Town To Charge for Parking on Elm While Making ‘Park Street Lot’ Free

Reversing a decades-old system, town officials are planning to charge for parking in the heart of downtown New Canaan while creating free spaces just off of the main drag. Making good on a proposal she made public nearly one year ago, First Selectman Dionna Carlson said the town is planning to create 75 paid parking spaces on the one-way stretch of Elm Street while offering the 100 spaces in Park Street for free. “ It’s a more economic way to do parking,” Carlson told NewCanaanite.com in an interview. “We currently—and I’ve said this multiple times, we currently charge for our least valuable parking, and we give away our most valuable parking for free. And we are creating congestion on Elm Street that people have written to me about, with people circling for free parking.”

The Board of Finance on Tuesday voted unanimously in favor of a bond issuance including $91,000 “for the acquisition of parking pay machines for Elm Street and South Avenue.”

Those funds will be used to purchase nine solar-powered parking machines similar to those already in paid lots such as Morse Court and Playhouse Lot.

Affordable Housing: New Judge on Hill Street Appeal

The state Superior Court judge assigned to the closely followed affordable housing appeal at Weed and Elm Streets recently was assigned a criminal case that has pushed back the New Canaan decision a further month, officials say. The parties in the case—the town and developer Arnold Karp—had been expecting to get a decision this week from Judge Edward O’Hanlan on the proposed 120-unit development at 751 Weed St. but “it has now been delayed till May 7th,” according to First Selectman Dionna Carlson. “The judge on this case was assigned a criminal case, and so he’s even more backlogged,” Carlson told members of the Board of Finance during their regular meeting Tuesday night. In fact, Carlson said, O’Hanlan got so backed up that the state assigned another affordable housing appeal—a 93-unit development proposed for Hill Street—to a different judge, Carlson said.

Selectmen OK Funds for Work at Transfer Station Incinerator Building

The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting approved about $28,000 to work on a former incinerator building at the Transfer Station, including removal of one stack. The selectmen at their March 25 meeting also approved funds to patch the roof of the building and relocate a radio antenna used by Department of Public Works vehicle operators. “We have two incinerator buildings,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “This is the one that houses the salt area and the Swap Shop. It was decommissioned in the ‘90s.

Selectmen OK Demolition of Town-Owned 1900-Built House on Grove Street

The Board of Selectmen last week approved an approximately $54,000 contract to demolish a town-owned house on Grove Street. The town two years ago purchased the 1900-built house at 28 Grove St. for about $1 million, calling the .15-acre parcel a “strategic” property in that it backs up to the Lumberyard Lot. 

At their regular meeting on March 25, the selectmen voted 3-0 to approve $54,198 in contracts to raze the house and a shed and remove contaminants from the site. “The demolition would include the foundation of the building,” Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer with the Department of Public Works, said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “And then we would just level it off to make it safe.