The Town of New Canaan owns and maintains too many under-utilized buildings. Solving this has been discussed as a priority for several years but not enough has been done. Our duty to be fiscally responsibility has become more urgent in light of the COVID-induced financial crisis.
Case in point: Waveny House is underutilized, yet a proposal is currently in the final approval process to spend $2.8 million on construction to make it compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Additional costs listed in the Town’s 5-year capital plan could bring the outlay to almost $5 million over five years.
The question isn’t about providing access to the disabled–of course we should. It’s whether we should continue to spend sizable sums on a building with no clear mission and limited benefit to most citizens of our town.
The best outcome isn’t to shut down Waveny House, which is a treasure. What we need is a mission and utilization plan that justifies the cost of improving and maintaining it. This was emphasized last week by Todd Lavieri and Amy Murphy Carroll of the Board of Finance, and we agree.
All ideas should be given serious consideration, including one we refer to as the “Lapham Swap.” It would involve moving Lapham Community Center’s activities to Waveny House and expanding them, moving the Board of Education administration offices to the Lapham Center, and moving Town offices from Waveny House to another location. This would repurpose Waveny House as a community center and would address the controversial $339,000 rental cost the Board of Education incurs each year.
Another alternative would expand the revenue potential of Waveny House by leasing it to a commercial enterprise, but we’d prefer a plan that maximizes use of Waveny House by New Canaan citizens.
The debate over the best use of Waveny House isn’t new. What’s new is the growing conviction that until we have a better utilization plan, we should stop writing big checks.
Tom Butterworth and Rich Townsend are members of the Town Council but write in their personal capacities.
Couldn’t agree more on the need for greater fiscal responsibility by town leaders. They should spend money as if it is coming out of their own pocket, not everyone else’s pockets. They should have a strategic plan that assesses spend vs utilization for all town owned properties. It is too easy to spend other people’s money irresponsibly.
Thank you for this thoughtful proposal. It is worthy of further consideration and discussion.
Agreed, Chris. Time for new ideas and strong leadership.
This town is too rich to worry about anything less than 8 digits. The recent influx of wealthy NYC Covid19 evacuees has only made the town richer. While I think every dollar should be well spent, I’m sure that $2.8M to make the recreation dept ADA compliant is a fine example of financial decadence.
Yes! Waveny is a treasure and a big part of New Canaan’s identity. You are right – it needs to be used a lot more – marketed more. Great ideas re: tenants.
Thank you!
How about instead of leasing out space to some commercial entity, we create a New Canaan owned-and-operated version of “WeWork” that enables our own small businesses to have an amazing shared workspace? The town sure could use it, and it would keep Waveny even more of a local treasure.
Despite the Covid crisis, we still have a need for senior housing – perhaps even more so for post Covid designed units. While I appreciate not popular with all, I would think that expanding senior housing using some land between Lapham Road and the railroad tracks, could spur increased activity that a repurposed Waveny House would complement. Perhaps a chance to tie these 2 investments together for the benefit of many, including lower cost / increased revenue for the town?
While everyone agrees that we need to protect the building–make sure the roof and windows don’t leak etc. I am glad to see that more of our town officials are now coming around to the same point of view I and my supporters were making this time last year–without a clearly agreed upon plan for exactly how we were going to use Waveny, based on a sound understanding of the costs and revenues generated, no more spending on the building should be done. The town may choose to spend millions and millions of dollars and recoup pennies, but the choice should be made in the sunshine of a fully documented and openly debated plan. The start is an outside, unbiased study of the widest range of options possible covering the costs, benefits (both monetary and social) and impacts of the myriad options available to us. During my campaign, I heard a number of ideas proposed based on what other towns had done with similar properties–from upscale restaurants to museums and many more. We have waited years to get our First Selectman to acknowledge the need to give us such a report of options, we can wait a little bit longer to actually get such a report and make our choice among our options before spending any more more of our money.