Tag Archives: Downtown Westport

Downtown Activism

Posted on August 12, 2011 | 44 comments

It sounds like an oxymoron:  “Downtown Activist.”

For years, property owners sat idly by as Main Street morphed into Mall Street, local shoppers fled to more friendly and/or funky places like Fairfield, and the movie/bar/entertainment scene ossified.

Chain stores were happy to be here.  Rents rose.  There was not a lot of activity — but no reason for landlords to take an active role in anything downtown-related.

Drew Friedman is trying to change all that.

A major downtown property owner himself, he’s organized a group.  Its mission:

To formulate, propose and help implement an action plan to improve Downtown Westport as a vital community center for culture, art, entertainment, government, business, social activity, riverfront enjoyment and ambience.

Its name:  Downtown Activist.

Downtown Westport hums with activity, in this cover photo from Downtown Activist magazine.

The group has a website.  It’s got a glossy, full-color, 24-page magazine.

What it doesn’t have is a lot of activity.

The idea of the group — reinforced through the magazine — is to

  • Solicit ideas (via questionnaires,  and input from “downtown stake holders, interested parties, professionals and Activist Group members”)
  • Organize members into committees to “explore and evaluate the proposals recommended for downtown improvements”
  • “Translate committee recommendations into renderings, videos, interviews and other presentations to facilitate communicating the suggestions”
  • And stuff like that.

The magazine — it says $1 on the cover, but they’re really free, at Town Hall, Oscar’s, the alley leading to Bobby Q’s, the library and train station — is packed with information.

There’s a story on the history of parking in downtown Westport that includes a fascinating, little-known and very esoteric discussion of the Baldwin Lot (behind Williams Sonoma).

There’s a piece on beautification.

And there are photos of possible sites for more parking.  (Parking is a constant theme in the Downtown Activist magazine).  Suggested sites include the police station lot, Jesup Green (yes, the green itself), and the Baldwin lot (which seems pretty full already).

There are also 4 questionnaires.  They cover downtown in general; parks, park amenities and apartments; walkways and amenities, and (ta-da!) parking.

Drew was hoping for a lot of feedback.  So far, he’s disappointed.

“Most people don’t seem to have much interest,” he sighs.  “That’s been my experience over the last 40 years, trying to get people interested in zoning matters.”

One big name has sent in his $25 membership fee, and said he looks forward to participating.

Planning and Zoning Commission chairman Ron Corwin told Drew he’s eager to hear the questionnaire results.

Otherwise, the silence is deafening.

Drew keeps plugging along.  Recently, he sent a 2-page information sheet to every downtown property owner.  (Mailing 150 or so magazines was too expensive, Drew says.)

He got a few responses — though not as much as he hoped.

“I don’t know,” Drew says.  “They’re the largest stakeholders in downtown.”

They own property.  They make their money there.

But unlike Drew Friedman, they’re sure not downtown activists.

44 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Local business, Looking back, Organizations, People

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Crossing Borders

Posted on August 2, 2011 | 29 comments

When the Fairfield Store closed in 1996, everyone wondered what would fill the gaping hole in the heart of downtown.

Borders did.

When that bookstore bid a bankrupt bye-bye last spring, the worries resurfaced.

Now comes news that Fairfield University will open a new, innovative bookstore there this fall.

A handsome gazebo sits in Fairfield center, not far from what will soon be an exciting retail replacement for Borders.

The “state-of-the-art” operation — an adjunct to Fairfield’s on-campus store — will carry course books, plus clothing sportswear, and gift items from both the college and Fairfield’s 2 high schools.

According to the Fairfield Minuteman, “one of the largest companies and the most valuable technology company in the world” will also share the space.

Can you say “Apple Store”?

And “one of the largest coffee-houses” in the US will also open up shop there.

This is “06880” — not “06824.”  So why waste valuable pixels reporting on something a couple of miles beyond our, um, borders?

Because we too have a big bookstore.  And even though Barnes & Noble is in no danger of bankruptcy — yet — comparisons are apt.

