Around Town

Biz on Biz: Weed & Duryea on Favorite New Canaan Foods

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In this installment of Biz on Biz, we traveled to Weed & Duryea on Grove Street to ask about a favorite product or service of another business in New Canaan. The hardware store, which has been running as long as our town’s railroad system, was founded soon after Francis E. Weed returned from the Civil War in 1865, historians say. Inside, we asked retail manager Barry Coleman about local favorites and he responded by reviewing New Canaan eateries he likes most. The first place he mentioned was Chinese restaurant Ching’s Table, right on Main Street. “I’ve been going there for years,” said Coleman, a Trumbull resident.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The Summer Theatre of New Canaan kicked off its 2016 season on Friday evening with a Broadway Stars gala featuring Tony Award winner Kelli O’Hara, held at the Woodway Country Club. O’Hara was joined by fellow Broadway stars David Friedman, Robin de Jesus, Janelle Robinson, Jodi Stevens and Chip Zien. Scroll through the gallery above for images from the evening, including performances. ***

We’re hearing that Democratic Registrar of Voters George Cody won backing from New Canaan Democrats at Tuesday evening’s caucus, held at Town Hall. For the first time since his election to the office in 1994, Cody this time faced a challenger for the position, from fellow New Canaanite Bernard Simpkin.

Business

Audrey Stewart: Matriarch of the Market

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[This is the first installment in a four-part series “Matriarchs of Main & Elm,” profiling the women behind New Canaan’s great business families.]

Audrey Bailey Stewart had recently married Walter Stewart, Sr. when the young couple moved in with her husband’s parents—Walter Stewart, who had founded his eponymous food market on Main Street in 1907 and his rather formidable wife, Nellie, New Canaan’s first woman elected to the state legislature—at the Hoyt Street home that’s still in the family. A smart, strong-willed woman in her own right, Audrey didn’t always have an easy time living with the in-laws and “she didn’t always get along with Nellie,” family historian Karen Brockway Izzo said, recalling one funny story from her grandmother. “Once, Nellie told her that she didn’t like the color purple,” Izzo recalled. “Grandmother apparently had a bit of a rebellious streak, and after a disagreement, painted her entire apartment purple. Even the bathroom.”

After meeting her would-be husband through a chance encounter after taking in a movie at the (then relatively new) New Canaan Playhouse on Elm Street while still a teenager, Audrey Stewart would go on to immerse herself in one of the town’s most important and civic-minded business families. From humble beginnings and acquainted with tragedy even as a young girl, Audrey Stewart would go on to forge a definitive and direct positive impact on the family business during a crucial period of growth, while rearing and raising an entire generation of Stewarts well known to locals.

Business

Parking Relief Sought for New Elm Street Building, Future Home of Stewarts Spirits

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The owner of an Elm Street commercial lot that soon will see a new two-story building go up—a structure that officials say will serve, in part, as a future location for Stewarts Spirits—is seeking some relief from a local parking requirement as a basement level now also is proposed. Permits to construct the 3,011-square-foot building on the .28-acre lot at 215 Elm St.—located just east of Walter Stewart’s Market and Stewarts Spirits—already have been secured. Now, the property’s owner, Melissa Engel, is seeking to create a 1,598-square-foot basement which, under the New Canaan Zoning Regulations (see page 109 here), triggers the need for six additional parking spaces. The parcel’s site plan, as it is, will fall three spaces short. Engel is seeking relief under Section 6.2.E.2 of the zoning regs (page 112 here).