As they continue to pave over more and more of Waveny Parkland in favor of asphalt parking lots, soccer parents continue to line the fields with their cars, collectively turning a blind eye.

Pictures: While paved lots remain empty, Self-righteous visitors park on the grass just yards from designated parking spaces.

The future of New Canaan’s Waveny Park hangs on tonight’s special Park and Recreation Commission meeting at South School, 7:15pm. Please attend.

A resident quoted in the paper, Mr. Hanson, is correct when he says that the summer theater won’t “desecrate” the cornfield.
That’s true because the town has already desecrated the meadow area. The theater will occupy the cornfield. The concessions for people and vehicles will desecrate more than just 4 1/2 acres of Natural landscape.

Conversations about building a new summer theater in Waveny Park are intensely debatable. Those in favor of the idea want to develop roads into the woods and repeatedly drive 100 cars and trucks into a “cornfield” in the center of our little-remaining forest. With dump-trucks delivering waste products from across town the ‘cornfield’ has already been 100% raized and ruined by the current “stewards of New Canaan’s assets”.

After explaining how they would use newly widened ‘roads’ (existing footpaths) in the woods to allow vehicles to drive into our forest, the man pushing the project forward said: ” We’re not building parking lots, we’re building meadows.” A defensive, illogical statement.

“A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants. It may be cut for hay or grazed by livestock such as cattle, sheep or goats.”

A cornfield is “a field in which corn is grown.”

The cornfield, before the town decided to obliterate it, was already a meadow.
Residents should be in favor of restoring the ‘cornfield’ or ‘town dumping grounds’ to a meadow status but should we be in favor of driving cars into the woods? The trucks have already deposited piles of crude oil product. The trucks have destroyed and then polluted the habitat area, driving out thousands of animals leaving them no similar habitat nearby. So, yes, please restore the cornfield to natural, wild habitat. But why, why in the world would anyone want to impact the tiny amount of Nature we have left in New Canaan’s greatest park in such an indisputably negative manner? Roads, cars, pavement, structures, run-off, litter, increased traffic… all pollution to the Natural setting.

Unfortunately for local residents;

It turns out that for cultivation to successfully remove the existing weed seeds, has to be done every two to three weeks for 12 to 18 months.  So, maybe this isn’t a project for the low-maintenance crowd.

Maintenance requirements for the first season after plugging consist of about 20 hours a week of hand weeding and weekly watering with a sprinkler unless an inch of rain had fallen during the week. (gardenrant.com)

Will the summer theater group pay for the 20 man hours per week to maintain their “meadow” or will this be more reason Park and Rec needs to cut down more trees for a 2,500 square foot storage shed built nearby?

Let’s build more stuff, let’s cut more trees, let’s have Disney world instead of Nature. Keep going, destroy destroy, destroy. There’s nothing like a good summer theater performance. Let me just suggest the idea that when there is no place left untouched, there will be no place to “get away” from it all and find inspiration in the beauty of Nature. Maybe we can go see a play about the way things used to be, before they paved our world.

BTW: I was very pleased to learn from the newspaper that the town admits to destroying the fields behind the pond. I am glad to know the area is called the cornfield and I’ve added tags to my related posts. I was glad to know that other runners share my disdain for hard surfaces, there is plenty of road for runners, why widen footpaths for trucks and pave. I was glad to hear words like “desecrate” used in the paper! The fact that several minds share the perspective should be enough to cause sufficient consideration.
I think it’s a dreamy setting for a performance tent. Someone will eventually use pesticides to control the bugs since you are parking yourself smack in the center of ticks from your “meadow” and mosquitoes from the pond. With the exception of the bugs, I imagine it would be a great spot to be, especially at night. How idyllic. Yes, that’s my point. Nature provides the idyllic setting and it is Nature that you intend to alter to suit your structures and then you are going to bring automobile traffic and what more? Electricity? Water? Sewage plumbing? It is not the restoration of a meadow or the placement of a tent in a field that is a concern. It is the devastating impact of the concessions for human and automobile traffic.

Walk to the “tent” – no electricity, no lights, no pesticides, no vehicle access! You pack it in, you pack it out!

How many  porta-potty toilets are you required by law to place in the “meadow” for performance visitors? How often will sewage removal trucks be driving past the endangered bog turtle?