Unlike Fairfield, our chain store is not downtown.  In fact, it’s pretty far away, in one of our many stand-alone shopping centers.

It’s the type of place you don’t just wander into.  You have to plan to go there.

Fairfield skirted with disaster when the Fairfield Store — a long-time anchor — departed.  It lucked out when Borders arrived — though behind-the-scenes maneuvering probably had something to do with that “luck.”

Now — just a couple of months after Borders shut down — the high-profile property will once again pulse with activity.  Shoppers of all ages will come, linger — then wander up and down the lively downtown streets of Fairfield.

Once upon a time we had our own anchor:  Klein’s.  While the Fairfield Store sold clothing, Klein’s specialized in an eclectic mix of books, electronic equipment, stationery and other “department store” items.

But its role was the same.   It drew people in, kept them there — and benefited many other local merchants.  Its replacement — Banana Republic — is a big name in retail.

Yet it is also just another clothing chain, on a street swamped with similar stores.

Sometime (relatively) soon, the Y will decamp for its new home.  The hole it leaves will be as significant as when first the Fairfield Store, then Borders, departed.

Promises have been made that the Y will be replaced by an exciting mix of commercial, residential and office properties.

We shall see.

We’ll see whether the most important old/new building in downtown Westport draws a diverse crowd, from within our borders and beyond.

Or whether everyone keeps heading to Fairfield for exciting stores, restaurants and fun.

29 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Local business, Places

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How Our Gardens Grow

Posted on July 1, 2011 | 10 comments

The 2 gardens at the eastern (Klaff’s/Starbucks) end of the Post Road bridge have gotten a bit grotty.

As “gateways” to Westport — among the 1st things you see as you enter downtown from the Merritt, I-95 or Post Road — they provide a poor 1st impression.  Built 20 years ago, they’re now weed-infested, overgrown and neglected.

The only people who care about them, it seemed, were folks who trampled over them putting up illegal signs, which stayed long after the events they advertised were done.

The 2 gardens were designed to be mirror images of each other.  Now all they share is decrepitude.

But if you want to see for yourself, you better hurry.  All that is about to change.

The town Beautification Committee is giving the “Gateway Gardens” an extreme makeover.

It hasn’t been easy.

Four months ago, a generous company agreed to pay for renovations.  The committee solicited plans.  Five local firms complied. 3 were selected — Laurel Rock, Daybreak and Geiger’s — and their proposals were passed on to the benefactor.

But the company reneged on its offer.  The Beautification Committee apologized to the 3 garden design firms, and wondered what to do next.

Nancy Carr and Angela Trucks at work, weeding a Gateway Garden.

A week later, Burton DeMarche called.  35 years ago his father founded Dickson DeMarche Landscape Architects in Westport.  Now called LaurelRock, after Burt — a horticulturist — joined DDLA,  it’s expanded to become one of Fairfield County’s leading sustainable design/build firms.

Though its headquarters are in Wilton, DeMarche wanted to do something for his hometown.  He offered to donate LaurelRock’s services — from planning and plantings to hardscape materials and installation — to bring the gardens back to life.

And to do it in time for this year’s Fine Arts Festival — July 16 and 17.

It’s a donation valued at over $35,000.  Beautification co-chair Angela Trucks calls LaurelRock “our heroes.”

LaurelRock also agreed to maintain the gardens through the fall.  Then the Downtown Merchants Association will take over.  The Beautification Committee will pay for water.  (No easy task — it must be trucked in.)

DeMarche has assigned one of his top landscape designers — Brian Westermeyer — to the project.  “We drew our inspiration from the bridge’s shape and structure, as well as the river,” he says.

He’s creating a garden that will blend in with both.  Plantings — including evergreen ground cover and hedges, perennials and flowering shrubs — will provide “an ever-changing palette of color, texture and pattern year-round.”

Trucks is thrilled by the new Gateway Gardens.  “With stress levels so high here, it’s important to ride through town and see beauty,” she says.  “This is such a pivotal spot, and to make it beautiful says a lot about Westport.”

