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Town To Take Up Modified Application for Overhaul of Little League Baseball Fields at Mead

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Town officials are scheduled Monday to vote on a modified application filed on behalf of New Canaan Baseball to improve the little league fields at Mead Park. Unveiled 18 months ago, plans call for installing turf on the infields at Mellick and Gamble Fields as well as increased playability, improved drainage and new backstops, scoreboard and fencing. Originally, the project was to start last fall and also was to include new light poles and a re-oriented Game Field, but higher-than-expected cost estimates connected to lighting forced New Canaan Baseball to push back the work to 2018 and forego replacement of existing light poles and fixtures. According to an application received Feb. 20 by the New Canaan Inland Wetlands Department, changes to the original project include: Moving Mellick field slightly to the east and adjusting the left-field corner so that the existing light pole could be used; concrete dugouts on both fields now will be asphalt; outfield fencing on both fields has been adjusted slightly; and a playground walkway west of Mellick Field will need to be replaced and that effort will be coordinated with planned improvements to the playground.

Around Town

Parks & Rec Approves Spring Dates for 2nd Annual ‘Cherry Blossom Festival’ at Mead

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Following a successful inaugural event, town officials this month approved use of the colonnade area at Mead Park by the Japan Society of Fairfield County for a cherry blossom festival this spring. The Parks & Recreation Commission voted 6-0 to approve the festival to run on Sunday, May 6—or, if the Society prefers, to run on Sunday, April 29 with May 6 as a rain date. “It was just a wonderful gathering, very family-friendly,” commission Chair Sally Campbell said of last year’s festival. New Canaan resident Jackie Alexander, a member of the Society who is helping organize the festivals, said the events are traditional celebrations in both Japan and the United States. “Cherry blossoms, as you know, are a harbinger of spring, it’s very fleeting, so it’s meant to appreciate the tradition of enjoying each moment of the cherry blossoms season,” Alexander told commissioners at the meeting, held in Lapham Community Center.

Around Town

Parks Officials Hope To Open Mead Pond for Ice Skating This Week

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Town officials say they’re hoping this week to take steps that will make it safe to skate at Mead Pond. Though the pond has just four inches of ice right now—whereas the town’s insurer requires six inches in order to open skating to the public—Parks Superintendent John Howe said he’s hoping to clear its surface of snow and add a layer of water to the top in order to create the requisite thickness. “A little bit of snow on top of the ice works as an insulating blanket, so it keeps the cold air from getting to the ice and freezing through,” Howe told NewCanaanite.com. “So our intention is to put some water on it [on Wednesday] and flood it. That will accomplish two things: We’ll get rid of the snow and let the ice form up instead of down.”

“My hope is that there will be skating by the end of the week,” he added.

Government

Officials Weigh New Parking, Traffic Proposal for Mead Park

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Town officials are weighing a proposed parking and traffic plan for Mead Park that would preserve its one-way entrance and exit while making other major changes to how and where motorists can go and pull in. Under a proposal from local landscape architecture firm Keith E. Simpson Associates, traffic in the first long area that motorists enter from Park Street would become two-way, while the often-disregarded traffic island in the center of the park would be re-shaped so that it’s more intuitive to motorists, and new curbing would come to a second traffic island near the Apple Cart at Mead Park Lodge so that nobody parks directly on top of it. During a Nov. 8 presentation to the Parks & Recreation Commission, the firm’s Bill Pollack said it was possible to have 90-degree parking for the long stretch along the pond, though some officials said they’d prefer to have more comfortable angled parking there, even if it means losing some spaces. Commissioner Francesca Segalas said she would prefer angled parking because it’s far easier to open a front door “because the front of the next car is not even next to you.”

The proposal also calls for new parallel parking spaces beyond the right-field wall of the large baseball field, new directional arrows on the pavement and crosshatched areas between newly designated handicapped spaces and fire lanes.

News

Officials Postpone Planned Overhaul of Little League Fields at Mead One Year Due To High Cost Estimates

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A widely anticipated plan to improve the little league baseball fields at Mead Park is being pushed back one year after those overseeing the project received higher-than-anticipated cost estimates, officials said Wednesday night. Unveiled last year, the project to create larger dimensions at Mellick and Gamble Fields and to install new fences, light poles, bleacher areas and a scoreboard originally had been pegged at about $950,000 and was to start this fall. Recently, however, a cost-estimate came back about $600,000 higher than that, according to Scott Werneburg, president of New Canaan Baseball, and officials are not willing to rush into a project now without further pricing out of materials as well as total confidence that it could be wrapped up by spring. “The prudent course of action was not wanting to risk onset of winter and not being able to compete our fields and risk losing our spring season,” he told members of the Town Council during their regular meeting, held at Town Hall. “And the smart course of action is to take our time, get through this process and hopefully have our selected contractor this fall and be able to order early and plan everything to go to construction in August next year after the baseball season has ended.”

The re-engineered project will accomplish many of the big-ticket items originally imagined, he said: turf on the infields, increased playability, improved drainage and new backstops, scoreboard and fencing.