Business

New Canaan Music Marks 10 Years Downtown

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Ten years ago, New Canaan resident Phil Williams opened up a music shop with nothing but what he calls “hope and a dream.”

Today, New Canaan Music has expanded to two stores and, here in town, has become a hub for music lessons and instruments while Williams has become deeply involved with the community as a business owner. After seeing an opportunity in New Canaan at a time when it had no music store, Williams built a business plan to “give back to the community,” he said. 

New Canaan Music provides customers with music lessons and the option to rent or buy instruments, catering to a variety of music needs and experiences. They have had “known celebrity music people come in as customers as well as the aspiring beginner,” Williams said. 

Whether it’s doing “set up work for a band going on the road that’s been a national act since the 1970’s” or having “a child break a string on a ukulele,” New Canaan Music offers a place for every age of music lover. Starting in 2013 in a smaller shop on Elm Street, New Canaan Music soon outgrew its space and moved to a new location at 90 Main St. “From our first location we had three lesson studios that we had converted into four—here we have eight lesson studios where we do lessons six times a week from Monday through Saturday,” Williams said.

Around Town

New Canaan Library Director Lisa Oldham To Retire at Year’s End

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New Canaan Library’s executive director for the past decade plans to retire at the end of this year. In a message sent to library donors, Lisa Oldham said she has been “so privileged to lead the New Canaan Library through this wonderful period of change for the past ten years.”

“Thanks to your extraordinary support, by the time I depart the entire project for the Library and Green will be complete,” Oldham said in the email, sent Tuesday afternoon and obtained by NewCanaanite.com. “I am very proud of the Library, our team, and the vision you have helped us realize.”

Though the centerpiece of Oldham’s legacy is the hugely popular and well-received new library that opened in February, her achievements go far beyond the remade building and campus. Under Oldham’s leadership, the library has forged stronger relationships and partnerships with the town, local press and nonprofit and business communities, made several key hires and overhauled the organization’s programming, launching popular new series and learning experiences for patrons. Asked about Oldham’s tenure, New Canaan Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Laura Budd said, “As a wise man once said, ‘Try to leave this world a little better than you found it,’ and Lisa Oldham has certainly done that for New Canaan Library and in turn our entire community.

Business

PHOTOS: Sidewalk Sale Draws Crowds to Downtown New Canaan

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Scores of bargain-hunters headed to downtown New Canaan on Saturday for the annual Village Fair & Sidewalk Sale. Crowds of shoppers milled about on Elm, Main and Forest Streets on a warm but mercifully unsticky summer day, flipping through racks and rummaging through tables set out on sidewalks and streets by New Canaan and seasonal merchants. 

“We are thrilled,” said Laura Budd, executive director of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the annual Sidewalk Sale. “We have a terrific mix of vendors and organizations here, and Mother Nature has cooperated 100% with some beautiful breezes. We’re really pleased. It’s just a classic New Canaan event.”

One local family, the Falsettas, counted themselves among those sharing information about nonprofit organizations—in their case, the  Gracie Fund for Pediatric Cancer, which will be the beneficiary of this year’s Oct.

Business

New Concrete Planters To Replace White Plastic Barriers for Outdoor Dining on Elm

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New Canaan’s local traffic authority has approved this season of expanded outdoor dining in three areas along the north side of Elm Street. The Police Commission at its most recent meeting voted unanimously to allow the expanded outdoor dining—an offshoot of the COVID-19 pandemic where tables and chairs are placed in would-be parking spaces on the street and enclosed by temporary barricades—in front of Patisserie Salzburg/Rosie, Solé and Chef Luis. The white plastic barriers from past outdoor dining seasons will be re-used until, with approval from other town bodies, they’re replaced in six to eight weeks with rectangular 32-by-32-by-64-inch concrete planters, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. The 2,400-pound planters are “somewhat similar to the size of a temporary precast concrete barrier, only those are eight feet long whereas these are just over five feet long,” Mann told members of the Police Commission at their April 19 meeting, held at police headquarters and via videoconference. “We feel we can place these along the area instead of the white barricades and they will provide more safety for outdoor diners and the fact that it can be planted is kind of nice, and it’s really a different look than the white barricades,” Mann said.

Business

Dunkin’ Donuts Plans May 20 ‘Grand Opening’ in New Location at South and Elm

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Dunkin’ Donuts is planning a May 20 grand opening in its new space at South Avenue and Elm Street, officials say. The chain coffee shop plans to put a pop-up tent in a no-parking area outside the store, with “wind wavers” and a balloon arch on the sidewalk on that Saturday morning, handing out samples and swag to passersby, according to Laura Budd, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. “They’ve got a whole promotion planned for the event,” Budd told members of the Police Commission meeting, held April 19 at police headquarters and via videoconference. “And because that tent can’t go on the sidewalk, they want to put it up flush against the curb. Customers would access whatever’s happening in the tent from the sidewalk side.”

Budd referred to a photo submitted to the Commission on behalf of Dunkin’ showing where the promotional materials would be located. 

“They didn’t need the whole ‘Pop-Up Park’ space but they did want to make a splash of it,” Budd said, referring to the first block of South Avenue, between Elm Street and Morse Court, which is sometimes blocked off to motor vehicle traffic for special events.