If you have driven past the old Acme on West Putnam and wondered when someone was going to do something with that building, here is your answer.
The Goddard School went in front of Planning and Zoning this month with a pre-application to convert it into a daycare and preschool. If the name sounds familiar, it should. There are more than 600 Goddard Schools nationwide, including Darien, Stamford, Westport and Fairfield, so this is not a first-time operator learning on the fly. Their reputation precedes them. Worth knowing before anyone asks: the program is play-based with a set daily structure, not Montessori.
The plan calls for up to 216 children and roughly 40 staff, with a 6,000 square foot playground on the south side of the building. Drop off would run 7:00 to 9:30 in the morning and pick up 3:00 to 6:00, so families would not all be landing in the same fifteen minute crush.
The commission had questions, and most of them came down to cars. Left turns onto the Post Road. How traffic moves around the site. Where the line forms if everyone shows up at 8:00. How a parent carrying an infant gets from the parking lot to the front door when there is a real grade change in between.
One detail that matters more than it sounds: Goddard would be a tenant here, not the owner. The building is privately held, and the same owner controls the lot across the street at 132 West Putnam, which is also part of the lease for staff parking. So when the commission pushed on tearing out the old loading dock and the disused Brookside driveway, the attorney could only go so far. Those decisions belong to the landlord.
Chair Margarita Alban said what most of us already know, which is that this town needs daycare. The applicant’s attorney went further and called the shortage acute.
Nothing is approved. A pre-application is the earliest stage there is, so revised plans, a formal filing and public hearings all come before anyone breaks ground. No opening date exists yet, and it would be premature for anyone to give you one. But this is the first serious proposal that building has seen in years, and the fact that the answer is childcare is worth watching closely.
What do you think?
