Government

Public Works: Short-Term Closures Expected on 10 New Canaan Roads

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The Town of New Canaan will be resurfacing the following streets beginning July 9th:

Marvin Ridge Road
White Oak Shade Road
Kimberly Place
Hawks Hill Road
Autumn Lane
Arrowhead Trail
Braeburn Drive
Lone Tree Farm Road
Bridle Path Lane
Carriage Lane

Microsurfacing will be applied to these streets in two passes over two consecutive days (weather permitting); an initial “leveling course” followed by a “wearing course.” Each course will require up to 15 minutes to cure and be ready for traffic. The contractor for this work is SealCoating, Inc.

Their microsurfacing work will be limited to between the hours of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. each day in order to reduce the impact on residents of the short-term closures waiting for the material to dry. If a potential 15-minute delay in exiting or entering your driveway will adversely affect your scheduled activities, we suggest you make arrangements to park on a neighboring street while your street is being treated. Should you have any questions regarding this project please do not hesitate to contact our Assistant Director of Public Works, Tiger Mann at (203) 594-3056 or Tiger.Mann@newcanaanct.gov, or Highway Superintendent Mose Saccary at (203) 594-3709 mose.saccary@newcanaanct.gov.

Around Town

Garden Club’s Newly Planted Wildflower Meadow Blooms in Irwin Park

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Visitors to Irwin Park have yet another spot along the Flexi-pave path that circles the property where they can stop and ogle a beautiful planting. The wildflower meadow that the New Canaan Garden Club planned last fall for a prominent area below Gores Pavilion has taken root and started blooming its reds, blues, pinks and yellows. Inspired by the Mose Saccary-planned (and Murphy Pennoyer-fertilized) wildflower meadow at Route 123 and Parade Hill Road—in fact, relying heavily on the formula developed by Saccary, highway superintendent in the New Canaan Department of Public Works—the colorful area at Irwin is blooming with baby’s breath and poppies. “It looks great,” said Katie Stewart, a club member who serves on its Irwin Park Committee. “With each rain, I think, each week it will look different and better as different things come up.

Around Town

Wildflower Power: New Canaan Garden Club Plans a ‘Mose Meadow’ for Irwin Park

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New Canaanites will recall how the town received a wonderful gift of pink, yellow, purple and blue this past summer. By the end of July, cars were pulling over on Parade Hill Road to photograph the wildflower meadow (see slideshow above) planted in a disused patch of land off of Route 123. A creation of DPW Highway Superintendent Mose Saccary (a Center School alumnus) and his crew, the suddenly and dramatically transformed roadside parcel earned high praise from New Canaan’s experts in lovely plants. This week, some of those same experts—notably, Caroline Garrity, president of the New Canaan Garden Club and Katie Stewart, a member—received permission from parks officials to create what hopefully will be a similarly spectacular and deeply appreciated wildflower meadow at Irwin Park. “Mose has tried different things there [at Route 123 and Parade Hill Road], and this summer he had great success,” Stewart told the Park & Recreation Commission Wednesday at the group’s regular meeting, held in the Douglas Room at Lapham Community Center.

News

New Trees Grace Entrance to Irwin, Thanks to Garden Club and Town DPW

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[Editor’s Note: The following information was submitted by Katie Stewart of the New Canaan Garden Club, a nonprofit organization that’s been doing this type of great work in town for more than a century. Find out more about membership here.]

The three photos below were taken on Tuesday, September 30, 2014 by Judy Neville when the New Canaan Garden Club Irwin Park Committee installed five new trees at the Park entrance with the help of the town backhoe and Parks Superintendent John Howe, Highway Superintendent Mose Saccary and Tiger Mann. In 2005 the garden club members accepted the stewardship of New Canaan’s newest park on Weed Street from the Irwin Family when the club members were given an endowment fund to continue the beautification of the property/park and improve the quality of life in our already special town. The garden club gladly collaborates with the Park and Recreation Commission, the Office of Selectman and the Public Works crew on the maintenance and beautification. Annually improvements and new projects have been undertaken using the funds.

Government

Mill Pond to Get ‘Dry Hydrant’ during Biennial Dredge

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The biennial dredging of Mill Pond is underway, an approximately $10,000 maintenance project that alternates each year with Mead. Mill Pond, which gets a far heavier sediment load from the Fivemile River than Mead does from the subterranean waterway that feeds it, additionally has a screening system called a “gabion weir” installed, according to Mose Saccary of the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “We put this in and the plan is if we keep pulling debris out of the weir, the rest of the pond will stay clear,” Saccary said. The pond—site of the popular annual fishing derby—had gone without a dredge for some 25 years until 2008, when a $1 million project was needed to clear the pond, just eight inches deep and sprouting weeds at the time. The contractor on the job is Norwalk-based Hussey Brothers Excavating.