Business

Cross and Vitti Streets: ‘Ripe for Change’

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Calling the area of Cross and Vitti Streets a largely neglected section of downtown New Canaan that has potential to serve the community better, officials on Tuesday sketched out a plan to re-imagine its use, density and streetscape, possibly even introducing a newly defined business zone. As it is now, most of the businesses on either side of Cross and Vitti are part of “Business Zone B”—a designation that allows for heavier-duty commercial use such as for garden supplies, hardware and lumber. But the way the area has developed—in some ways, as a kind of industrial park within New Canaan, with repair shops, car washes and print businesses—may not be just how it would be mapped out given a choice now, Town Planner Steve Kleppin said at a subcommittee meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission. “It’s ripe for change,” Kleppin said during the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center. “It’s the one area that I don’t know if there is anything that couldn’t change over there at some point in time, and there’s already talk of some new development over there, so I think it’s a good idea for us to be out front and really decide how do we want this area to look in the future, what’s the potential of it.”

Kleppin said he has money in the budget now to bring in a planning/design consultant to sketch out some designs and then oversee a series of public meetings and workshops for feedback from residents.

Business

Planning Officials Target Problems with Merchant Signage Downtown

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Saying that too much and certain types of signage in the downtown are unseemly, New Canaan planning officials are turning their attention to a problem that they say ultimately affects overall property values. The three major problems with signs in New Canaan’s business district are sandwich boards, pasted notices on windows and ‘For Sale’ signs, Laszlo Papp, chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission, said at the group’s Aug. 26 meeting. Papp said P&Z would appoint a task force to take up the matter, and that he would include merchant groups such as the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce “so that it would be obvious that controlling signage does not mean the commission would intend to harm or curtail the merchants in town.”

“The significance is the quality of the downtown—that is the issue,” Papp said at the meeting, held in the Douglas Room at Lapham Community Center. “And the quality of the downtown is an issue for overall town property values.

Business

Disused Shopping Carts at Mrs. Green’s Remain a Visible Eyesore, P&Z Says

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Though parking at Pine and Park Streets appears to be just fine despite worries about an influx of customers at Mrs. Green’s, the store’s makeshift corral for disused shopping carts isn’t satisfying town planning officials. Since opening in mid-April, Mrs. Green’s has been lining up the carts along the eastern side of the building (facing Park). That wasn’t part of the original site plan, and the Planning and Zoning Commission last month instructed Mrs. Green’s to create a shrubbery-enclosed corral so that the carts wouldn’t be visible from the street. Commissioner Dan Radman during Tuesday’s regular P&Z meeting called what’s been created there a “lame attempt.”

“What power do we have to make them screen properly?” Radman said during the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center’s Visitors Center. “They still haven’t satisfied what we approved them for, because they did something that wasn’t approved in the first place,” he added.