She applauds the partnership between her committee, the DMA and town officials — and is thrilled at the generosity of LaurelRock.

“There are still a lot of giving people around,” she says.

And they’re giving downtown the gift of beauty.

(The dedication ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, July 17 at 1 p.m.)

One last look at a grungy Gateway Garden.

10 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Environment, Local business, Organizations, People

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All About “Art About Town”

Posted on May 26, 2011 | 5 comments

If you weren’t at this evening’s Art About Town event — the street festival kickoff for a display of intriguing artwork in downtown store windows — here’s what you missed:

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa -- we think -- and friends.

No, it's not a piazza in Rome. This is dining alfresco, in front of Bobby Q's. Blue Lemon and Michele's Pies also sold food on the street.

Just another day on Main Street.

Peter Rubino sculpted Beethoven -- to the tune of his "5th Symphony." For a video of the performance, click the YouTube arrrow below.

5 Comments

Posted in Arts, Downtown, Entertainment, People, Restaurants

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No More Needle Park?

Posted on May 26, 2011 | 35 comments

In the beginning it was a pocket-size park at the corner of “State Street” (Post Road) and Main Street, around the corner from the entrance to the original Westport Public Library.  It featured benches, flowers, and a fountain donated by the Sheffer family.

In the 1960s it became known as Needle Park.  That’s where Westport’s alleged heroin users — both of them — allegedly shot up.  In reality, it was just a great hangout for high school kids smoking a little weed.

When the library moved a few hundred yards south — replaced by Starbucks, a short-lived restaurant, a few ever-changing retail outlets and (of course) a bank — the park was spruced up by developers.

"Needle Park," in one of its many incarnations.

Quickly, it fell into disuse.  Yet it was always there, a handsome reminder of the library’s storied past, and one of the few places on Main Street to rest when your shopping bags got too heavy.

Now, “Needle Park” — as it’s still (now affectionately) known — is no more.  Construction equipment is busy tearing it up.  Soon, it will be reconfigured into a  store entryway.

A construction worker said it will still look “like a park.”  He did not know any more details.

"Needle Park," yesterday afternoon.

I thought a deed restriction promised it would be a park “in perpetuity,” but realtor Mike Calise — who is not involved with the project — says no.  He says that when the library relocated in the mid-1980s he proposed the town receive the small property in a land swap, but first selectman Bill Seiden said no.

Mike says that “public access” will continue to be guaranteed — but that just means no one can shoo you away if you have lunch on the new steps.

It’s a small change for downtown Westport, but it augurs bigger ones ahead.  Across the street from the now-defunct park sits the handsome Bedford building, first a hotel and then the original Westport YMCA.

When the Y vacates the property 3 years from now, who knows what will happen there?

At least we know we can sit in a new park — or, if that does not come to pass, on the steps across the street — and watch.

35 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Library, Looking back, YMCA

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Re-Imagining Westport, 8th-Grade Style

Posted on April 12, 2011 | 15 comments

Plenty of time and energy has been invested in re-imagining downtown Westport — deciding what’s needed to inject a little life in the ol’ place.

There’s been much talk too about the importance of developing Westport students’ critical thinking, 21st-century skills.

Downtown Westport has gotten a bit grungy lately.

The twain met today at Coleytown Middle School.  Five teams of 8th-grade students — winnowed down from a few dozen who began the project — presented their plans for making downtown both prettier and zippier.

Analytical thinking — not to mention a great grasp of history, government, finance, town planning, the environment, Google Earth, Photoshop, Excel, writing, video-making and presentation skills — was on full display in the auditorium.

The 5 groups (4-5 students each) unveiled their ideas before a group of judges that included the 2nd selectman and superintendent of schools.  (Also, me.)

