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‘It’s Been There For a Year’: White Van Full of Junk Sits in Locust Avenue Lot [UPDATE]

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Update

Police say the white van that officials described earlier in the week as “abandoned” for about one year in the Locust Avenue municipal parking lot is legally registered and allowed to park there overnight. Original Article

Town officials on Monday night discussed a van that appears to have been abandoned about one year ago in a municipal parking lot downtown. The white van parked near the northeastern corner of the Locust Avenue Lot “has been there since before COVID-19 started,” according to Zoning Board of Appeals member Luke Tashjian. “I go there every Friday with my son, to see the fire ladder truck they test out,” he said Monday night. “This van is full of junk.

Ben Bilus

ZBA To Homeowners: We’d Deny Your Application for an Outdoor Patio

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Saying there’s no evidence of a hardship that would warrant a one-off exception from the New Canaan Zoning Regulations, town officials on Monday night told the owners of a Welles Lane home that they would deny an application for a variance to create a covered patio. Though the Zoning Board of Appeals did not formally vote down the application for 54 Welles Lane, the appointed body’s members told homeowners Altin Tirana and Jorida Banda that they should figure out another way to get a covered 530-square-foot patio on the 2.15-acre property. “Unfortunately, our hands tied because these are town ordinances,” Chair Laura Edmonds said during the meeting, held via videoconference. She referred to what’s required for a variance as well as what counts toward building coverage, under the Zoning Regulations. 

The homeowners’ plan for a covered patio—with an outdoor cooking and seating area—would put their home, already over coverage by nearly 500 square feet, about 1,000 square feet over what’s allowed, according to the town planner. Though an uncovered pergola in that spot would require no approval, a roofed structure such as the one the applicants proposed likely would require the homeowners to “subtract enough coverage” from the property first, Board Secretary John Mahoney said.

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Record-High 94 Percent of NCHS Seniors To Enter Internship Program

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This spring, 289 New Canaan High School seniors will participate in an increasingly popular internship program that sends the students to work for the last month of the academic year at local and area businesses and organizations. The figure represents about 94 percent of the Class of 2018—marking a high point in the history of a program that launched with just a dozen NCHS seniors in 2011. Heather Bianco, coordinator of the Senior Internship Program, attributed the rise in popularity of ‘SIP’ its many benefits for students. “It just gives them experience out of school in a work environment that they don’t get in school and a lot of them have not had a job before, so it just gives a professional environment where they can get a real-life work experience,” Bianco, who is in her second full year of overseeing the program, told NewCanaanite.com. Here’s a look at its growth (article continues below):

 

Bianco took the reins from Sue Carroll, who as coordinator of the College and Career Center at NCHS had overseen the development and first several years of SIP with help from a volunteer steering committee.

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ZBA Green-Lights New Two-Family Home on East Avenue

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The Zoning Board of Appeals on Monday approved two variances allowing for the construction of a two-family home at 72 East Ave.—however, the project still needs approval from the Planning & Zoning Commission in order to move forward. William Panella plans to raze an existing 1,400-square-foot home on the property, where his late mother Mary had lived, and remove a non-compliant detached garage in the rear in order to build a new, residential style, two-family dwelling measuring about 4,000 square feet. However, in order to get a special permit for the project he needed relief from a requirement that the property have a minimum of 100 feet of frontage (it has only 93 feet) and that the site allow for a conceptual 100-foot diameter “circle” of open area where there is no building footprint (the “circle” is just short at 97 feet) —both of which were granted at the ZBA meeting. The application was continued from the board’s October meeting after some board members expressed concerns over the driveway shown in a preliminary site plan. The initial plan showed the driveway running from East Avenue all the way to the rear of the property, where it was to connect with the parking lot for a new residential and commercial development currently underway at 23 Vitti St.

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ZBA Green Lights Small Addition in Harrison Avenue Development

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The Zoning Board of Appeals at its most recent meeting granted a variance allowing Don Corbo of Darien to build a small addition at 138 Harrison Ave.—one of six units in the development, consisting of three two-family homes near Main Street. Corbo, managing partner of Harrison Avenue Development, told members of the ZBA at their Oct. 2 meeting that he is converting the homes—purchased this summer for $4.2 million— from rentals to condominiums, and thus is seeking to renovate and update them. “This particular unit is the smallest and least attractive of the units,” he said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. “Right now it has only one room on the first floor which serves as a living room, dining room and kitchen.”

The plan, he said, is to build a small addition that will allow for a separate kitchen area on the ground floor and a master bedroom on the second floor.