Business

Varnum’s Landlord: Pharmacy Moving Soon, New Tenant Will Not Be a Restaurant

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The owners of 91 Main St.—long home to Varnum’s Pharmacy—say they’ve received a number of inquiries from restaurateurs interested in occupying the 1940 building, but that they’re holding out for something more appropriate. New Canaan resident Terry Spring, who is part of a group that owns the commercial buildings from Varnum’s running south along Main Street—a stretch of popular retail shops in New Canaan that include mainstays Baskin-Robbins, The Toy Chest, Candy Nichols, Garelick & Herbs, People’s Bank and Handwright Gallery & Framing—said that to this point interest in the long, narrow Varnum’s space has been expressed by food businesses and “things that might compete with our current customers.”

“We want a retailer and something that will work out well with our other tenants,” Spring told NewCanaanite.com. “Young women’s accessories, for example, or exercise stuff.”

The owners at Varnum’s could not immediately be reached for comment on the timing of their planned move to 44 East Ave. (next to Goldenberry, in that strip of businesses opposite East Avenue from Cherry Street East). Spring said that the pharmacy is close, as it’s secured approval from state officials.

News

Forum with Yankee Gas in New Canaan: ‘Get Them the Concrete Numbers’

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New Canaanites are calling for harder numbers and timetables behind projected cost-savings in natural gas conversion—for example, how much it will cost to convert a home of X square feet that lays Y feet from a main line, and exactly when service will come to each property—prior to committing to Yankee Gas to the degree that the utility needs in order to put a shovel in the ground here. Yankee Gas said during a panel discussion at New Canaan Library Monday evening that it wants to have natural gas service available in New Canaan starting this fall. That service would start by following a roughly 5-mile main up from Stamford along Ponus Ridge, running the length of Frogtown Road, jogging down Weed, running from the top of Elm to South Avenue and then out to the high school. At first, the line would serve many New Canaan businesses in the heart of our downtown, as well as a lot of big town buildings near the route (Town Hall, Police Department, South, Saxe and the high school) and possibly the YMCA. Yet even those buildings no longer carry enough of the natural gas load to reasonably offset, in the eyes of state regulators, the cost of doing the infrastructure work here, according to Paul Zohorsky, vice president of gas operations at Northeast Utilities (which owns Berlin, CT-based Yankee Gas).