The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday unanimously approved a $103,900 contract with a New Canaan-based company to install new sidewalks on two sections of Park Street.
You can see the blacktop sidewalk on the east side of Park Street change to brick near Ardsley Square. Streetview
Peter Lanni Inc. will put a new concrete sidewalk with granite curbing on the west side of Park from Maple Street to Richmond Hill Road as well as a new brick sidewalk with the same curbing on the east side of the Park from Cherry to Maple Street.
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted in favor of the contract, presented to the board by New Canaan High School senior Josiah Jones, an intern with the Department of Publics Works, and DPW Director Tiger Mann.
The total amount of the contract includes a $14,000 in contingency funds, Jones said at the meeting, held in Town Hall.
The selectmen asked Jones what were the range of bids (another bid came in at $102,895 compared to $89,900 from Lanni), whether funds for the project are within the current fiscal year’s budget (yes), whether just two companies responded (correct, though several had taken the bid package) and whether the project requires all new granite curbing even though some of that already is in place (it needs new curbing on the east side and to be reset on the west side because it’s tilted there).
Moynihan asked why the sidewalk would be concrete on one side and brick on another.
According to Mann, the difference in material is due to a requirement imposed by the town when a small development went up at Maple and Park Streets. The Planning & Zoning Commission required that the developer improve the sidewalk so that it was brick, though another stretch of that same sidewalk had been left in its original blacktop. On the west side, there is already some brick paving for the sidewalk and the town ultimately decided to use the crosswalk at the intersection of Park and Maple Streets as a break, so that it continues to Richmond Hill as asphalt.
“We could do brick but then it starts to look like patch work,” Mann said.