News

Letter: Seeking Results of Town-Directed Survey of Maple Street Cemetery

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To the Editor:

We are writing to request the complete town-directed, state-supervised study M2 conducted on the Maple Street Cemetery. Our understanding, from the State Archaeologist’s office, was that M2 was asked to present the findings to P&Z two weeks ago, but as of Monday morning that has not occurred. The report will be made public via the Dodd Archives at the University of Connecticut (where the Connecticut State Archaeologist’s office is located), but we are requesting the information sooner so it can be released to the public. Our concerns are:

1) The argument has been made that M2 owns title to the portions of the Maple Street Cemetery because they believe certain plots never contained remains, which, in their opinion, would make this section of the cemetery, “not a cemetery”; and

2) Now that human remains have been found, M2’s argument seems to be that current laws do not apply because the human remains were interred before the laws were enacted. However, Connecticut statutes state that (italics our own): Sec.

Around Town

Top-10 Stories of 2016

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Here’s a big ‘Thank you’ to our loyal readers and fabulous advertisers—you are absolutely the best—for delivering a wonderful 2016 here at the New Canaanite. In NewCanaanite.com’s second full year, traffic on the news site increased 19.8 percent, to nearly 1.3 million pageviews. The top-10 most-read articles from 2016, listed below, reflect the town’s wide-ranging interests and point to a burgeoning and popular category of news that revolves around breaches of civility. Hopefully, the list also reflects our own steadily re-examined and refined coverage plan. As we’ve said since launching Jan.

Government

Property Owner Appeals Six Conditions Attached to P&Z’s ‘Merritt Village’ Approval

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The group that owns Merritt Apartments is appealing some of the conditions placed on its hard-won approval to develop the downtown New Canaan site with up to 110 units. M2 Partners is “aggrieved” by six of the 65 conditions that the New Canaan Planning & Zoning Commission imposed on construction of the planned ‘Merritt Village’ complex near Maple and Park Streets, according to an appeal filed Dec. 22 in state Superior Court in Stamford. The conditions—which deal with the ‘Old Burial Ground’ or ‘Maple Street Cemetery,’ underground parking and fencing during construction—have no legal or factual basis and should be revised or deleted, according to the appeal, filed on behalf of M2 by attorney Steve Finn of Stamford-based Wofsey Rosen Kweskin & Kuriansky LLP. A series of conditions regarding the burial ground would appear especially objectionable to M2 because, if upheld, they would require the property owner to seek approval for an amended site plan.

Around Town

181-Year-Old Gravesite of Prominent New Canaan Man Discovered at ‘Maple Street Cemetery’

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The remains of a prominent New Canaan man who died 181 years ago have been found in a previously unsuspected area of the Merritt Apartments property, officials said Thursday. Long ignored and historically important, the ‘Maple Street Cemetery’ was thrust into a spotlight this summer when Merritt’s owners unveiled a dramatic plan to raze the apartment buildings there and build four new ones. Advocates for historic preservation quickly organized, citing state laws that govern burial grounds and calling for a comprehensive study of Maple Street Cemetery itself. When the Planning & Zoning Commission finally approved 110 units for the proposed ‘Merritt Village’ last week, it included conditions designed to protect the cemetery. One of those called for property owner M2 Partners LLC to “conduct further testing” under the state archeologist “to verify that there have been no burials” (as the office of the New Canaan town attorney had asserted) in an area of the cemetery that M2 owned.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The Planning & Zoning Commission during a special meeting on Monday night reviewed some 65 yet-to-be-released conditions that it is considering as part of an approval for the closely followed Merritt Village proposal. Though still in draft form and therefore not public, the approval P&Z discussed appears to land on 105 total units at the proposed development. The specter of an affordable housing application looms over the project, should property owner M2 Partners and the town fail to reach a compromise. During an interview after the P&Z meeting, New Canaan resident and would-be Merritt Village builder Arnold Karp said he and his partners “have sat through six months of hearings.”

“We went from 160 to 140 to 123 to 116 to get 105? That doesn’t sit that well with myself or my partners, because it’s way too arbitrary and capricious,” Karp told NewCanaanite.com.