Government

‘The Town Needs To Invest a Little More’: Officials Call for More Funds to Maintain Public Parks’ Grounds

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More maintenance is needed in New Canaan’s parks, particularly in landscaping the areas immediately around public buildings, and the officials in charge of them say they’ll seek more money in the upcoming budget season to care properly for the cherished properties. The Parks Department doesn’t have the funds needed “to adequately maintain the parks,” Sally Campbell, chairman of the Park & Recreation Commission, told members of the Town Council at their Nov. 16 meeting. “I just still can’t believe the conditions of the landscaping around our town buildings and around our beautiful town assets,” Campbell said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “And we are fortunate that [Parks Superintendent] John Howe does an amazing job maintaining the athletic fields and maintaining our baseball diamonds—and those are kind of easier to maintain—but to maintain the landscaping around Lapham [Community Center], or in Irwin Park where the weeds are just all over the place or the town buildings, we just need more money.”

The comments came during a pre-budget season review of parks and recreation before the Town Council, the final funding body to sign off on New Canaan’s spending plan each year.

Around Town

Selectmen Approve Funds for Pedestrian Path at Waveny

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Town officials this week approved funds to create a new pedestrian path at Waveny that’s designed to get people out of a frequently used roadway. Proposed two years ago by the recreation department, the new path will run parallel to the road that comes off of the main road through Waveny and runs toward Lapham Community Center, according to Tiger Mann, assistant director fo the New Canaan Department of Public Works. The idea is to get pedestrians “onto a trail system on the side of the road, because it does access our senior center and it is quite heavily traveled,” Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting on Tuesday, held at Town Hall. “We would like to see all of our residents walking their dogs or running or what have you utilize the trail instead of the roadway, especially in inclement weather.”

The selectmen unanimously approved a $43,000 contract with a Norwalk company that will create the processed stone trail. Recreation Director Steve Benko first proposed the trail two years ago, and it has garnered support from the town’s funding bodies since then.

Around Town

‘A Marvelous Destination’: Waveny Park Conservancy Pursues Project at Cornfields; Tailgate Fundraiser To Be Held Saturday

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An unsightly clearing in the southeastern corner of Waveny, laden with an invasive grass species grown out of the dredged material that in recent years has been piled there, is to be transformed into a newly landscaped and inviting destination, according to a nonprofit organization that’s taken on the restoration and beautification of the park. Known as “the cornfields”—a name that recalls Waveny’s pre-Lapham agricultural roots—the long-untouched area in recent years and until last summer had served as a sort of storage and staging ground for what had been dredged from Mill and Mead Ponds. Under a new plan developed by the Waveny Park Conservancy—and backed financially by a foundation established by a generous, recently deceased New Canaanite—the area “will become more of a meadow,” said Bob Seelert, chairman of the conservancy’s board. “It will be a marvelous destination spot, and in that regard, quite frankly, when you talk about continuing to inspire and serve the people of New Canaan forever, this is a transformational kind of destination spot.”

One of the first five projects taken on by the conservancy—projects that undergo the required town approval process prior to any physical work, though they’re funded through the nonprofit organization—the reimagining of the cornfields complements and is tied inextricably to a major plan to restore and beautify the Waveny Pond nearby (at the bottom of the sledding hill). In order to do that work, the conservancy is relying on New Canaanites who enjoy Waveny to support the organization through donations—see details below of its first major fundraiser, to be held Saturday.

Around Town

‘I Think It’s the Greatest Thing’: High Praise for New Trail at Waveny

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Since last month, Hannah Socci, a rising senior at New Canaan High School and regular runner at Waveny, has been eyeing the new trail that workers began carving out of the hill that rises alongside a blind turn in the main road through the park, opposite the Orchard softball field. Daughter of New Canaan Fire Capt. Mike Socci and granddaughter of former Center School nurse Vicki Socci, Hannah said the new trail creates a far safer running route than road itself. “It’s all we had for options,” she said on a recent afternoon during a brief break from her run. “When I saw this come in a few weeks ago, I was so excited. It’s safer and it’s better on your knees, also.

Government

First ‘Waveny Park Conservancy’ Project Imminent: New Pedestrian Trail To Be Installed at Park

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New Canaanites can expect work to commence soon on the first project conceived and funded by a nonprofit organization that’s taking on the restoration and beautification of Waveny’s most cherished and widely enjoyed grounds. The Waveny Park Conservancy (see brochure embedded below) is providing $27,515 for a contract with a Bedford Hills, N.Y.-based company to create a new 8-foot-wide trail that’s designed to help pedestrians stay off of the main road through the park at an especially dangerous, twisting section with limited sight lines for motorists. The Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting Tuesday voted 3-0 in favor of the contract with Cambareri Masonry. Broached by the Park & Recreation Commission last fall and endorsed enthusiastically by that group when the conservancy brought forward a formal proposal in March, plans call for a trail that will start at the base of the hill that climbs up past the Orchard softball field, on the southern side of the road, through a disused wooded section that leads to the parking lots in front of Waveny House. The trail’s designer and a board member of the donor-supported conservancy, New Canaan-based landscape architect Keith Simpson, said during the selectmen’s meeting that his own firm has used Cambareri for decades.