Business

Local Restaurants and COVID-19: Elm

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In this Q&A with a local restaurateur, we hear from chef Luke Venner of elm restaurant downtown about how the highly touted eatery is coping with restrictions following the COVID-19 emergency. New Canaanite: What has this past week been like for you? 

Chef Luke Venner: Very challenging to say the least. We had to completely change our business model and systems within 24 hours and reassure a nervous staff that we were devising a solution to keep them employed. We also started keeping a body temperature log of everyone that enters the building and a shuttle service to keep our employees away from public transportation. How is you faring business-wise?

Business

Local Restaurants and COVID-19: Cherry Street East

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[Editor’s Note: This week, we will feature a daily Q&A with a local food service establishment working to remain open and operating under health and public safety restrictions due to the COVID-19 emergency.]

We start with one of New Canaan’s best-loved eateries, Cherry Street East. Here’s our exchange with Mary Bianco Bergin, a 1993 New Canaan High School graduate who owns the popular restaurant with her husband, John Bergin. Cherry Street is open 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday for pickup. New Canaanite: What has this past week been like for you? 

Mary Bianco: It has been very stressful and emotionally exhausting. Worrying about our staff and community plus our personal family, this is something you are never prepared for.  We are trying to our best to band together and help each other out and stay positive.

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Waveny Pulls Application for Senior Facility on Oenoke Ridge

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The venerable nonprofit organization that last summer unveiled a proposal to build a new senior living facility on Oenoke Ridge last week withdrew its applications. Citing the COVID-19 emergency and its focus on the residents it serves, the Waveny LifeCare Network said in a March 18 letter to the Planning & Zoning Commission that its “mission of caring and commitment to our residents, patients, employees and the entire community remains steadfast.”

“When Waveny LifeCare first formally submitted three separate applications to the New Canaan Planning and Zoning Commission the fall of 2019, we could not have predicted the global events that have taken place since then,” a letter to P&Z from the organization’s Board of Directors said. 

“Accordingly, while a potential executive order by Governor Lamont to extend the limits mandated by state-imposed deadlines placed on applications currently in front of local planning and zoning commissions remains a possibility, the Board of Directors and Senior Management of Waveny LifeCare Network has decided to withdraw our pending zoning applications rather than adding to the burden of our volunteer P&Z commissioners and Town leadership,” the letter said. “We do not make this decision lightly but do so with the public’s best interest in mind.”

Waveny will return with a new application when appropriate, Board Chair Kathleen Corbet said in an email. 

Signaled in late-2018 and unveiled in July, Waveny’s plan called for 70 units in a three-story residential retirement building located between the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society campus and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church green. While advocates pointed to a lack of options for active local seniors seeking to remain in New Canaan through a “Continuing Care Retirement Facility” model, opponents called the proposed building too large and dense for the site.

Business

Love in the Time of Coronavirus: New Canaan Eats

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Last Saturday night, which, as we all know, was precisely seven years ago in terms of both temporal and emotional distance, I had an idea. We had cancelled plans with friends because the whole Coronavirus thing was getting a bit too real, so I thought I’d ask my husband on a date to our dining room. We called up Elm, ordered three courses, and I put on a fancy dress and dusty high heels while my husband drove into town to pick our dinner up. 

The service at Chez Ault, our hot new dining room restaurant, is terrible. That’s because the service is me. There are dogs underfoot and no butter for the bread and the courses are poorly paced while I check my phone for the latest, exponentially terrible news of COVID-19.

Business

Town Directs Salons, ‘Bodycare’ Facilities To Close at 5 p.m. Thursday

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Municipal health officials on Thursday directed the owners of New Canaan salons and “bodycare” businesses to close at 5 p.m. and remain closed until further notice. According to an Emergency Order signed by the health director, the affected businesses include hair salons, barber shops, nail salons, skincare facilities and massage therapy facilities. 

The closures are “necessary actions to protect the public’s health” during the “pandemic emegency,” Jen Eielson said in the order, obtained by NewCanaanite.com. 

“Failure to comply with this order will result in your license being revoked,” she said in the order. 

The closures mark the latest major change for a community that is being asked to comply with restrictions that emergency officials have put in place in order to slow the spread of COVID-19. 

One New Canaan man already has succumbed to the virus, the first selectman said Thursday morning in a press release. Leaders at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church had said in a post last week that a member of the congregation had been diagnosed with COVID-19. On Thursday, church officials corrected local media reports regarding a pastor with the following statement: “The Rev. Elizabeth Garnsey does not, and has not had any symptoms, contrary to what has been published in some media outlets this morning.