Business

‘This Is Ridiculous’: Town Officials Urge Auto Shop Owner To Be Reasonable in Parking Vehicles Along Main Street

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Members of the volunteer group that oversees on-street parking in New Canaan are urging the owner of a downtown business to work with them or risk exacerbating an emotionally charged dispute and potentially dangerous situation. The Police Commission already has spent more time on traffic and safety concerns near AC Auto Body than it has on hiring issues, according to commissioner Paul Foley. “This is ridiculous and it is still not solved,” Foley said at the start of the commission’s regular meeting, held Wednesday in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. “It would be resolved if this individual would perform in a neighborhood way.”

Turning to members of NCPD that are working with both AC Auto Body owner Anthony Ceraso and neighbors who say the way he parks customers and shop vehicles blocks sight lines, Foley added: “You want to convey that to [Ceraso]? That we are concerned again about this action that he continues to do and if there isn’t any cleanup, especially now that snow coming and all the other stuff, that we will go to [Planning & Zoning].

Government

Tensions Escalate Between Auto Body Shop, Neighbors In Parking Clash on East Maple Street

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Fueled by an already tense parking situation, bad feelings between an auto body shop downtown and its neighbors on East Maple Street were ratcheted up Wednesday morning after the business’s owner deliberately parked a company car in front of the home of the residents’ spokesman. While AC Auto Body owner Anthony Ceraso said he purposely parked there for a legal two-hour period because David Shea had made a rude gesture the day before, Shea called the move is a bullying tactic and further evidence that the business should not be granted a special privilege of all-day parking in a designated area on East Maple. The ongoing dispute boiled over Tuesday when, according to Shea, Ceraso “parked four trucks up and down the street in front of residences,” prompting neighbors to snap photos and send them to on-street parking authorities “saying this is egregious and this is ridiculous, considering everything we have been through, for him to put this back in our face.”

Ceraso recounted a different version. AC Auto Body parks its trucks in an area along East Maple Street that the Police Commission had carved out because the company serves as New Canaan’s designated on-call wrecking service in emergencies. Following a two-car accident Tuesday morning at Bank and Park Streets, Ceraso said, he had two flatbed trucks return to AC Auto Body “and if you know my parking lot, you know what car capacity we have, so we moved them out on East Maple Street, not on Main Street, so that we could move cars around in our lot and drop the cars in flatbeds onto the lot.”

“We were in the trucks, we did not leave them there [on East Maple] and leaving them there for the day, that is not what we do or have ever done.