New Canaan families got the first full week of school under their belts, and for many families that means it’s time for youth sports, and days away from the high school varsity football team’s season opener.
Here’s a home that got the TP treatment. Credit: Michael Dinan
Some local families whose kids play for our varsity sports teams last week saw their home’s TP’d.
We had good news to start the week, with an older dog that went lost amid a severe heat and humidity wave returning home again. We also had strange news, of a Locust Avenue man brought up on a misdemeanor charge, for failing to shield his body from fellow residents of a multi-family dwelling when he sunbathed nude in the backyard. Though the man’s naked body was not visible from ground level (he shielded it through a bed sheet barricade of some kind), residents in the upper floors of the house could see him when they looked down—how he possibly could have shielded them from view and still caught the desired sun rays isn’t clear.
Here’s the Week in Review.
Just inside the door Sept. 3 at the walk-in (from the covered parking lot) level of the New Canaan Racquet Club building at 45 Grove St., under renovation for a comprehensive new á la carte-style health-and-wellness center. Credit: Michael Dinan
Town Talker
We got a “sneak peek” at the new health and wellness center that’s going into the Grove Street building that houses the New Canaan Racquet Club.
A fitness center, complete with weights and equipment, will occupy a central spot in the 16,000-square-foot space, which is undergoing a total gutting and renovation. The center will feature 11 suites and studios that surround that central area, and in there local experts from a wide variety of health-related professions will offer nonmedical services, officials say. Everything in the center is to be offered á la carte, rather than through a membership model, and a late fall opening is planned.
Land Use
A plan to subdivide an untouched 4.76-acre Hill Street property into two lots, one house on them apiece, met with some opposition last week from a neighbor.
Here’s part of the general plan for Lot 72 on Hill Street, including about where a pair of homes could be located. Concerned about the effect that the home on the right would cause for downland properties along Urban Street, town officials are asking whether the driveway itself could be shifted to the left, allowing the home on the right to be located further away.
More specifically, a New Canaan-based attorney representing a neighboring property owner told the Planning and Zoning Commission that more must be done to protect against unwanted runoff and also aesthetically, prior to developing the sloping Hill Street lot.
We also saw plans come in to put up a new home at the end of Kimberly Place where a 1938 house now stands.
Downtown
Planning officials are calling out downtown merchants in violation of the town’s Zoning Regulations—specifically, those businesses that put sandwich boards on sidewalks or otherwise violate explicit rules.
The New Canaan Police Commission at its May 20, 2014 meeting decided to approve a three-month trial whereby the stretch of Elm Street between the alley at Chef Luis, and Park Street, will be designated on weekdays from 7 to 10 a.m. as a loading zone for delivery trucks. Credit: Michael Dinan
While that’s happening, we also are hearing that motorists are not respecting any of the designated loading zones downtown, a practice that forces many trucks into one of two heavily used lanes on Elm Street and makes getting off of that main drag very slow going.
Perhaps increased motor vehicle congestion downtown will encourage more pedestrians to walk there, as those who live back behind Kiwanis, on roads such as Marvin Ridge and Old Kings Highway, may be able to do with the soon-to-be completed sidewalk up from Kiwanis to Main, and a new crosswalk connecting to a trail at the park.
Finally, the downtown has seen some police activity, including from a couple whose argument escalated to a physical confrontation.
A McLaren, photo from the Geneva Motor Show 2013, by Norbert Aepli, Switzerland/Wikimedia Commons
Public Safety
Police handled that situation, as well as a motorist driving a 2013 McLaren on Wahackme Road who unknowingly and illegally sped past police, and then during a subsequent stop, took off home in the sports car, only to be arrested later at his Ponus Ridge home.
New Canaan police also broke up an underage drinking party on Gower Road, and are investigating a report that a $6,000 diamond earring went missing from a car parked at the Lumberyard Lot by the train station.