BY ANDREAS YILMA
citizens news
BEACON FALLS — Town officials are considering a redesign of Main Street to make the main downtown artery more business friendly, including possibly removing the center median island.
First Selectman Gerard Smith said Public Works Road Foreman Robert Pruzinsky brought a concern to town officials’ attention how the new upcoming restaurant, The Pizza Beacon Bar at 81 South Main St., formerly known as Beacon Market, will potentially cause parking issues as the new unopened restaurant will have upward of 50 seats and only about 10 parking spaces.
“What’s going to happen when they’re full on open and the place is now loaded, where’s everybody going to park?,” Smith said. “We know where they’re going to park. They’re going to line the median island. They’re going to park on the median which is where everybody parks now. People are parking on the median down here in front of the Tap House.”
The new pizzeria is on a corner right next to a three way intersection with South Main Street, Feldspar Avenue and Fairfield Place.
Pruzinky’s concern is that people will be parking everywhere. If people start parking on both sides of Feldspar Avenue, vehicles won’t be able to get through that road, Smith said.
“You’re going to have the same problem we had on over here with people running in to get pizzas, parked and blocking Feldspar, parked and blocking Fairfield, parked in the shoulder in Main Street,” Smith said.
Smith said they want to encourage business on Main Street.
“Right now there’s people parking all over the place down there in front of those homes,” Selectman Michael A. Krenesky said.
Selectman Peter Betkoski said its good timing as the Planning and Zoning Commission is holding a hearing on the Plan of Conservation and Development draft on Aug. 15 at Town Hall at 7 p.m. and he imagined this discussion would take place.
“We can’t deter businesses,” Betkoski said.
Smith said the town is actually going to make a Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program application for Main Street.
“It would make sense to actually get rid of that center island and redesign everything and shift everything over so there is parking on the business side or redevelop the whole plan that was actually designed one time where there’s businesses on both sides of the street,” Smith said. “It becomes a whole different downtown business friendly for parking.”
Krenesky said he has reached out to the engineering firm Decarlo & Doll Inc., to try to resurface the original plans of Main Street from the 1990s.
Smith said the new pizzeria is still a couple of months from opening.
“This needs to be completely reengineered to make Main Street business friendly because remember it was a highway,” Smith said. “You can still see it’s a highway.”
Lauren Fennell said there is a similar issue at Mario’s Pizzeria in Naugatuck at 123 Cherry St.
Krenesky said the way the POCD is currently written; there is nothing in the document that talks about a major renovation to Main Street.
“It talks about renovation to Main Street but it doesn’t going into any kind of detail,” Krenesky said.
A streetscape project on South Main Street was finished in 2012. That project included a walkway, which runs from Depot Street Bridge south to the intersection of Route 42 and South Main Street as well as the southbound lanes being reduced to one lane.
Krenesky said Route 8 used to run the center of town before the state redeveloped Route 8 to its current location.
