Officials: $18 Million New Canaan Town Hall Renovation on Time, Budget

The widely anticipated renovation of Town Hall is on pace to wrap up next spring and officials said Monday that even after earmarking about three-quarters of what’s been budgeted for contingencies, the project is on track to come in at its estimated $18 million. According to the Joseph Zagarenski of Bridgeport-based firm The McLoud Group, which is overseeing the project as construction manager, the project is within two days of schedule and with the installation of steel by the end of June, “We will be 100 percent on schedule.”

“The foundation is 95 percent of the way complete,” Zagarenski said during a meeting of Town Hall Building Committee III, held in the Adrian Lamb room at New Canaan Library. “The frame will go up in the next two to three weeks. It will be a huge difference in what you see.”

A project expected to improve dramatically New Canaan’s main municipal building and services, the Town Hall renovation since its inception has been guided by principles of creating a modern facility (adding ADA accessibility and built-in technology to ease public use, for example) while retaining the historic character of the original 1909 structure (it was designed by celebrated architect Edgar Alonzo Josseyln after he’d won a competition for the right to do so, historians say—by then he’d already designed what’s now called the “Old Town Hall” of Stamford). The following renderings of the renovated New Canaan Town Hall are from White Plains, NY-based KSQ Architects and have been included in multiple presentations to town officials over the past two years.

Up to $50,000 Tagged for Testing at Town Hall Renovation Site

 

Stopping by the Town Hall offices located temporarily in the same building as Walter Stewart’s, NewCanaanite.com was fortunate to get a few minutes with Registrar of Voters George Cody (D), who was kind enough to talk some about the large painting outside his own office. Cody had commented on a recent post in our “0684-Old” series about WPA murals hanging in New Canaan’s elementary schools. He mentioned that more paintings that had been on the walls at Town Hall (under renovation and scheduled for completion next spring—more on that below) likely will be re-installed when it reopens. The one hanging here, by artist T.R. Colletta, is an artistic representation of New Canaan’s Main Street, looking south from the bottom of Elm Street (in other words, toward the present-day New Canaan Library), Cody said. “You can see the man walking up the hill from Burtis Avenue and you can see where the restaurant [Barolo] is,” he said.