At last night’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Dr. Gary Richards voiced his concerns that a proposed new daycare center at 385 Danbury Rd.–slightly south of the high school–might create potentially dangerous traffic patterns during times when school buses and students are present. He said that the district had received “a note from the town’s Planning & Zoning department in late August” notifying the schools that P&Z commission received an application to build a daycare at the location with a tentative opening date scheduled for next year.
The facility would be approximately 8,700 sq. ft. to be used as a daycare learning center to be called the Goddard School. Built on land between Danbury Rd. and Kristine Lilly Way, at the property adjacent to the Wilton Deli, the site would reportedly have two entrances–one on each road. Richards expressed his concern about the kind of impact the additional traffic would have during the school day, given the amount of current traffic from school buses, cars driven by high school students, and other drivers.
“Although we support the development, we do have concerns about traffic pattern that would develop should the facility be allowed to construct an egress onto Lilly Way. These concerns include the following: the drop-off and pick up times for childcare would likely coincide with the opening and possibly dismissal times at Cider Mill and the High School. The second concern is it’s a very busy street, not only during regular hours during school but also after school, as athletic practices, games and other events take place. The third concern, we worry that a driveway and egress onto Lilly way would be used as a cut through to Rt. 7. [Last], We’re also concerned that the proposed egress would cause conjunction on Catalpa and School Road, Rt. 7 and Lilly Way.
Richards said he believed that the developers have commissioned a firm to conduct a traffic study of the area.
Richards showed the BoE members pictures and a video from earlier in the day showing limited mobility when buses line up along the southbound lane of Kristine Lilly Way before dismissal time at Cider Mill. In addition, cars departing from the Wilton High School south student parking lot often have limited site lines to exit safely.
As Richards pointed out, when the buses are parked along the roadway, when cars coming from the direction of Cider Mill encounter cars heading southbound, there’s only one lane for both cars to traverse; as he put it, “there’s no way.”
After looking at the pictures BoE chair Bruce Likly said, “If P&Z were interested in letting that happen, they’d probably have to double the size of that [Lilly Way] road for it to work.”
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