Donors threaten to walk
A nonprofit group's bid to convert the town-owned Havemeyer Building into an arts center is in danger of unraveling.
First Selectman Peter Tesei said he is reluctant to ask the Representative Town Meeting to consider a proposed lease of the Greenwich Avenue landmark until the public school administrators occupying the building decide whether they want to leave for new office space.
That decision is not expected to come until the first quarter of 2009, according to school officials, well after the Dec. 31 deadline imposed by the Greenwich Center for the Arts to procure a $1-per-year lease.
If the town fails to act, a group of wealthy donors that includes Empire State building owner Peter Malkin has threatened to walk away from its offer to donate $15 million toward the Havemeyer Building's transformation.
Private donations would pay for the entire $30 million project, according to GCA, which has told the town that it can't keep its donors in the lurch.
"No one likes to lose an opportunity, but you can't force someone to do something they don't want to do," Tesei said in a recent interview....
....Weissler said school officials agreed to wait until after the Commission on Aging completed its own analysis for a new senior center this past spring before embarking on a similar survey that won't be complete until the first quarter of next year.
"I'm having a hard time seeing how that's inaction. That's basically following the time line that we were given," Weissler said.
If and when school officials make a decision on their future home, Weissler said it will be some time before the Havemeyer Building becomes vacant.
Citing the downturn in the economy, Weissler said an estimated $25 million project to renovate the Greenwich High School auditorium scheduled for the 2009-10 fiscal year is likely to be delayed until 2010-11, when the construction of new offices for school administrators was supposed to occur. That, too, will be delayed, she said.
"We have said as a board we will prioritize the needs of our students ahead of our administrators, which will push out the central office," Weissler said.....
Comment:
Perhaps Empire State building owner Peter Malkin needs to learn how to negotiate and sweeten the deal for failed Board of Education Chairwoman Nancy Weissler.
"OK, Nancy you win. If you move out of the town-owned Havemeyer Building we will hire your incompetent best buddy Frank Mazza to be in charge of the Arts Center renovation project."
Byram Pharmacy is back in business after abruptly shutting down Sept. 26 following an FBI search of the facility, officials said.
On Monday, a manager of the pharmacy said it is now open for its regular hours but would not comment on the closure, which kept the doors closed for nearly two and a half weeks.
Michael Romsky, a spokesman for the FBI in New Haven, said that the agency executed a search warrant on Sept. 26 at the 13 N. Water St. drugstore. He would not release any details. No further information on the incident has been released since.
The Drug Control Division usually receives word when the FBI searches a pharmacy, according to Gadea. However, the division received no report of the Byram Pharmacy search.
Gadea also said Joby George is still listed as the licensed pharmacist at the facility. George could not be reached for comment on Monday.
According to state records, the Byram Pharmacy was first issued a license in April 2001.
Comment:
My wife has a monthly prescription that she has filled at the Byram Pharmacy. She held off having the prescriptionfiled, because this independent pharmacy is $35 less than CVS and I have to pay the $65 out of my pocket.
On Sunday Night, I was working in Byram and saw that there was no sign on the door of the pharmacy and the place looked like it was ready to open for business so I told my wife to try and go there after work.
She told me that everything seemed normal in the pharmacy.
I hope things workout for this small independent business, because this establishment really filled a void after CVS bought the old Byram Pharmacy and closed it down and moved the prescriptions across town.
The pharmacist has previously open by Firehouse deli, but recently moved into a building with parking next to the bank.
Personally, I wish the FBI would look into how CVS closed virtually every independent pharmacy from Byram to Old Greenwich.
Last week I had to go to the CVS on Greenwich Avenue for two prescriptions because a I had this spider bite that had became infected. I am standing behind a lady who is complaining at the drop off window that she has been waiting for her prescriptions for 40 minutes and that CVS had promised them in 20 minutes. The next person dropped off their prescription and was given the standard "your prescription will be ready in 20 minutes" story.
So I left line and later that night before going to bed I gave the prescriptions to my son and asked him to go to drive to the Riverside CVS and fill the prescription. The next morning when I woke up I finally got to take the anti-biotic and the pain medication.
Later that day I went to get the wound check and the doctor is telling that the infection got worse and once again giving me antibiotics intravenously. Plus I got to listen to the doctor lecture me about how I need to fill and take prescriptions promptly as she gave me a second antibiotic prescription to take with the first antibiotic prescription.
Once again I go to the CVS on Greenwich Avenue drop of my new prescription which will be ready in "20 minutes", So I went out and had lunch at Subway at the top of Greenwich Avenue and then came back and got in the prescription pick up line was going incredibly slow, because people stuck in CVS ended up buying things waiting "20 Minutes" for their prescription to be filled.
Personally, I think that this "Your prescription will be ready in 20 Minutes" is part of a CVS marketing plan to try and get you to buy sundry items while being forced to wait for your prescription.
Some people don't mind using all of these chain stores, but every time I can't find help in Staples I long for those funny and friendly guys at Marks Brothers on Greenwich Avenue.
To help a rural African village break the chains of poverty, Stanwich School teacher Shaun Fletcher says it isn't enough to simply visit once, as some part-time humanitarians have done.
Starting next summer, the Stanwich science teacher will bring students to a destitute Rwandan village each year for the next decade to build water wells, classrooms, a medical center, a library, bathrooms with showers, even a laundry room.
