Weir Farm Looks Ahead
Weir
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
9/11/07
WASHINGTON – The Weir Farm National Historic Site is seeking congressional authority to expand its territory beyond Wilton and Ridgefield.
At a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday, National Park Service deputy director Daniel N. Wenk testified that the Department of the Interior will support legislation that would help the historic site to acquire new facilities at no extra cost.
“We believe that we can exchange land, save money,” Wenk said during the hearing of the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks.
The legislation, an amendment to the 1990 Weir Farm National Historic Site Establishment Act, was proposed in March by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4. In April, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., proposed a similar amendment, which Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., is now cosponsoring. The bill would “expand the National Park Service’s authority so that it can consider the acquisition of property in all of Fairfield County,” Wenk testified.
Under current law, Weir Farm has been able to look at acquisition in only Ridgefield and Wilton, where it already holds land. The Park Service also is required to come to an agreement with these towns before any building is to be done.
The amendment would allow Weir Farm to exchange up to nine acres of land in Ridgefield for 12,000 square feet of the Georgetown Wire Mill in Redding, reducing the farm’s construction, operating and maintenance costs. The historic site has been leasing 5,000 square feet of the mill property.
Park officials said that rising costs and concerns about building in residential areas led to the need for the amendment.
“This is not about expansion,” Linda Cook, the Park Service’s superintendent for Weir Farm, said in a telephone interview. “We want to be able to think broadly, to look beyond a mile outside of the park boundaries.”
Weir Farm was established as a national historic site in October 1990. One of two National Parks that deal chiefly with visual art and artistic expression, the area was once the land of J. Alden Weir, one of the main players in cultivating the American impressionist movement. The site works to preserve and maintain the landscape as it was in the late 1800s, and to offer other artistic and educational opportunities.
“I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the Weir Farm National Historic Site Amendment Act,” Dodd said in a statement Tuesday. “Finding a long-anticipated permanent home for this facility will save taxpayers money and help to ensure the preservation of Weir Farm, an important part of the culture and history of Connecticut.”
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