Sep 24, 2007
WEIR FARM:
Park eyes Georgetown for support functions
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An aspect of Weir Farm’s envisioned expansion that has long worried neighbors in Ridgefield — plans for a 10,000-square-foot building housing a variety of support functions — may be moved off Old Branchville Road and out of town.
Weir Farm officials say they’re looking into a variety of possible solutions, including a land swap in which they would gain a building on the old wire mill site in Georgetown, while giving up some land off Old Branchville Road in Ridgefield.
An amendment to the federal legislation creating The Weir Farm National Historic Site is now being considered in Washington. It would allow the park management to consider a wider variety of options in trying to solve the problem posed by the need for support facilities — from woodworking to storage — in the residential neighborhoods surrounding the farm.
“It doesn’t find a solution, it allows us to look at other alternatives,” said Linda Cook, supervisor of the Weir Farm Historic Site. “Until we go through that looking process we won’t know if we have a different alternative.”
Among the alternatives to be studied is the potential land swap in with the Georgetown Land Development Company, which owns the former Gilbert and Bennett Wire Mill site in Georgetown.
As envisioned, Weir Farm could give Georgetown Land Development acreage off Old Branchville Road that is near but not contiguous to Weir Farm’s historic core off Nod Hill Road at the Ridgefield-Wilton town line.
And Georgetown Land Development would give Weir Farm a building on the mill site in Georgetown that Weir has been leasing and using for support functions for several years.
To make this potential deal something the National Park Service could legally do, the federal law creating Weir Farm has to be amended.
Specifically, the amendment would insert changes into the Weir Farm National Historic Site-enabling legislation that would allow the government to acquire property for the farm beyond “close proximity to the park boundary” — which means beyond a one-mile radius from the park, Ms. Cook said.
And, “we asked Congress to give us authority to look at buildings that are already built,” she said.
Part of what makes the Georgetown swap attractive is that the facility Weir Farm would acquire is one it already uses for support functions.
Weir Farm recently renewed a lease with Georgetown Land Development for one of the many secondary wire mill buildings off Portland Avenue.
“It’s called ‘the machine shop’ — it’s a two-story industrial-looking 19th Century building,” Ms. Cook said. “It kind of looks like a mill building, but it’s only two stories.”
The land that Weir Farm might give up is less than a mile north of Weir Farm’s “historic core” at the intersection of Nod Hill Road and Pelham Lane. The deal could involve all or part of a nine-acre subdivision tract that the park acquired about 1999. The land is east of Nod Hill and south of Old Branchville Road in Ridgefield. Its access is off Old Branchville. The land was approved as five house lots — one that has a structure known as “the Westerveld house” on it.
“One of the alternatives would be to look at an exchange, doing a land exchange, of the nine acres that we currently hold on Old Branchville Road — all or some of that land — to exchange it for the property we currently have at the wire mill. But instead of just having the downstairs, we’d have the upstairs, too,” Ms. Cook said.
In a presentation before a U.S. Senate subcommittee last week, Daniel Wenk, deputy director of the National Park Service, spoke on behalf of the proposed amendment.
Mr. Wenk said the park leases 5,000 square feet of space, and the amendment would allow the park to own 12,000 square feet of finished space of the wire mill, “in exchange for all or part of the nine acres acquired by the park in Ridgefield.”
The Georgetown building — technically in Redding — is something that “the park has leased for over 13 years for park curatorial and maintenance functions,” Mr. Wenk said.
Georgetown Land Development Company, which owns the former Gilbert and Bennett Wire Mill property, has elaborate plans to redevelop the site as a mixed-use “village” including housing, commercial and retail space, a community theater, a health club, Norwalk Hospital facility and a new railroad station.
In a brief phone conversation, Georgetown Land Development President Stephen Soler did not elaborate on a possible deal with Weir Farm: “They’re currently a tenant at the wire mill,” he said.
Ms. Cook confirmed that a potential acquisition at the wire mill was part of what’s behind the proposed amendment.
“We’ve always leased space at the wire mill and we are asking Congress ‘Will you give us permission to look closer at that space we lease at the wire mill, as well as other space, to meet our preservation and curatorial needs at the park?’ ” Ms. Cook said.
“We’re asking Congress to let us look, and especially let us look at the space we’ve been in 13 years.”
She said the park hopes to make its ideas public in greater detail in the coming months.
“This fall we’re going to do an environmental assessment. It’s a document that allows us to look at these alternatives and share them with the public. But before we can look at them we have to ask Congress for permission to do it, and that’s what this legislation does.
“This is at a very preliminary stage,” Ms. Cook said. “This is at the alternative stage, so it’s exploring. But until we have the legislation, we don’t have the ability to truly pursue it.”
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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