"As an American, you can't just come in and say, 'Let me fix all your problems,' and then feel good because you bought them a pack of 20 goats, or did a few weeks of work," he said. "The key is developing long-term partnerships."
Fletcher, who spent three weeks in Rwanda in July, now plans to return with about a dozen Stanwich students and alumni next June to build a modern infrastructure in the remote village of Cyabatanzi, which has a population of roughly 4,000.
That work will be part of a 10-year humanitarian project, which Fletcher said he recently designed with the help of a $5,000 grant from the school's board of directors....
..."They are not warm to visitors, and they won't greet me and the students with a hug," Fletcher said. "But they will look you in the eye and open their village to you, if they think you aren't looking to make a quick fix." ....
Comment:
Stanwich teacher Shaun Fletcher is 100% right and a credit to the good works that are going on at the school.
I know that at Harvest Time Church, where I worship, a missions group has just returned Monday from a trip to Senegal They were operating a medical clinic for the second year in a row.
This church has started an orphanage that they have named "My Father's House" in the same town that the clinic is in. Currently the orphanage is ran like a group home out of one house.
The Church has bought land in this town and wants to build 8 or 10 additional group homes for orphans, but is still trying to get local governmental approval for a building permit.
Senegal is a Muslim nation and very slow to approve badly needed Christian relief projects.
But that has not stopped Harvest Time Church. Steve Gamble the church's Missions Director went to look at some farmland North of this African Town that might bee used to grow food for the orphanage.
Over 1000 people were feed and treated at this last Senegal medical clinic and doctors from Greenwich helped provide care to the needy.
Currently, Harvest Time Church is raising $15,000 to send a water drilling rig that they now have to Africa.
Next March, there is a mission trip planned for Bangladesh.
This church is involved in so many other missions activities around the world.
Moreover, Harvest Time Church has been making repeated trips to two United States towns ever since Hurricane Katrina hit years ago. One town is in Louisiana and another town is in Mississippi. A big missions trip just returned from Louisiana about 4 or 5 months ago.
Every year this church raises over $500,000 for missions work. The goal of the church is to spend 25% of it's budget on missions work that helps people throughout the world.
Even when this spirit filled church was meeting in the Western Greenwich Civic Center and did not have a building of it's own it was helping build structures for others who were in need.
In fact, this church will start celebrating it's 25th anniversary in town this Wednesday night.
It is amazing that a church that started meeting in the Greenwich YMCA twenty five years ago has grown so much and done so many good works.
Even, though I am very new at Harvest Time Church, I have been invited to participate in the Mission's trips, but for one reason or another I have found an excuse not to go.
But, I have been almost brought to tears when I seen videos of all the grateful people receiving aid and comfort. Often times some of those that have benefited from the Church's generosity have came to say thank you it has made for a very emotional service.
Just last Sunday I went to a lunch at the Church honoring a man from South Africa.
And one thing that I like is that the Harvest Time Church has decided to redouble it's efforts of helping people in the Greenwich area without sacrificing the good work that is done overseas and across the nation.
Many times we forget that there are a lot of hurt people in this town of plenty.
Please See:
Staff Writers
Columbus Day is a lot different now than when Tod Laudonia, the president of the St. Lawrence Society, first learned about it in school.
"In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," Laudonia joked, reciting the poem he memorized as boy to a crowd of about 20 gathered outside Town Hall Monday morning for the annual Columbus Day raising of the Italian Flag by the St. Lawrence Society, an Italian-American club based in Cos Cob.
Once solely about the journey of the Italian-born navigator, the day has become one to "reflect and celebrate our heritage," the president said.
Like Columbus, Laudonia continued, Greenwich's Italian immigrants were explorers. Unlike Columbus, he said, they stayed here, helping make Greenwich what it is today.
This year's flag raiser, selected by the St. Lawrence Society, an Italian-American club based at 86 Valley Road, was 90-year-old James Rocco Santaguida, a second-generation Greenwich Italian whose family founded the first horse-and-buggy town trash pick-up and owns Cos Cob's James R. Santaguida sanitation.....
For youth rugby players in Greenwich, finding a team to play can be about as easy as digging a ball from the bottom of a scrum.
Senior Hana Bowers has been a leader all season long for the Greenwich High School field hockey team, and Monday's home contest against Pomperaug was no different.
The story is getting to be old hat: Connecticut's Probate Court system is posting a $20,000-per-day deficit, and is in dire need of reform.
To the editor:
I am strongly against the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in Connecticut.
I agree with Justice Peter Zarella's dissenting opinion that "there is no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, and that the court's majority failed to discuss the purpose of marriage laws to 'privilege and regulate procreative conduct.' " ("Gay marriage approved," Greenwich Time, Oct. 11). Effectively redefining marriage by decoupling marriage as between one man and one woman, which has been the basis for all civilization (and even the uncivilized) for thousands of years is somewhat breathtaking.
Needless to say, in our own tradition in America, which is Judeo-Christian, traditional marriage stands as being in harmony with God's plan. While the imagination can run wild now that marriage is without its traditional and biblical grounding, what other legal challenges will arise, for whom or for what (or between whom and what) to be joined in marriage?
I do not believe this ruling reflects the will of the people of Connecticut. Therefore, I urge the citizens of Connecticut to mobilize in contacting their state legislators demanding of them to repeal this forced ruling.
Richard Day
Old Greenwich
================================================================
