To the Editor:

“Dear Planning and Zoning Commissioners,

Thank you for your service to Newtown.”

A three-story apartment building looming over Newtown’s incomparable Main Street cannot be a legacy our elected officials long for. Nor can they hope to tell their grandchildren why they did not fight to prevent a hundred tenants crowding an ancient neighborhood of single-family homes. But that is what they will be remembered for — transforming our historic small town thoroughfare into a noisy, crowded city street — if they allow the land on which Mary Hawley’s home stands to be so desecrated.

Clearly, balls have been dropped on all sides — several balls — by elected town officials who watched the Inn [at Newtown, 19 Main Street] molder for years and failed to ask how can we deal with this before it gets worse; a property owner who spent half a million dollars on lawyers instead of renovations; and we of the public, who should have stepped up earlier. But it is not too late to take bold action — the sort of brave action that town officials and volunteers took years ago at Fairfield Hills. (Yes, it was and is messy, but as slowly as things have developed, it looks more and more that Newtown gained a valuable center needed by a growing community.)

The Hawley situation calls for similar bravery and innovation. If the Inn is too far gone to renovate into a productive business property, then demolish it (or better yet the worse parts, leaving the historical core) and erect two or three single-family homes in the various Main Street styles. The Dana Holcomb House sets a perfect example of how to build new without insulting our past.

How to pay for it? Pay for it with the sale of those two or three homes, or the lots upon which the new resident would build, plus donations of money and property to a Historic Main Street foundation to which gifts are considered tax deductible as long as they are used for the public good — the public in this case being the 26,000 residents of Newtown who use Main Street daily and call the historic borough part of their home. With so many lawyers already billing hours, surely some would volunteer to cobble together a foundation that will pass IRS muster. The property owner would realize the very significant tax savings gained by donors of land. And all will leave their hometown a legacy to be proud of.

Justin Scott & Amber Edwards

Parmalee Hill Road, Newtown October 17, 2019