Government

‘We All Feel Really Good About It’: Finance Board Votes 8-0 In Favor of Full Saxe Building Project

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After hearing from residents across a wide swath of the town as well as an advisor who described implications for New Canaan’s financial picture, officials on Tuesday night unanimously supported the proposed $18.6 million renovation and expansion at Saxe Middle School. Board of Finance members voted 8-0 in favor of the proposal, formally recommending a bond issuance to the Town Council to pay for it. The vote received applause from an estimated 150-plus people who packed into the Town Meeting Room for the finance board’s meeting, and marks the clearing of what’s been seen as the critical hurdle in a project that has galvanized parents of school-aged kids and others. The Town Council is expected to give the project its formal final approval on Nov. 19.

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Nonprofit Foundation Planned to Support Saxe Auditorium Renovation, Wider Visual and Performing Arts Community

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The group that’s overseeing the renovation of the Saxe Middle School auditorium plans to create a nonprofit foundation that will accept donations to offset the cost of the capital project itself, as well as to serve the longer-term interests of New Canaan’s visual and performing arts community, officials say. The Saxe Auditorium Building Committee is tapping SLAM Construction Services of Glastonbury (already on the South School windows project) as an owner’s rep, is targeting early-2015 for draft plans of the renovation and is looking at work completed during the summer of 2016, members said Tuesday at the regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen. “What we need to do first is get a decent scope of the work that we think fits with what is economically viable and fills the needs,” committee member Jim Beall said at the meeting, held in the Training Room of the New Canaan Police Department. The selectmen voted 3-0 to approve a $67,240 contract that will bring in SLAM as the owner’s rep and for project feasibility and scope development services. First Selectman Rob Mallozzi commended the building committee for its sensible approach to the project.

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Group Forms to Oversee Saxe Auditorium Renovation

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New Canaan this week took a big step toward the widely anticipated renovation of Saxe Middle School’s aging auditorium, with the creation of a volunteer panel to oversee the project. The Saxe Auditorium Building Committee includes elected and district officials as well as private citizens. The town approved $175,000 for project designs in the current fiscal year, with $2 million earmarked for the actual work in fiscal year 2016, budget documents show. Part of the original 1957 building, the Saxe auditorium received a “poor” rating in an August 2013 facilities survey. Interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi described the auditorium as both an instructional and performance space “and it hasn’t been updated, maintained or renovated in an awfully long time.”

“We’ve got a situation where the seats are broken and the space itself is no longer serving the needs of the school or the community,” Luizzi told NewCanaanite.com.