Using maps, 3-models, full-color handouts, detailed financial projections — and, most importantly, foresight and creativity — the middle schoolers introduced a variety of ideas.  For example:

  • Improved landscaping, including flowers and more trees (planted and maintained by volunteers, lowering costs and increasing a sense of community)
  • Adding birdhouses (built by volunteers) and old-fashioned lampposts
  • A movie theater in the current YMCA building, showing now-available-0n-DVD films (lowering costs)
  • More street festivals
  • A greenbelt replacing the current one-lane exit from Parker Harding Plaza
  • More restaurants (family-style, multicultural, a diner…)
  • Minibus transportation from outlying parking areas
  • Improving and lighting the tunnel from Main Street to Parker Harding (also done by volunteers)
  • Renovating the boardwalk across from Oscar’s, extending it further into the  Saugatuck River and making it more inviting (the money would come from sales of planks, with donors’ names on them)
  • Developing the river’s west side into a “community complex,” with restaurants, an arcade, community theater, snack shop/bakery, teen center, and kids’ center (a “West Bank Development” could provide financial incentives)
  • 2-level parking
  • Bike paths
  • Mini-golf and a full-sized basketball court (near the Imperial Avenue lot).

Those are great ideas.  Some are easily doable; some would take work; a few are probably impractical.  All, however, show a depth of understanding and sense of community not often associated with 8th graders.

Now let’s  start working on the best ones.

How to begin?

Hire the Coleytown kids as consultants.

The boardwalk by the Saugatuck River is nice. But when was the last time you used it?

15 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Education, Entertainment, Restaurants, Teenagers

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Winslow Is For Wimps

Posted on December 27, 2010 | 13 comments

Anyone can sled on gently rolling hills.

If you’re a real Westporter, you’ll ride this:

13 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Westport life

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Westport’s Christmas Card

Posted on December 22, 2010 | 33 comments

It’s as much a part of Christmas as unbearable stress and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”:  the card/letter telling everyone all the amazing, remarkable, high-status stuff the sender’s family did during the past year.

Westport is, in a way, a family.  A dysfunctional one, sure, but a family nonetheless.  If we sent out a Christmas letter, here’s what it would say:

Hard to believe 2010 is almost over!  So much has happened over the last 12 months.  We’ve been on the go all year.  We’re sorry we haven’t kept in better touch, but you know how busy a growing community can be!

It was an exciting year on the college front!   All our kids got into schools — yes, every one of them!  Not all of them should go, of course — some should work, take a year off to travel or find themselves, or even join the military — but since when have kids known what’s best for them?  We’re excited to see them leave the nest, though we also look forward to hovering over it to make sure they make all the right decisions, and nothing bad ever happens to them!

An intimate vacation.

Speaking of travel, we enjoyed a number of wonderful vacations this year.  We took cruises in the Caribbean and around Alaska.  We went to Europe many times, as well as South America, Asia, the Antarctic, even Africa for the World Cup.   Do you know they have automobiles and roads in South Africa?  What a pleasant surprise!

We traveled so much, we were not around to protest that awful increase in the education budget.  How appalling that town officials wanted us to pay for things like small classes, art and music.  It would have cost us an extra 75 cents a day, which is totally out of line.  Hopefully, this year we’ll be here in town to say “enough is enough!”

One of our most enjoyable trips was to Guatemala.  We went on a service project, to build toilets for poor, starving people with quaint customs and delightfully raggedy clothes.  We learned quite a bit, and will never forget that those people are just like us, only browner.  We hope to continue our community service work next year in another, even further off, exotic land.  Thank goodness no communities near Westport need help!

Speaking of the home front, we are in the midst of an enormous renovation.  Well, not renovation exactly — we’re tearing our house down to the ground!  It was built way back in 2004, and has only 6 bedrooms, a 3-car garage and a very small bowling alley.  Needless to say we were the laughingstock of our neighborhood.   Our new home is still not too big — only 27,000 square feet — and we have worked hard to retain the warmth of our “old” one.  We look forward to having you all over, just as soon as we finish decorating it in 2019.

