Back in the day — before Bridgeport Hydraulic built a water storage facility, and Staples High School moved in across the street — North Avenue was farmland.
A couple of decades ago, the Rippe farm and orchard was replaced by Greystone Farm Lane. Developers tossed a bone to the past, designing parts of some of the houses to look like silos.
Which may provide one solution to a controversy now roiling the road.
Aquarion — Bridgeport Hydraulic’s successor — wants to build 2 water tanks at the site it owns. Their 39-foot height concerns neighbors.
Pete Romano has an idea.
The LandTech principal knew that on Wilton Road at Newtown Turnpike, Aquarion used a facade to “hide” some of its equipment.
The Aquarion facility on Wilton Road.
He asked Peter Wormser — an architect at his engineering firm — to design something similar for North Avenue.
The result: 2 “barns.”
LandTech’s rendering of the barn structures for North Avenue. Click on or hover over to enlarge.
“I know Wilton Road is not as big,” Romano says. “And maybe Aquarion needs access on all 4 sides. But it’s an idea. It might get people talking.”
North Avenue will not go back to apple orchards and onion farms.
But perhaps — even with 2 big pumping stations — it can look that way.