Rethinking The Fairfield Hills Plan

To the Editor:

When the Fairfield Hills purchase was first being formulated, many people instinctively knew that the campus would have to be demolished. There were just too many environmental and structural problems. Now, after many years of environmental studies, consulting, inadequate mothballing, consulting, planning and replanning, consulting, and polls of the town citizens, and even more consulting it seems clear that even the few buildings that would have been nice to save, in order to have some semblance of campus and history, will have to be demolished, too. (Read the article quoting Mr Geckle after his tour of the buildings to be saved). I guess our instincts were right!

It has been instinctively recommended that the entire campus be demolished and all environmental issues remediated immediately, in order to: 1) stop continuing security issues, 2) avail ourselves of low interest rates, and 3) get public access to FFH as soon as possible. No plan has yet been promulgated for immediate environmental remediation. To date it seems that the only plan ready so far is for painstakingly slow environmental work over many years, ball fields, and a new town hall. Pressing at our backs is the financial stress of expanding school enrollment.

But wait. Isn’t it time to go back to the planning drawing board now that the campus will be 100 percent demolished. I had the opportunity to take out two books from our library, The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language, both written by Christopher Alexande (Center for Environmental Structure, 1977). The book clearly and intelligently speaks of the planning for small towns. I recommend that our town politicians read it. Mr Alexander speaks of building on the hillside, not your best land. The level land at FFH is best left for recreational purposes. He also speaks of not destroying the old town center. Why build a new town hall and therefore take away significant energy from Main Street? Why have two buildings to maintain rather than one? When we look at all of these proposed capital projects it is also important to consider annual maintenance costs for our operating budgets.

We must think clearly, not only in financial terms, but also in terms of what we must do to keep our town alive and healthy. How do we do it? We must look to ourselves to plan it, not consultants.

Gary Tannenbaum

Pond Brook Road, Newtown                                   November 3, 2005