Rendering of the planned pickleball courts at Mead Park. Specs by Hinding Tennis LLC
Town officials on Tuesday approved about $200,000 in contracts for the widely anticipated pickleball court installation project at Mead Park.
The five pickleball courts that will replace the hard-surface all-season public tennis court at Mead should be ready for a late-June or early-July opening, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
The project includes replacement of a tennis backboard adjacent to the existing court and will see that practice area raised so it’s on-grade with the new pickleball area, Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held via videoconference.
The town is planning to install sidewalks on both sides of Gower Road as it passes South School. Credit: Michael Dinan
Town officials on Tuesday approved an approximately $20,000 contract for the design of new sidewalks that will make New Canaan’s most walkable elementary school even more walkable.
As it is, sidewalks that run from both ends and on each side of Gower Road near South School terminate just at the edge of school property.
The existing sidewalks on Gower “actually stretch from South Avenue to the entrance to South School and then from Old Stamford Road eastward to South School, as well,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held via videoconference. “There is nothing that traverses across South School’s property. There is a walkway along South School into the property but nothing along the right-of-way.”
Town officials say they’ve hired a traffic engineer to review a plan to bump out sidewalks on Elm Street.
Michael Galante, director of traffic at Norwalk-based Hardesty & Hanover LLC, has been hired “to come out and take a look at Elm Street, review a bump-out plan for us, a sidewalk bump-out plan,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
“He is going to be doing a little bit of traffic study and a little bit of speed study on Elm Street, the main business section,” Mann told members of the Police Commission during their regular meeting, held March 17 via videoconference. “There was a request to have the speed limit dropped there, and then we’d like him to take a look at that. So he will be out there in the next couple of weeks to look at that and then we are hoping to come back to you in April with some findings.”
With snow from winter storms melted away in downtown New Canaan and warmer weather expected, public works officials this week re-installed barriers downtown that will allow for restaurants to expand their outdoor dining areas.
Public Works Director Tiger Mann said Monday that the “barricades are back out, so the restaurants will be able to expand out.”
“It’s going to be absolutely beautiful for this week, 60 degrees by Thursday, so we are hoping there will be no snow,” Mann said during a regular meeting of the Selectmen’s Advisory Committee on Buildings and Infrastructure.
Created last May in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the water-filled barricades on Main, Elm and Forest Streets have allowed restaurants to expand onto the sidewalks while creating pedestrian walkways in the street.
Route 123 will be closed in both directions next month for about three weeks, officials say.
Though town officials had asked that the work replacing a “box culvert” or bridge near the New Canaan Field Club be put off until next summer, the Connecticut Department of Transportation is moving forward with the work early next month, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
“We asked for that to be changed to the summer, and while we had already gotten a delay from them back in November, because they couldn’t detail that they were actually going to finish before winter shutdown, they won’t budge it further,” Mann told members of the Selectmen’s Advisory Committee on Buildings and Infrastructure during their regular meeting, held Monday via videoconference.