Around Town

Keeping Up the ‘Gold Star Walk’: Citizen-Led Campaign for Little-Known World War II Memorial Path at Mead Park

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Standing at what is perhaps the least-traversed edge of Mead Pond on a recent morning, town native Jim Bach, a 1947 New Canaan High School graduate who served as a U.S. Army sergeant from 1952 to 1954, picks lichen from the branch of an apple tree whose trunk is twisted in prickly weeds. “I don’t know what this stuff is, and you see how the vines have grown up?” Bach said on this cool, clear December day. “That shouldn’t be. That is the lack of maintenance, and a lot of those lower branches should be taken off and also, you know, it has gotten spindly too. That’s the attention that these types of trees need.”

Dedicated at the close of World War II to the 38 New Canaan men who lost their lives while serving during the war, the area dubbed “Gold Star Walk” starts just inside the gate at Mead Park’s entrance and runs along the eastern and northern edges of the pond.

Government

Antique Gates OK’d for Entrance to Former Huguette Clark Property

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A set of antique, wrought iron gates may soon grace the entrance to the famed former Huguette Clark estate in New Canaan. Saying the uniquely large size of the 52-acre lot and fact that the gates themselves are to be set back a good 75 feet from the road at 104 Dan’s Highway (well out of the front yard building setback), planning officials on Monday night approved an application for a Special Permit allowing the gates, which otherwise would be too high, under New Canaan’s Zoning Regulations. Local landscape architect Keith Simpson, in presenting to the Planning & Zoning Commission, said part of the work going on at the property—which includes a 1937 mansion undergoing a complete interior renovation—is restoring that main house and part is to “enhance the property in a responsible way” with “a request that we replace the current gates which are certainly failing and replace with some gates that owner have found.”

The gates are nearly nine feet tall and are translucent, so they do not obstruct a view of the property from the road, Simpson said. The gates are “simpler” than some on the west side of town that Simpson cited, saying at the hearing, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center, that he was “hoping the commission may consider the scale of the property and the sort of simple-ness and attractiveness of gates may be something suitable for a Special Permit.”

It isn’t clear whether the gates actually will be added to the property, since the owner of the estate—it was sold in April for $14.3 million and the new owners quickly moved to dissolve an approved 10-lot subdivision of the lot—has not yet purchased them, Simpson said. “The owner would like to buy them before someone else does,” he told P&Z.

Government

‘A True Town Treasure’: New Canaan Pays Tribute to Dr. Sven Englund, 93, for Contributions on Inland Wetlands Commission

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New Canaan landscape architect Keith Simpson can remember his very first appearance before the newly formed New Canaan Inland Wetlands Commission in 1988—for a subdivision on Seminary Street known at the time as the “Bryant-Kellogg subdivision.”

It required blasting out about 30 or 40 feet of rock to get through into what we know today as Scofield Lane—and in the 26 years since, Simpson and scores of fellow architects as well as residents, lawyers, soil experts and other professionals as they’ve sought approvals for sensitive projects have depended, among others, on one consistent figure on the commission: Dr. Sven Englund. “He’s a brilliant engineer and we all benefitted from his knowledge and understanding of engineering and science—he was a tremendous help to other commissioners,” Simpson said Monday night from the Douglass Room at Lapham Community Center, where nearly 40 locals gathered to honor Dr. Sven Englund for his decades of service on the commission. “I think he and other commissioners have been very good about striking a balance between making sure the wetlands are protected and allowing property owners to have a reasonable exercise of their rights as property owners, but doing the job which state statutes really require, which is to protect the wetlands,” Simpson said. “There are sometimes when you have to come close to wetlands and sometimes you have to cross them and if you do it in a responsible way then it’s fair and things don’t get damaged long-term.”

During a celebration of the 93-year-old’s work—which in truth goes back to the early-1970s, as a member of the then-Environmental Commission, family members say, a predecessor to Inland Wetlands—current commission Chairman Daniel Stepanek presented Dr. Sven Englund with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Connecticut Association of Conservation and Inland Wetlands Commissions, First Selectman Rob Mallozzi and Selectman Beth Jones read a proclamation declaring Dec. 15 ‘Dr. Sven Englund Day in New Canaan,’ and Stepanek, Simpson, Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Director Kathleen Holland, son Sven Englund and others offered words of gratitude to a man that Mallozzi called “a town treasure.”

A retired chemical engineer and father of two, prominent member of the United Methodist Church and choir who also has belonged for years to the New Canaan Senior Men’s Club, Dr. Sven Englund announced in October that he was stepping down from the commission.

Around Town

Remembering Briggs Geddis: Life of Longtime New Canaan Environmental Health Director Celebrated at Waveny

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[Editor’s Note: Each photoin the slideshow above is from a collection that was on view during the Aug. 7, 2014 celebration by family and friends of the life of Briggs Geddis, held in the Great Hall at Waveny House.]

Here’s what young Ashley Brower, granddaughter of the late Briggs Geddis, wrote about a man that many New Canaanites know as the town’s longtime director of environmental health:

“My grandpa who I call Bop-Bop had a nickname for a lot of people. My mom’s nicknames were Abby-Gabby-Gooey and Mrs. Bang, because she slammed doors a lot. My uncle’s names were Briggy-Wiggy and Wig. My names were Pipsqueak and Scallywag.

News

Local Architect on Huguette Clark Property Plans: ‘It’s Going To Look Terrific’

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Though they own multiple restored properties around the world, the couple that three months ago bought the former Huguette Clark estate on Dan’s Highway plans to settle into the famed New Canaan mansion—becoming its first occupants in decades, officials said Tuesday. Asked by the Planning and Zoning Commission whether he could identify the purchasers, New Canaan-based attorney David Rucci—while applying on the new owners’ behalf to dissolve a 10-lot subdivision of the 52-acre property—said they’ve renovated historic properties in the past. “They just happen to be very preservation-minded people,” Rucci said during the commission’s regular meeting, held in the Douglas Room at Lapham Community Center. “They are out of the city. They have properties in other parts of the world that they have done the exact same thing with.