Point Conservancy and UConn Announce Partnership

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By Chéye Roberson
Sentinel Correspondent 

At this year’s annual Beach Ball event held at Greenwich Point, the Greenwich Point Conservancy announced an agreement between the University of Connecticut and the Greenwich Shellfish Commission to make use of the Innis Arden Cottage for study of the Long Island Sound.

“There’s going to be a partnership to have a marine science center at the Innis Arden,” said Chris Franco, the president of the Greenwich Point Conservancy. “The Innis Arden cottage is a building that the Greenwich Point Conservancy restored and it was always a dream of ours that we would have like first class environmental research center there that would be focused on Long Island Sound. So this is the culmination of a dream that we’ve had for five or six years.”

Mike Willig, the director of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering at UConn and a professor of ecology in evolutionary biology, said the partnership will offer an array of benefits.

“It’s really an opportunity for two organizations with like minds that really care about the environment and how science really informs all of our decisions can come together to sort of advance scientific discovery, but in a way that’s important to the everyday lives of people and the people of Greenwich. It’s a wonderful opportunity for all of us,” said Willig.

Roger Bowgen, chairman of the Greenwich Shellfish Commission, said the collaboration will help answer questions about the water quality of the Sound and how to make improvements.

“This agreement will mean that eventually we will have a professor situated in the Innis Arden Cottage, and we’ll bring education to public and private schools through UConn,” said Bowgen.

Franco said the partnership works well with the goals of the conservancy to preserve the gifts of Greenwich Point history so that they can keep on giving.

“It’s perfect, because when we restore historic buildings one of the things that we have to do is make sure that we know how they’re going to be used,” he said. “We have to know that they’re going to be useful and designed properly for the next generations, because we’re not trying to restore museums. These are living and breathing buildings; they have to function into the future.”

The Greenwich Conservancy is a public/private organization that raises funds to renovate and restore the historic buildings that link the town to its history.

“The Greenwich Point beach was the estate of Mr. Tod, who was a very wealthy man,” said Kendra Farn, who is on the conservancy’s board of directors. “The Innis Ardent Cottage—he would let the nurses in Manhattan from the Columbia Presbyterian come over in the summer and take a summer respite there. Then, when he died, his wife gave it to the town of Greenwich.”

The Beach Ball included a silent auction, a live auction, and a wine pole, from which attendees pulled a bottle of wine to go home with. There was also a game called “heads or tails,” where people got on the dance floor as someone would flip a coin; if the dancers were not representing the right side of the coin they had to leave the dance floor. There were prizes for the winners.

The funds raised at the Beach Ball will help the conservancy with its next task.

“The Chimes building is our next project,” said Farn. “On the other side of the beach of the chimes building where they would ring the chimes and it’s by the Old Greenwich Yacht Club. That is our next project and what we’re fundraising for here tonight.”

The founding members of the conservancy began the organization after seeing that the town needed help maintaining the buildings when one of them was lost.

“Initially, the mansion that was Mr. Tod’s mansion was perched up on the top of the hill, and it was torn down because the town couldn’t maintain it,” said Alison Leigh, vice president of the Greenwich Point Conservancy. “It’s just a shame that any more would fall into disrepair and be torn down, so we came up with this idea.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal was one of the dignitaries in attendance to show his support for the efforts of the conservancy.

“I love Greenwich Point,” said Blumenthal. “I come here to walk and enjoy it with my family. It’s really a treasure. It’s not just a treasure for Greenwich, but really for our nation, because it sits on a critical point on the Sound. And so we ought to do anything and everything to conserve it, keep it pristine and precious, and the way it is.”

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