As the start of a major construction project along the narrow, one-way stretch of Forest Street draws near, planning officials are urging those in charge to coordinate and communicate with police and merchants on matters of parking and traffic.
These buildings will come down as part of the site plan for 21 Forest St., which is actually three separate lots totaling .72 acres. There’s a three-story mixed residential-and-retail complex due to go in. Construction should start before of August 2014. Credit: Michael Dinan
Construction will start this summer of a three-story mixed residential-and-retail complex at 21 Forest St. The project will see two commercial spaces, seven residential units, a pocket park and 48-space parking lot go in where The Farmer’s Table (now across the street), Forest Street Deli and a long-vacant parking lot have been located for years.
The street will be “shut down for hours at a time,” Planning and Zoning Commissioner Dan Radman said Tuesday at the group’s meeting.
“You’re going to be staging, bringing steel in, and cement trucks and everything else,” Radman said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center’s Visitors Center. “That street is effectively closed, and just making it clear to the merchants on that street that they will have no vehicular traffic during that time [is important].”
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Darien resident Christopher Gatto, who owns the property, said that he’d visited all the merchants on Forest about one month ago and “everyone we spoke to is in favor of the project and support it.”
Christopher Gatto of Darien is principal of Forest Street Properties LLC, which owns 21 Forest Street, site of a major construction project starting soon. Here he is at the May 27, 2014 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Credit: Michael Dinan
“It’s going to take some time to implement this, build this building and generally what I am hearing is that folks on the street welcome this development, because they feel that this vacant parking lot is not helping the merchants presently, so seeing this building built and bringing some new businesses onto the street, some residences onto the street, everyone views as a positive,” Gatto said. “They understand it will be a transition. There will be a period of discomfort. We’re going to try and minimize that as best we can.”
Radman noted that the residents who park on Forest must be a consideration—say, if they park there at 9 a.m. and a steel truck delivery comes one hour later and they can’t get out. He suggested working with town officials for those planned deliveries to make sure paper notices go up and down the street to give fair warning.
Dan Radman of the Planning and Zoning Commission at its May 27, 2014 meeting. Credit: Michael Dinan
Commissioner Jack Flinn urged Gatto and Jeff Wyszynski, COO at Hartford-based Tecton Architects Inc., which designed the complex (slideshow above), to coordinate with police. Flinn and commissioner Tony Shizari noted that the area is typically full of children, such as those at the New Canaan Dance Academy.
Wyszynski said the matter of parking is further complicated because he’s relocation preexisting storm water drains in the street.
“There will be a period where we’ll need to take those parking spaces that exist above that pipe,” he said.