Town officials this week approved a contract for work designed to improve the sidewalk on a heavily foot-trafficked area of upper Elm Street.
The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 during its regular meeting Tuesday to approve $1,965 in survey work in the area of Walter Stewart’s Market.
The northern side of the sidewalk there is to get brick sidewalks and granite curbing installed, bringing it into the same style as much of downtown New Canaan, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
“If you look, we have a brick sidewalk that leads from Elm Street, the downtown area, to the edge of Walter Stewart’s and then from the edge of Walter Stewart’s past Karl Chevrolet to Grove Street,” Mann told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.
He continued: “We have brick sidewalks on the opposite side of the street. It’s one piece that’s in the middle that we weren’t able to complete at the time. One of the reasons is we want to verify the property line in the area. It actually extends into the grass. There’s a little grass area between the sidewalk and the parking lot of Walter Stewart’s. We want to verify that location, so our town engineer asked for the survey, so she can come forward and complete the design of this area.”
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted in favor of the contract with New Canaan-based RKW Land Surveying.
The town also will create an ADA-compliant ramp for a crosswalk between the building at 220 Elm St.—new home of the Board of Education—and Stewart’s across the street. Mann said that he’d heard safety concerns about sightline distances at the crosswalk, and noted that there’s more than 250 feet in both directions, enough to accommodate motorists traveling at 25 to 35 mph.
The selectmen asked whether there’s money in the budget for the work (yes) and whether the bricks can be set in concrete (it’s a greater cost and is only used when there’s a significant slope to the sidewalk, such as on Burtis Avenue).
Karl asked whether the the brick sidewalks with granite curbing and lampposts would extend beyond the very center of the downtown, as once anticipated.
Mann said, “We stopped at the downtown in the area that we already had. That was a directive from several administrations, to not extend further. So we haven’t. We do not on Grove, on Pine we were looking, but we might not be able to—we don’t have a sufficient right-of-way to get the road, the sidewalk, and be able to have a pedestrian way with the lampposts.”
Mann said the stretch of Elm in front of the market “is one of the last stretches” to do now.
The original vision, from 11 years ago, was to extend beyond the very heart of the downtown, up Elm, as well as Grove and Pine Streets. Grove is complete “and then Pine Street will be done this year when we repave it,” Mann said.
“The plans are underway for a complete streetscape with new granite curbing, new brick sidewalk, new paving done with Pine Street,” he said. “And in essence, the area will be complete.”
He noted that there’s an area on Park Street in front of Starbucks that needs to be done, following a request from the Parking Commission (where people routinely park on the sidewalk).
Carlson said she’d been to the BOE building the day before and the sidewalks on the opposite side are not five feet wide and asked whether the town is going to need to dig in order to have a sufficiently wide sidewalk there.
Mann said the survey is designed, in part, to verify that the property line extends into the grassy area between the sidewalk and lot.
“And that would be our limit,” he said. “We would talk to Walter Stewart’s about what we were planning to do. But yes, that’s our limit. And then we would look to see if we can’t move the curb line out slightly to give us five feet.”
Referring to the owners of Walter Stewart’s Market, Karl said, “We’re going to have to ask Alex and Doug [Stewart] for the one millionth and one act of generosity to New Canaan.”