Selectmen’s Eyes On Greenwich Ave: Beautifying Concrete Barriers, Free Music Fridays, Brackets on Lamp Posts

At their March 26 meeting the Board of Selectmen discussed several topics that impact Greenwich Ave, starting with the possible return of Free Music Fridays.

Selectwoman Lauren Rabin said the Reimagine Greenwich committee hopes  to bring back Free Music Fridays, originally a way to get people safely outdoors during the pandemic. Initially a lunch time concert series in Greenwich Common, it was later switched to early evening.

“At 5 o’ clock we were getting a crowd,” First Selectman Fred Camillo recalled. “People would take their dinners and a glass of wine and it was really nice. It would be terrific if we could at least have a few of them.”

As for seasonal outdoor dining in parking spaces enclosed by jersey barriers that form “nodes” – another initiative that got its start during the pandemic as an emergency measure to keep restaurants in business and offer safe social distancing  – the board agreed to have a third read (April 9) on whether to end the season on Oct 4 or 18.

Since the pandemic, the season’s end date has been shortened incrementally from the end of November.

The board will also tentatively vote on whether to approve a proposal presented at their March 26 meeting by the Dept of Public Works to create attractive covers for the concrete  jersey barriers.

Town administrator Kate Buch said the Oct 18 end date would overlap with DPW’s leaf removal effort as the same crew is responsible for both tasks. 

“There has been a lot of talk about the barriers for the outdoor dining, and they’re ugly,” Ms Buch said. “The Public Works Dept has done some research, and looked into getting covers for the barriers. There will be expenses related to that.”

 

Ms Buch said if the proposal is adopted and the covers made mandatory for restaurant owners, it would be necessary to give them time to provide feedback.

“We’ve been hearing about the aesthetic of the concrete for a couple years,” Rabin said, recalling that a few years ago there was a contest for ideas to beautify the barriers.

Commissioner of DPW Jim Michel said the concrete barriers are used because they are safe, but his department often hears comments about them being unattractive.

“We don’t not take a whole lot of offense to that because we know they are concrete and we are Public Works, so we deal with stuff like that all the time. We’ve been exploring different options,” he said.

Mr. Michel said DPW had investigated putting green colored sleeves over the top of individual barriers.

“These would slide right over the top of them so that we can take them on and off when we move them,” he said.

The product DPW hopes to purchase would last three years and Mr. Michel said the covers would add about $15.00 a foot for each individual barrier spread out over three years. He said most restaurants average 40 feet of barrier length.

Specifically, with 2026 option 1 (end of season, Oct 18) the cost for restaurant owners would rise on average per linear foot from $6,572 to $7,148. For option 2 (season ends Oct 4) the cost would  rise from  $6,148 to $6,716.

According to the meeting materials, in 2025, the Town collected a total of $110,640 in fees from 17 restaurants. Fees included $33,840 in barrier cost and $76,800 in parking stalls revenue.

Also, in 2025, 50 parking stalls on or near Greenwich Avenue were occupied with outdoor dining. Based on prior year utilizatio0n, with approximately 411 parking stalls, 12% of parking stalls are displaced.

“We would do a solid, darker green color – kind of the same color of the traffic boxes you see near traffic signals that blends in with nature,” he said. “In talking with Planning & Zoning, we can’t really label these because that gets into a conflict with sign regulations. So we can’t brand them for each individual restaurants – and it would be a nightmare to manage all that as well.”

Mr. Camillo said one restaurant had made attractive covers for their barriers last year, but they were required to remove them because they violated the town’s rules about signs.

While Greenwich is infamous for restrictions on house for sale signs, the issue of commercial signs has also made headlines with some frequency.

Several years ago, as part of the Think Greenwich PR campaign, banners were hung on lamp post brackets on Greenwich Ave that were deemed to be commercial signs by P&Z. The signs were removed and replaced with American flags, which Ms Rabin said have since gotten tattered and the brackets are getting old.

 

Think Greenwich signs hung from lamp post brackets adjacent to non-profit banner draped across the Avenue. Oct 9, 2020 Photo: Leslie Yager.

Artificial flowers on Sound Beach Ave in Old Greenwich were deemed to be an “eye catching device” and were required to be removed in 2022.

More recently, in 2022, there was a brouhaha over what many considered a tasteful artificial flower display around the window of a popular boutique on Sound Beach Ave that was ultimately ruled by P&Z to be an “eye catching device” warranting a fine from the town. Similarly, on Greenwich Avenue a red artificial flower arrangement resulted in a violation for Gregory’s Coffee.

The next Board of Selectmen meeting is Thursday, April 9, 2026.

 

See also:

P&Z, ARC Workshop on Greenwich Signage Regs Focuses on Fake Flowers April 2022

Advertisements on Greenwich Ave Lamp Posts to be Removed

Oct 8, 2020