Government

New Canaan’s Chief Building Official Proposes Creation of ‘Blight Committee’ To Field Complaints

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Saying it would be best if a volunteer group of residents oversaw the sensitive and nuanced process of handling a blight complaint, New Canaan’s chief building official on Monday night proposed the creation of a new municipal committee. 

Brian Platz said that in his position, he must be absolutely consistent in how he handles complaints about blighted properties in New Canaan, but such rigidity does not allow him to address on case-by-case basis situations where, for example, a resident has fallen on hard times. For that reason and others, Platz said, a Blight Committee such as other towns have created is a better vehicle for fielding the complaints. 

“I think that if [town residents] were to be, for want of better word—‘judged’—on the condition of their property, it may be better received by a jury of their peers rather than a building inspector who is an enforcement agent of the town,” Platz told members of the Town Council’s Bylaws and Ordinances Committee during a meeting held at Town Hall. “Once I knock on their door and introduce myself, they already, understandably, get a little defensive. And I have had situations where I knocked on a woman’s door and she had gone on chemotherapy. She could barely answer the door and was fighting cancer, and she was well into her 70s, lived alone.

Around Town

Town Officials To Take Up Abandoned Effort To Rid New Canaan of ‘For Sale’ Signs

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Weeks after real estate organizations in New Canaan abandoned the widely discussed effort, the town’s legislative body is looking into what it might do to create a ban, at least temporarily, on ‘For Sale’ signs here. 

Town Councilman Steve Karl said that members of a committee he helps lead will meet with the chairman of the Planning & Zoning Commission to study how Greenwich accomplished its own ban “because if we want to get this thing going, we are going to have to mirror what Greenwich did.”

“And it is sort of a halfway agreement between the real estate offices and with the town,” said Karl, co-chair of the Council’s Bylaws and Ordinances Committee. Saying prospective homebuyers identify properties online and that ridding New Canaan of hundreds of ‘For Sale’ signs would improve the town’s appearance, the New Canaan Board of Realtors, with support from the New Canaan Multiple Listing Service, announced in June that a six-month “trial ban” would start in July. But before the month was out, the plan was scrapped. Officials said the turnaround came following talks with the National and State Associations of Realtors. At the Town Council’s most recent meeting, held July 18 at Town Hall, Chairman John Engel asked Karl whether a new effort to realize a ban was “on the burner” and he replied that it was. 

Asked about it, Karl said that even with a re-worded ordinance or regulation, there likely would need to be wide agreement among real estate professionals to effective rid New Canaan of the pervasive signs (there are hundreds of residential properties on the market). 

It isn’t clear whether the matter is best addressed in New Canaan through an ordinance or a zoning regulation.

Government

Town Councilman: Two Parties Interested in Leasing Space in Former Outback Teen Center

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The town has selected a Realtor to work with as it tries to find a future use for the former Outback Teen Center building, officials said last week. However, the municipality hasn’t signed a contract with that Realtor “because there are two entities who have expressed interest in leasing space in the building,” according to Town Councilman Penny Young. “And until those negotiations are completed, either effected or rejected, we are not going to engage a Realtor,” Young said at the Council’s regular meeting on July 18, held at Town Hall. “So that process is underway. It takes time, but it’s underway.”

Inherited by the town three summers ago, the Outback has been a subject of wide discussion among New Canaanites ever since.

Government

‘We Are Not Going for Bad Architecture’: Housing Authority Chairman on Proposed Redevelopment of Canaan Parish

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As redevelopment plans for an affordable housing complex materialize, New Canaanites must balance safeguarding the town from a punitive state law with creating buildings that look just how they want and doing so in a financially viable way, project leaders said this week. Specifically, increasing the number of units at Lakeview Avenue and Route 123 in order to gain relief in the future from an affordable housing law known by its statute number ‘8-30g’ means working within restrictions in terms of building height and even style, according to the chairman of the New Canaan Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners. Such considerations long have weighed on the minds of the Housing Authority and an organization called New Canaan Neighborhoods, which created and manages Canaan Parish, a 60-unit Section 8 housing complex, Chairman Scott Hobbs told members of the Town Council during their regular meeting Wednesday night. And though early-stage renderings of a redeveloped Canaan Parish have been received poorly by at least some in New Canaan, those schematics are not final and, in many ways, result from careful considerations in how to achieve a workable balance between financial viability and legal qualification on the one hand, and usefulness and aesthetics on another, Hobbs said. “If you want to build a giant box and put a low-sloped roof on it, you have more options,” Hobbs said at the meeting, held in Town Hall.

Government

‘It’s a Great Town We Live In’: Councilmen Praise Public-Private Partnerships in Funding Waveny Trails, Platform Tennis Court [UPDATED]

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Citizens’ generosity helped push New Canaan’s legislative body last week to approve taxpayer funding of projects that will enhance Waveny for two sets of park users. Members of the Town Council in approving bond issuances of $50,000 and $70,000, respectively, to improve trails at the popular park and to create a fifth platform tennis court—an additional requested for several years—cited donations from two private groups as reasons to move forward. Specifically, the Waveny Park Conservancy is matching dollar-for-dollar the town’s $50,000 investment in improving trails starting with those that run behind “the cornfields” (soon to become ‘Waveny Meadows’), and platform tennis users are contributing $35,000 upfront toward a fifth court. “Those two projects are just a great example of how lucky we are to have the public and private combination of funds because without the private part of this, we would not be able to get this done,” Town Councilman Steve Karl said at the group’s regular meeting, held May 16 at Town Hall. “With the trails, we are basically doubling the amount of money we are spending there, and in the case of the platform tennis court, it’s another $35,000 in.