Everyone’s talking about tariffs.
In this area, many of those talking are businesspeople. Most have some skin in the game.
That includes Stew Leonard Jr.
The Westport native — now CEO of Stew Leonard’s, the company his father founded, with 8 locations in the tri-state area — sat down the other day with Business Insider. Among his comments:
As far as tariffs go, I’ve talked to our suppliers in Mexico with avocados and beer and tequila, and I’ve talked to our suppliers in Canada. We get some tomatoes on the vine from Vancouver, and salmon is our biggest item from Canada. There’s also lobsters, but it’s not lobster season yet.
Basically, take your darts out for your dartboard because nobody that I’ve talked to, even the experts in the field, knows what’s going to happen.
Throw a dart. Is this tariff going to last one day? Is it going to last a week? Is it going to last a month?
What we’re scrambling to do is find alternate sources if there is an increase in the tariff. We’re sitting here riding the market day by day….
Click here to read the full story. (Hat tip: Doug McCarthy)
Stew Leonard Jr. (Photo courtesy/Westchester Magazine)
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On the 5th anniversary of the pandemic, COVID is still here.
Is bird flu here too?
While the CDC website shows no reported cases in Connecticut — or east of Ohio — one Westport woman is not so sure.
She told “06880” yesterday that she found 2 dead birds in the waters of the Ned Dimes Marina at Compo Beach, and another nearby on the Longshore golf course.
She was advised to contact the Aspetuck Health District, just to be sure.
Dead birds at the Compo Beach marina.
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For a while, I’ve wondered why nearly every new house in Westport seems to be white (with black accents).
I’m not the only one.
Dan Kois has thought about the trend too.
Now he’s written about it.
He concentrates on Arlington, Virginia. But the style is national, he notes.
His piece in Salon answers a number of questions, including why they’re so big, and why they’re so white. Click here to read. (Hat tip: Scott Smith)
This 4-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom house on Spriteview Avenue is on the market for $3.499 million.
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It’s less than 3 miles from Staples High to the Westport Country Playhouse.
It’s a lot longer through Ithaca, New York.
That’s the route Zach De Brino took. It was worth the detour.
Before graduating from high school in 2019, he was an assistant director for Staples Players.
Zach earned a BFA in stage management from Ithaca College in 2023. Since then he’s worked Off-Broadway and regionally, including production assistant and crew swing on “Teeth” at Playwrights Horizons, assistant stage manager for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, and event production coordinator in New York.
Now he returns home. Zach is the production assistant “Theatre People,” which opens March 25 at the Playhouse.
Click here for more information on the show, including tickets.
Zach De Brino, checking props for “Theatre People.” (Photo/Andrea Quiles)
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Jay Norris’ new “Visionary” podcast has just dropped.
This week, the business/tech/media/retail/real estate/music entrepreneur talks with ESPN chair (and fellow Westporter Jimmy Pitaro.
To hear the strategy that led him to the world’s top sports network — and much more — click below.
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Signs of spring are everywhere. Bob Weingarten spotted this — a perfect candidate for “Westport … Naturally” — on Hillandale Road:
(Photo/Bob Weingarten)
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And finally … as noted above, Stew Leonard Jr. is worried about:
(Be a champ! Help support “06880.” Just click here — and thank you!)
Regarding white houses with black accents (trim): I find it most dissapointing that builders are creating these monoliths in our town. They are complety devoid of character and charm, two things our town was most noted for.
people are buying them
Once upon a time, apparently there was a fire sale of a particular white paint (is it called “snow glare white”?) and apparently a lot of builders and painters bought lifetime supplies of it. That, and basic black, which as any fashionista will tell you, goes with everything. The blacked out windows are another matter. There might have been a design group who worked from the same few pages of a “builders guide to basic homes.” The combination of these things has produced an inventory of (fill in the blank yourself). This is not unlike what happened c.2005 +/- when very many new homes were built with faux palladian windows. Thankfully, paint in colors was still available then and homes were built in various sizes, generally in range of normal, some larger. That said, I am most grateful for the outstanding highly skilled and creative architects who design beautiful homes and surroundings regardless of their size. About the large white house in this article: 1) Three garage doors. Two have a driveway. Third garage door has no driveway. Is it for the lawnmower? Or a horse? 2) At left of house. Steep stairs. or maybe ventilation flaps? And a platform at top. Is that a diving board? Just wondering. Intentionally, I have not addressed the unfortunate and saddening practice of clear cutting properties.
I was also curious about the garage without a drive – so much so I looked at the real estate listing. There was a helpful aerial view which showed two parallel tracks (probably a single line of pavers) going into the garage. This reduces the coverage on the lot while still allowing access.
Stew Leonard‘s is going to lose a lot of business when Wegmans’s opens up in Norwalk. People are going to check out the new store and when they see the unparalleled quality control, and the quality of food, they will get hooked! The Wegmans family wouldn’t want Stews to lose business, but it’s going to happen.
Not to mention BigY and Costco’s massive parking (& Tire Center) expansion. Competition is welcome to help mitigate high prices. Also, no way that house on Spriteview comes close to $499 million.
Ken, Wegmans is a very unique store.
Wegman’s is out of Rochester, NY and when I lived there (‘83-‘85) it was the “Happy Hunting Ground” for single guys like I was back then. I love Wegman’s wish they would come to Cincinnati.
Seeing a dominant style of homes over a few years is not new; home design fashions seem to change every ten or fifteen years. In the 1950s and 1960s, pretty much all anybody built were so-called “raised ranches” and centre-hall colonials, with a short and unfortunate spasm of split-levels. In the 1980s and early 1990s they seemed to build bigger centre-hall colonials. By the late 1990s they were building mostly great big things in the style of “the house of a zillion gables” with two or three peaks and maybe an eyebrow window in the front and great big family rooms with three or four dormers above the garage. At some point around the late 2000s they began building the faux-farmy things featured here, made of randomly connected white boxes with black windows. People hire local or regional name-brand architects to design houses that may differ in detail but seldom differ in style from the stuff everybody else is building. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose. In ten years all the new houses will be something “new” and different from what is being built now, but not much different from each other, and it will be time to tear down the stuff built in the 1990s.
I share the concerns over bird flu. There are dead birds being found, but I don’t think it’s so unusual this time of year. We may notice it more now because of these fears. It can be difficult to guess what the cause of death is. For example, if you find a dead wild bird like a duck or goose, the outer form of the bird can seem unchanged, but the organs were eaten clean by a fox.
I don’t mean to downplay people’s concern by sharing this and I do think people should keep curious and observant.
If you think it may be bird flu call the Aspetuck Health District.
It would be helpful if our local authorities support scientific observation and distribute safety protocol to the public.
It is important to not feed or touch wild birds.
It is important to remember bird flu is a FAR greater risk in our grocery cart, that is, the risk we take eating eggs and eating meat, such as beef. The birds most impacted have been chickens within the meat and egg industry.
It’s never been a better time to consider the benefits of reducing or ending our intake of meat and eggs. It’s cheaper to make meals, good for our individual health and also in reducing the risk of pandemics, and good for the environment.
There were at least six dead birds during my walk around Compo Beach today. Very concerning, particularly since my dog seems attracted to each one!
If you don’t mind my asking, were you able to contact Animal Control or alert Parks and Rec? And if so, were they responsive?
As Chuck Schumer likes to say, tariffs are taxes and in the end, it’s the consumer that pays them.
some birds died during the freezing temps, they got stuck in the ice.