Members of a group seeking to raise money for, recommend and help oversee yet-undetermined capital projects across a big chunk of Waveny Park said Wednesday night that they’re seeking to hit $2 million in order to “break ground” after prioritizing plans through the winter.
Calling itself the ‘Waveny Park Conservancy,’ the group has “some money in the bank to get us going, and I think we have pretty reasonable ideas and prospects whereby we can raise this $2 million,” its chairman, Bob Seelert, told the Park & Recreation Commission.
“I know a lot of people are trying to raise money for a lot of different things in town—this, that and the other thing—so I suppose there is competition for scarce resources,” he said at the commission’s meeting, held in the Douglass Room at Lapham Community Center. “But the reality is if you live in New Canaan, and you’ve been here a long period of time, if you ever have out-of-town guests into your home, you can do two things with them: You can take them down to Elm Street and bring them over to Waveny. And they all sit there and say, ‘Oh my god, what an iconic place this is, it’s a real gem, I wish I lived here.’ So we think there is enthusiasm for what it is we want to do because, in truth, it is for a really noble purpose.”
Inspired by the model of the Central Park Conservancy, the group incorporated on June 11 with the intention of helping Waveny “thrive in perpetuity” for all New Canaanites, according to Seelert, through a public-private partnership. It formed after meetings with members of the Town Council and First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, Seelert said, and includes some of the town’s very best “veteran forest minds,” he said, as well as others.
In addition to Seelert and Bill Holmes of the New Canaan Preservation Alliance, group’s members are: Susan Rein, highly respected local landscape architect Keith Simpson, Caroline Garrity, past president of the New Canaan Garden Club, Carol Seldin, immediate past president of the New Canaan Beautification League, Chris Schipper of the New Canaan Land Trust, and “longtime Waveny watcher and open space advocate” Skip Hobbs, Seelert said. Park & Rec Commission Chair Sally Campbell and Neele-Banks Stichnoth of the NCPA are ex officio members, he said.
Part of the group’s mission reads: “The Waveny Park Conservancy is deeply respectful of the work the town and other organizations have done to improve and maintain Waveny Park in the past half-century and we look forward to collaborating with all those who have a history with and a love for Waveny. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that Waveny Park thrives in perpetuity and continues to inspire and serve the people of New Canaan forever.”
The group met with the New Canaan Community Foundation, Seelert said, and though it will create its own standalone nonprofit foundation in order to raise money while giving donors a tax exemption (it filed with the IRS Wednesday, he said), the NCCF—experts in local needs and fundraising—said the $2 million goal was feasible.
Though specific projects are still to come, the group has decided to focus on Waveny’s grounds (rather than its mansion or other buildings—see the line item on page 39 of the adopted fiscal year 2016 budget here) between South Avenue and Lapham Road and between the main road through Waveny and Merritt Parkway, Seelert said.
“We’re not really interested in getting involved in ‘whither goest the leaf pile’ or what happens to Parcel A on the other side of Merritt Parkway, and in truth everything north of the east-west entrance road are all … pretty fully developed,” Seelert told commissioners in his first public comments about the Waveny Park Conservancy.
“Our initial effort will be directed at what I would loosely call ‘the grounds’ – the forest, the open space, gardens, cornfields, that kind of thing—because at the same time that we might be unfolding things and trying to support things in that arena, the town has some placeholders for things they are going to be doing over the next few years relative to the mansion. So there is a placeholder for a study of what some of the needs are in the mansion. There is a placeholder the following year for the development of some architectural plans, and there’s a placeholder in year three for what would be some capital improvements. So we don’t want to get out in front of the town, we want them to unfold their things, but we think that we could simultaneously with that be developing some programs—plans, budgets and things—that could be brought to bear on the grounds.”
To Park & Rec Commissioner Rich Kilbride’s question of whether “leave well enough alone” would be one guiding principle of the group, Seelert described being able to fish several decades ago—Seelert had spent a good deal of his introduction describing his longstanding ties to the town (44 years as a resident, three kids and now six grandkids)—in the pond at the bottom of the sledding hill at Waveny.
Seelert said a dredge and clean-up of the pond would yield an experience there more true to the original version of Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., who laid out Waveny’s grounds when the Lapham family had the mansion built in 1912-13.
Seelert and the commissioners also discussed improvements that could be made to the area in the southeast portion of Waveny known as the “cornfields,” a depository and repository in recent years for dredged and other material.
“If you look over at the corn fields, in truth, the town has been dumping ‘dredgings’ and stuff in the cornfield and previously had been dumping other kinds of material, and so the good news about ‘dredgings’ are that it’s a good kind of fertile material, so if we could get the town to stop dumping other stuff and perhaps create a new dumpig area—perhaps over by the leaf pile or something people are less prone to enjoy—you could turn the cornfields into an amazing space with either wildflowers or various specimen trees with benches and a place for contemplation, relaxing, walking et cetera, so I think there are things you could do in certain spaces that would dramatically enhance their ability to serve the people in New Canaan and be places that people would want to go.”
Simpson in addressing Kilbride’s question noted that the forces of nature with invasive species of plants “do not leave Waveny alone” and that many types of specimen trees “really do need intervention” lest the entire forest and roots become a “pile of invasive species.”
The idea of a public-private partnership through what has developed as the Waveny Park Conservancy emerged after the Town Council in December voted to list the park and its outbuildings on the National Register of Historic Places.
This is yet another brilliant initiative on the part of the citizens of New Canaan. Bob Seelert has assembled a blue ribbon committee of volunteers that will shepherd the sustainability of the natural areas of Waveny Park and both ensure and enhance this town treasure. Hats off to all involved.
I am not sure I am in favor of this. I do see that it’s probably comprised of people who “understand” Waveny, how it came
into the town hands, how protective New Canaanites are of the park, etc. But I was not in favor of having Waveny listed in the historical registry (I still don’t trust what strings come attached from the government). With this group forming so quickly on the heels of the registry listing, it just makes me wonder. What sort of mandate do they have? Do they get to self-form and suddenly be a “force”
regarding the projects that are allowed to be carried out? How much power will this unelected group wield? And how is it going to be controlled down the road? What happens if, over time, different people join, and gradually start making decisions that aren’t supported by the majority of townspeople? They are now a mobilized group, so they will have a voice. And even if that voice represents a minority view, they will still have a louder voice than those of us who care about Waveny, but do not have press coverage. This is a common way for minority voices to push through an agenda. Proceed with Caution.