It’s not just picking out all the right furniture, accessories and envy-inducing appliances that takes time.  There’s the minor matter of the fact that we lost our job 15 months ago, and haven’t worked since.  Well, we’re actually “consulting,” so no one will know we’re unemployed (LOL).   Thank god for credit cards  🙂

Our new car!

Despite tough economic times, we did splurge on a new car.  We thought about getting a hybrid, because around here they are both cool and hot.  (Not to mention “environmentally friendly,” whatever that means.)  But we decided instead on a Lincoln Navigator.  It doesn’t exactly “navigate” well, but it’s sooooo much more effective at intimidating other drivers, cutting into lanes and zooming through red lights.  We know, we know, it’s pretty hard to park, but hey, you can’t have everything.  We just take 3 spaces, at whatever angle we want — that solves that problem!

So that was our 2010!  We really must get together soon!  Let’s do dinner in Fairfield.  We would say Westport, but there’s nothing here anymore.  Not even the Y, we don’t think.  Maybe it is, but we’re not sure.

We haven’t been downtown in a decade.

33 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Education, Westport life

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Does The Camera Lie?

Posted on October 10, 2010 | 26 comments

Last month, a former Westporter returning for her near-60th high school reunion asked “06880”:  “What has happened to our beautiful town?”

She described Main Street as “a disaster…dirty and abandoned.”  She called town property “neglected.”

Before the comments veered off — as they often do here — on tangents like zoning regulations and the redistribution of wealth, several readers took issue with the opinions of our returnee.

They pointed to the beauty of the beach, Longshore, even the people.

One person told her to stay away, and keep her “negative karma” out of here.

Those folks sure won’t like what Marcia Bingham has to say.

The 1960 Staples grad came back a couple of weeks ago, for her 50th reunion.  She’d seen the previous story on our “seedy” downtown.  She walked around.  She didn’t like what she saw.  She bit her tongue.

But then — a few days later — she emailed “06880.”

Marcia said:

The reunion was a terrific series of events.  It was wonderful to be back in Westport after so many years.

However, I was very surprised by the town’s appearance.  Perhaps age has modified my memories, but I remember Westport as a clean, cared-for town.  It was disappointing to see a town with the cachet of Westport looking so unkempt.

I don’t know who is responsible for all the things that keep up a town’s appearance.   Whoever they are, whether it is the merchants, town maintenance or someone else, they have fallen down on the job!

I hope Westport will regain pride in its appearance.

Pretty straight-forward.  One woman’s opinion, sure.

But before you kill the messenger, know this:

Marcia took photos.

She offered proof of what she saw:  overflowing dumpsters, trash in the alleys, crumbling stone walls, faded signs, weeds, branches, general detritus and schmutz.

If you’re tempted to blast her, the way you blasted the previous correspondent, at least look below.

26 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Staples HS

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Downtown Redesign Tiptoes Forward

Posted on October 8, 2010 | 15 comments

Two months ago, “06880” reported on a radical plan for redesigning downtown Westport.

According to the concept from the downtown subcommittee of the Town Plan Implementation Committee, the area could be revitalized by

  • constructing small brownstone-scale buildings combining retail, commercial and residential uses;
  • expanding the riverwalk from Gorham Island to the Levitt Pavilion;
  • adding paid parking, and
  • overhauling existing zoning regulations.

In ways big and small — partnering with private developers; creating a new town director position; moving dumpster locations and rejiggering garbage collection times — downtown could join the growing “greenfield” movement.

The psychic change would be as monumental as the physical one.  Downtown would look and feel different.  Traffic patterns would change; the mix of stores, and our ideas about commerce, would shift.  We’d conceive of all of Westport in a different way.

First Selectman Gordon Joseloff backs the plan — or at least an intense conversation about it.  “I think it’s time for the naysayers to take a back seat,” he says.

The next Town Plan Implementation Committee meeting is in 2 months.  That’s the heart of the holiday season — the one time each year downtown is truly vibrant, swamped with shoppers and decorated nicely.

Between now and then, let the debate begin.

Will the downtown Westport of the future look anything like this?

 

15 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Environment

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