Government

Town Approves $32,780 Contract for Masonry Repairs at Schoolhouse Apartments; Senior Living Facility To Secure Funding for Work

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Officials this week approved a $32,780 contract for a Darien-based company to do masonry repairs to the town-owned Schoolhouse Apartments building on South Avenue. The funds will come from the senior living facility itself, through HUD, according to Bill Oestmann, superintendent of buildings with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “[Schoolhouse officials] had went out and got some quotes to do repairs on the buildings and sidewalks and they were confused because the numbers were so crazy—all the quotes were something different—so explained to them at that time that these policies had been implemented there, that the town owns all that property, we are liable for all that stuff, so we will mange the project, they are going to give us all the funds through HUD,” Oestmann said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “They had no problem with that.”

He added: “And at the end of the day, the town owns the building and so we want the work done properly so it will last.”

The 1931-built Schoolhouse Apartments originally had been constructed as New Canaan’s first junior high school, and it was built in a style—brick, with a cupola—that complemented the original New Canaan High School (now the New Canaan Police Department), which opened in 1927 (the same year Karl Chevrolet was founded). Oestmann said DPW officials met with contractors and after the project went out to bid it garnered estimates that varied widely—some $20,000 between them.

Government

‘The Project Is Going Very Well’: Waveny House Roof Replacement Underway

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The widely discussed $2.3 million replacement of Waveny House’s porous and crumbling roof is underway and progressing nicely, town officials say. Contractors are stripping the existing roof and making repairs to damaged areas of the structure beneath it as they go, with an eye on starting the new roof next month, according to Bill Oestman, superintendent of buildings with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “The risk is diminishing daily as the work progresses and we have not uncovered anything that we didn’t already know about,” Oestmann told NewCanaanite.com. “The project is going very well.”

At this point, workers from Danbury-based Alden Bailey are on track to finish the project ahead of an end-of-year deadline, he said. They’re starting on the east side of the 1912-built Waveny House and are expected to encounter significant structural damage as they go—due mostly to the town’s decades-old neglect of capital maintenance on it.

Business

LED Bulbs, More Uniform Timers Going into All Decorative Lampposts Downtown

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Town officials have approved a contract with a Brookfield-based company for work that’s expected to make the decorative lampposts that illuminate downtown New Canaan more environmentally friendly and cost-effective. The Board of Selectmen at a recent meeting approved a $4,038.75 contract with Efficient Lighting & Maintenance Inc. that will see new light-emitting diode or ‘LED’ lights and “astronomical timers” installed on the lampposts. The new timers will be programmed to turn the lights on and off at pre-programmed times, rather than having them go and off now based on sensors that often “go bad over time,” according to Bill Oestmann, buildings superintendent with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “We are constantly chasing [the photosensors]” Oestmann told the Board of Selectmen at its March 21 meeting, held at Town Hall. “It gets costly.”

The existing photosensors could be tripped by passing headlights that make them “believe” it’s daytime, meaning the lampposts would switch off at night for a period of time, officials said.

Government

Project Underway To Do Away with Conspicuous Overhead Electrical Wires at Waveny Pond, Cornfields

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Town officials on Monday approved funds for a project at Waveny that ultimately will bury underground the power lines that now run conspicuously over the pond and cornfields—focus areas for a nonprofit organization dedicated to the park. The approximately $46,000 approved for three contracts by the Board of Selectmen at a special meeting—following a $21,000 contract with Eversource that the board approved last week—are designed to kickstart work as part of a public-private partnership between town and Waveny Park Conservancy, officials said. “The idea was to get this in place so that it does not disrupt the park come July and August,” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said at a meeting, referring to Eversource’s work of bringing in new electrical service. The project will see about 800 new feet of electrical cable go in underground, as well as installation of three new transformers and an overall system upgrade, according to Bill Oestmann, the New Canaan Department of Public Works’ superintendent of buildings. Mallozzi said the combined $90,000 project at Waveny will be split between the town ($60,000) and conservancy ($30,000).

Government

Newly Appointed Town Building Committee Elects Officers, Sets Priorities

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A committee charged with evaluating the uses, condition and future needs of town-owned buildings decided Monday to start its work by figuring out what data points it must have to conduct an analysis and make recommendations. Ultimately, the work of the Town Building Evaluation and Use Committee is expected to help officials prioritize taxpayer funding for competing capital projects—a job made more difficult without a basis for comparison, according to Amy Murphy Carroll, a committee member elected as co-chair of the group during its first meeting. “There is a lot of information for all these buildings,” Carroll said during the meeting, held in a board room at Town Hall. “What I am seeing is that we have all these buildings—the Nature Center and whatever—but I don’t feel we have a good sense of how they are used.”

With institutional knowledge and documentation from Department of Public Works officials in hand—such as each building’s operating expenses and an estimation of future capital needs—two-person “teams” from within the seven-member committee could made field visits to the various structures and collect all the desired information, Carroll said. “So then we have ‘This is the state of our building,’ This is what it needs,’ ‘This is how we use it’ and ‘This is how the town uses it,’ ” she said.