Government

Town Attorney’s Advice on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries’ Plans: Wait and See

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Though local planning officials may want to position New Canaan so that the town can control whether a medical marijuana dispensary can set up shop here can do so, the best strategy for now may be to deal with an application if and when it arrives, the town attorney has said. Connecticut has licenses six dispensaries in the state so far—including one in Fairfield County (Bethel)—and in each case the municipality where they’re located readily agreed to the new business’s arrival, Town Attorney Ira Bloom said at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission. Though there is no indication that the state will grant more licenses any time soon, “that could happen at any point in time,” Bloom said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center. “So I think so some degree we are in a wait-and-see period in the state of Connecticut, in trying to assess what is going to happen, whether more licenses are granted or there is a change to the law or whatever,” Bloom said.

News

Town Approves Two-Lot Subdivision of 4.76-Acre, Wooded Parcel on Hill Street

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On conditions that one of the two homes planned for a thickly wooded property near Route 123 shift away from neighbors and that vegetation now screening those neighbors remains as a buffer, town planning officials last week approved the two-lot subdivision of a sloping 4.76-acre parcel on Hill Street. Early-stage plans call for two homes on “Lot 72” of Hill Street, a windy road of 10 modest houses and condos that runs just above and roughly parallel to Route 123 for about 500 feet. It dumps into Brushy Ridge Road. The short segment of Hill Street that gives access to the oversized parcel known as “Lot 72” is wedged between numbers 11 and 37 and includes wetlands almost immediately off the street. Officials this summer approved a driveway across those wetlands, though representatives for neighbors objected to the overall plan, saying new construction would exacerbate runoff, lower property values and do little for the area’s aesthetics.

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.

Around Town

P&Z Approves Pool Pavilion Expansion at New Canaan Field Club

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Town officials on Tuesday approved the widely discussed expansion of the pool pavilion at the New Canaan Field Club. The Planning & Zoning Commission’s vote followed two public hearings at which several neighbors, mostly on Glen Drive, cited what they anticipate to be increased noise and light, more frequent and new uses, and lower property values brought on by a significantly larger pavilion. P&Z placed 16 conditions on the approval, and though those conditions were not publicly available straightaway—since they were in draft form until the moment of the vote—they appeared to include that pavilion functions end prior to 10 p.m., that the club receive the town planner’s approval for a modified landscape plan designed to provide screening for neighbors, and that no noise-generating construction (nearly everything outside of painting) takes place on weekends. Commissioner John Goodwin said at the regular P&Z meeting that though neighbors objected to the size of the expanded pavilion—plans call for a 65 percent increase in square footage to its existing two floors, plus a new 2,322-square-foot floor and 1,078-square-foot outdoor deck—that the structure is in line with other clubs and appropriate for the Field Club’s property. Goodwin said he felt the style of the pavilion was attractive and that the club had taken some pains to ensure that porches generally were pointed away from the residential neighbors.

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.