty of Waveny visitors end up walking along this access road down toward Lapham Community Center, which can get very busy with motor vehicle traffic. Part of the Rec Department’s FY 2016 capital requests includes $50,000 for Waveny trail resurfacing—a proposal to install a dedicated pedestrian footpath off of this road among them. Credit: Michael Dinan
First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, presiding as chairman over a regular Board of Finance meeting, said he views the estimated $50,000 project as addressing an important “safety issue.”
“I’d like to get this done,” Mallozzi said during the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center.
“This is like something that we have all seen, but we haven’t seen it,” he said and added to Recreation Director Steve Benko: “I applaud you for seeing it.”
A sketch (in red) of where a proposed new walkway could run alongside the access road to Lapham Community Center at Waveny. Right now, park visitors often are walking in the road itself. Recreation Director Steve Benko has sketched out a couple of ways that the path to Lapham could be completed (see “Option B,” which runs alongside Coppo Field). Courtesy of Steve Benko
Benko presented the new pedestrian walkway to the finance board as part of his fiscal year 2016 budget requests (see ‘Waveny Trail Resurfacing’ on page 60 here).
“We have a lot of pedestrian traffic on that road during the day ,and all different times, and people are walking with strollers and people jogging with their headsets on,” Benko said. “It’s creating a dangerous situation—we’ve got people on the road not paying attention to traffic, we’re getting a lot of traffic, people going to Lapham Center during the day, a lot of people go down to use the Lapham Center parking, they have activities on the water tower turf field, it is becoming an accident waiting to happen.”
With $50,000, a 6- or 8-foot-wide processed stone walkway could be installed off of the main road through Waveny at Lapham accessway (right there at the dog park), and along the east (softball and soccer fields) side of the road.
Benko presented two options for finishing the walkway showed one route that would follow the access road all the way to Lapham itself, and a second “Option B” that would swing right alongside Coppo Field.
Board of Finance member Judy Neville asked whether New Canaan may apply for a STEAP grant from the state for the work. Mallozzi said that application process could take a full year and he was eager to get it done now.
Board member Jim Kucharczyk when he heard Benko describe the proposed new walkway as “gravel” voiced support for the idea but concern about the material.
“I mean, on a Saturday morning, there are like 9,000 moms with strollers,” he said. “Would gravel be the right surface?”
Benko clarified that it would be made of a hard processed stone, not loose gravel, and would be right for strollers.
The finance board typically sends the budget forward to the Town Council in the second week of March.
How is it that $19,000 for the Teen Center is a financial problem when $50,000 for a new sidewalk in a park is not?