This spot is too remote and requires too many concessions.
This will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Arriving at the dog park today I saw more than a dozen dogs outside the park once again. After chatting with some of the folks about the fragile grass investment, I joined a half dozen canines gathered 50 yards into the center of a playing field. All the dogs were on leashes, 6ft or less, and all of the dogs were within 20ft of their owners. One lady held her pet’s leash, fearing her dog wouldn’t return on command. The rest were just there romping and being friendly.
It’s odd how six people who are separated by career, social relations, income level, political motivation, race, gender, age, etc… sharing only pet ownership in common can all have the same perspective about the experience in Waveny Park this afternoon.
It’s silly that the powers-that-be are so protective of their little diorama, Spencer’s Run.
It’s silly for us to be stopped by the Police for behaving responsibly with respect for others.
And all of us joked about who “all the calls coming in” could have been from, “over there”. I wonder what kind of a threat we were interpreted as?
Truth be told officer Kleinschmidt should have pointed at the cell antenna on the water towers when she pointed in the direction the calls originated. She was close.

(Murphy’s Law x 2: You will only forget your camera when there is something good to take a picture of.)

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social commentary: As a generalization dog owners seem to be social, energetic, out-going folks. A further generalization might be that New Canaan residents, dog owners included, act in a responsible manner, as is the case with many educated people. I really am curious what the imposed threat is? Is there a fear that a golden retriever will come bounding across the field and attack an elderly person? What is the reality of that happening? I agree it’s not worth questioning the risk of such an event and all measures to protect the public from such a scenario should be considered. But seriously is there a golden retriever in New Canaan that looks forward to leaving his warm New Canaan home, leaving little Katie and Johnny with mom so Dad can take him to the park where he’ll run away as fast as he can, relieving himself the whole way, only to attack a human and be put to death the next day? When I lived in a 65% Asian neighborhood I experienced the same blind fear.

I haven’t written a blog on Waveny.net in 10 days. It was 10 days ago today that I learned, firsthand, the reason for destroying those acres of Natural habitat beyond the pond. The reason they drove out the animals and plowed over the fields to store their crude oil debris piles is a good reason. They are literally spreading the asphalt all over the park, in the name of “paving the woods”. I’ve written a longer story with pictures but paving our park is such an atrocity I am delaying. Now we’re facing the day when Waveny will be likened to Central Park… a few squirrels, some recreational areas and lots of pavement. I’m glad I grew up in a time when Waveny Park was a Natural setting filled with wildlife and a myriad of flora.

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Monday, the weather was perfect for a walk in Waveny Park in New Canaan, Ct.

[Show as slideshow]

The Town of New Canaan figured out how to stop folks from parking on the grass in Waveny Park. They tore up the grass and made a parking lot. Wow! Now there’s some deductive logic for you. Could they have read my blog?

Every day of the week in Waveny Park visitors drive right past the huge empty parking lots, ignore the ‘No Parking’ signs and display their character by parking on the grass as close as they can get to an “athletic” field. Laughable, isn’t it? Like driving to the gym and getting on a treadmill.
Photo of the empty lot:

Photo of cars just yard from the empty lot, on the grass:

In an attempt to curb the illegal parking, they tore up the grass and made it pavement. Only thing is, the 50-60 new parking spots aren’t where everyone typically parks. I’ll bet money right now, this destruction of 10,000 square feet of fields will do nothing to stop drivers from parking as they have for years: all along the main drive and anywhere else they want to keep from walking the extra 100 yards to a legitimate parking space.

The installation of a yellow rope border along the driveway only forced cars to park parallel instead of pulling all the way onto the lawn. The No Parking signs do nothing to deter people.

When a builder considers a new development, a priority are the zoning requirements for parking. Didn’t the pool come with it’s own parking lot at the price of a woodlands? What about the moving of the Paddle Courts? What about the Dog Park? I think someone forgot about parking. Maybe there isn’t enough room in our Park for all these new developments.

I’m not an engineer but I noticed stormwater management issues. The grass they tore up served as a drainage culvert allowing water to move along the roadside. Now there will be a large surface area draining onto the driveway which is graded toward the pool. When it rains…. Enjoy.

Love those oil solids.