Developers: Walkway is key to city project
NORWALK — Sloping walkways for children to play on. Eye-catching, interactive light displays. Sunken townhouses hidden by planter-bearing, wrought-iron railings.
This isn’t a scene from “Sesame Street,” but the latest vision for a walkway that developer Toll Brothers says will be a “key element” to The Pinnacle, the latest large-scale development headed to the center of Norwalk.
Eric Rains, landscape architect for the project, last week described the re-envisioned walkway as the developer’s effort to “make the strongest connection possible” between the Stepping Stones Museum for Children, the Pinnacle and the Waypointe buildings.
“We are looking for ways to make that passage or that journey interesting and engaging, and look for elements to add in there that people would be able to come back to throughout the year, or even a part of the enjoyment of either Stepping Stones or the shops and the restaurants to the north,” Rains said.
Toll Brothers and the Zoning Commission have been at odds over the layout of the proposed walkway in recent months.
Commissioners have asked for more commercial space along the walkway — something more in line with the original “restaurant row” concept floated by the property’s former owner, Paxton Kinol. Without it, city consultant Bob Grzywacz argued the walkway would not be “activated.”
But Toll Brothers’ national director of mixeduse development Michael Skena instead insisted that this would only lead to “blank storefronts.”
Instead, the developer is offering a new way to draw people into the walkway and unlock the potential of the area.
One idea to draw walkers, Rains said, is to include arching, interactive light display that will draw both families with children from Stepping Stones and patrons of local restaurants.
A conceptual rendering of the walkway shows a semi-tunnel resembling a breaking wave that is adorned with hundreds of interactive lights. Normally, Rains explained, the lights would reflect the time of the year — be it Christmas, the Fourth of July or Halloween — but residents would be able to play with them as they walk though.
Another concept shows strings of interactive lights strung between columns lined with ivy and other plants.
Rains said the walkway will be pivotal in engaging the Pinnacle’s commercial ventures while also promoting the “added success of Waypointe” shops and restaurants.
“We think this can be a really unique, interactive installation to really create some curiosity and journey-through on the block,” said Craig J. Flaherty, a partner with land-use consulting firm Redniss & Mead.
To keep walkers engaged, Rains also raised the possibility of adding sloping, wood-plank walkways that children could play on as they pass through the development.
The interactive lights, creative walkways and vegetation would “act like a ribbon that winds through the space,” Rains said, drawing patrons from the Stepping Stones Museum to the Pinnacle and beyond to the Waypointe courtyard and surrounding businesses.
One side of the walkway
“We think this can be a really unique, interactive installation to really create some curiosity and journey-through on the block.”
Craig J. Flaherty, a partner with land-use consulting firm Redniss & Mead
will be lined with townhouses situated below ground level. The other side would have windows showing into an outdoor amenity space for residents of the surrounding apartment complex.
At the southern end of this walkway, which faces Butler Street, will be a small parklet that Rains said can be used as outdoor dining space. Rains said the little parklet will play a “significant” role in engaging that corner of the development, which was recently revised to include two smaller commercial spaces, equaling about 6,000 square feet in total.
“It gives people the opportunity to use the whole of the space and have that enhanced by the cup of coffee they pick up from in here, or the quick sandwich they want come out and eat,” Rains said.
Toll Brothers has downsized the scope of the development since taking over the project last year.
The latest plans call for a six-story building outfitted with 393 apartments, 576 parking spaces and
now 25,495 square feet of commercial space at the former Loehmann’s Plaza site on the corner of West Avenue and Orchard Street.
The building will include nearly 6,000 square feet to the development’s largest commercial space, located on West Avenue and wrapping around onto Orchard Street, in addition to the two smaller commercial spaces fronting Butler Street.
Flaherty said the team hopes to break ground on the project by the summer of 2021.