Town To Study Use of Center School Lot

The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday approved a $17,500 contract with an engineering firm to study the use of the Center School Lot.

Under the agreement, New Haven-based Hardesty & Hanover will hold meetings, walk the lot, watch it during peak periods to determine supply and demand, track types of usage and lengths of stay and provide a report at the end.

Town Planner Sarah Carey said the Memorandum of Understanding between the town and library called for the study.

“We’re hoping to start this now as we anticipate it will take probably a couple of months to have meetings and then find the ideal dates for the study,” Carey told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “The MOU also stipulated that the town has authority to select who the traffic consultant would be. We’re requesting Hardesty & Hanover because they were the town’s peer reviewer in 2021 when the town had the P&Z [Planning & Zoning Commission] approvals for the application. So they’re familiar with the project and it also stipulates that the library has to provide the funds for the study.”

First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 to approve the contract.

The selectmen asked whether the lot would be studied at different times of day (yes), whether motorists use the South Avenue entrance/exit (the study should answer that), what is the breakdown between library and town spaces (76 vs. 90-something, respectively) and whether the firm could make a recommendation about creating even more town spaces (it’s possible). 

Karl asked how the pull-off/dropoff area on Maple Street just outside the main library entrance is being used. 

New Canaan Library CEO Ellen Sullivan Crovatto, a guest at the meeting, said that “people do use it and I think in some cases there’s a little bit of a waiting line that happens.”

Sullivan Crovatto continued: “There maybe isn’t as much circulation as we might like. But I think it gets well used during the day. The purpose of that pull off was to enable people to both drop off their books at the book drop area, but also perhaps to pick people up who may have more limited abilities. As far as I’m aware it’s working well. People are using it.”

Karl noted that there are some grassy areas around the lot that could accommodate a parking expansion. Murphy Carroll said the Center School Lot is unusually attractive as-is, and asked that aesthetics be considered in any discussion of laying more asphalt. 

Sullivan Crovatto said, “One of the things that we could certainly imagine coming from the study are some recommendations on further traffic flow mitigation before we have to go to something extreme such as taking out any of the green spaces.”

The library pays the town $10,000 per year for the set-aside spaces. Sullivan Crovatto thanked the Department of Public Works for its help in stenciling the word ‘Library’ onto the organization’s dedicated spaces, saying it has helped clear up space usage for visitors.

The selectmen touched on the town’s successful program of offering free parking permits in the Center School Lot to those working in businesses downtown, as an incentive to free up more desirable spaces for shoppers and diners.

Tucker Murphy, a town employee, said that downtown workers using the free parking permits in Center School Lot have complained that they can no longer find a spot in the parking lot. 

Murphy said that people are “coming in and calling [Parking Manager] Stacy [Miltenberg] quite often and saying, ‘I can no longer find a spot when I come in at 9 a.m. to go to work.’ ”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Murphy’s comments were accurate. As Crovatto noted, the library doesn’t open until 9 a.m., “so that would be unusual to have all of our spaces filled.” (Asked later in the meeting how many employee parking permits the town has issued for the Center School Lot, Murphy said she didn’t know.)

Sullivan Crovatto said it’s important to “really understand” the demand for town spots in the lot.

“So that if we’re having to bring in more spaces in some configuration, we understand what that’s going to look like, so we’re not guessing on the number of new spots we need without having that information or understanding what the permittees might be looking for,” she said.

Asked for an overview of the parking at the lot, Sullivan Crovatto said, “I think for the most part we’re doing pretty well. There certainly have been some bottlenecks and pressure points and we’ve worked very hard to mitigate those with respect to how we adjust our programming. We’re very conscious of not programming anything other than ‘Book Babies’ on a Wednesday morning, for example, where we have an enormous amount of pressure on the system, because we have 50 wonderful toddlers and caregivers there. I’d say that sometimes there are short tempers when people are arriving too late for things and they can’t find a spot. As you know, we’re not out there monitoring what goes on on a daily basis in the parking lot. So it’s a little bit hard to give you anything other than the anecdotes from what we hear from folks. We know there were a couple of incidents that were unfortunate that we’d certainly like to not have repeated. But, I’d say, there could always be more parking in New Canaan.”