A Plan For Fairfield Hills

Now in its 14th year of cogitation over the future of Fairfield Hills, Newtown is finally ready to codify its preferences for the future of the 189-acre core campus of the former state mental hospital in the form of a Fairfield Hills Master Plan.

The Planning and Zoning Commission conducted a hearing on the specific provisions of the master plan on February 17, drawing about 70 townspeople. In the end, as in the beginning, townspeople expressed hope that Fairfield Hills could be used wisely to enrich community life. There are still differences of opinion on how that should happen. Some people told the P&Z that they were permitting too much commercial development at the campus. Others said they were providing for too little. But even the narrowing range of critical comments at this stage of the process suggests that Newtown has finally come up with a balanced, prudent plan for the development and conservation of the site.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the long succession of task forces and ad hoc committees that have considered the fate of Fairfield Hills is that in the end they did not try to do too much.  This piece of land at the heart of our community will live as a legacy of our generation to all successive generations, conferred to those unseen future citizens in such a way that it will engage them and invite them to be a part of the process started here and now. The plan deliberately leaves unanswered some questions about how the place will evolve, according a measure of discretion to the future.

In this long deliberative process, not deciding everything was the wisest decision of all.