Great for young families
‘Ungraying’ holds sway in Fairfield
SETTLED: 1639.
POPULATION IN 2000: 57,340.
LAND AREA: 30.6 square miles.
Sullivan-Independence Hall: 725 Old Post Road. 256-3000.
By ANDREW BROPHY
abrophy@ctpost.com
FAIRFIELD — In 1993, Jay and Cathy Coyle were living in Rockland County, N.Y., and looking to buy a home on Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven line so Jay could commute more easily to New York City.
"We found Fairfield. It was so beautiful," Cathy Coyle, 32, said of the state’s sixth oldest town. "It had excellent schools and affordable housing. There was no contest about where we were going to move."
The Coyles, who have four children today between 2 and 8 years old, bought a house in 1993 on Lawrence Road. And they liked Fairfield so much that when they were looking for a bigger house in 1998, they bought one about a mile away on Sherwood Farm Road.
"There’s nothing to compare it to. … Fairfield’s a really great town," Cathy Coyle said.
The Coyles aren’t alone. Many families with young children moved to Fairfield during the 1990s, attracted by its schools, beaches, low crime rate, open spaces and parks, two universities and economically diverse neighborhoods.
But this influx has spurred major school construction projects — nearly $44 million worth in the 1990s, with about $150 million more to come.
The town’s overall population rose to 57,340 in 2000 — its highest ever recorded by the U.S. Census.
The young families are part of the "ungraying" of Fairfield, a town whose numbers of children grew rapidly during the past 10 years.
Census figures show that the town overall gained 3,922 people from 1990 to 2000, a 7.3 percent increase, and this growth was highest among children 14 years old and younger. In 2000, the town had 3,115 more youngsters in that age range than in 1990.
Maggie and Mark Ford of Burr Street and their three school-age children moved to Fairfield in 1998 from a suburb outside Chicago after Mark got a new job in New York City.
They found Fairfield ideal, said Maggie Ford, 43, because of its two universities — Fairfield and Sacred Heart — as well as its beaches and a wide range of property costs.
"There’s too much concentrated wealth in a lot of the other towns. It’s kind of stifling," Maggie Ford said. "Fairfield’s got a sense of normalcy [in which] to raise young children. It felt right."
Most homes in Fairfield cost between $200,000 and several million dollars, although two estates on Sasco Hill Road recently sold for $13.5 million and $24.5 million and a home on Bronson Road recently went for $10 million.
Colleen and Douglas Rose of Melville Avenue moved to Fairfield with their now 10-year-old daughter three years ago from Queens, N.Y., based largely on the reputation of Fairfield’s school system, Colleen Rose said.
Rose said she also liked Fairfield because it doesn’t have tall buildings and because houses aren’t sandwiched together. "We love the town," she said.
"All you have to do is drive around," said David Sturges of Mill Hill Road, a longtime resident. "You see young moms pushing, not only single strollers, but twins and triples."
Census data comparing the makeup of the town in 1990 and 2000 reflect the trend toward younger residents:
l The percentage of households with children younger than 18 rose from 29.8 percent in 1990 to 35.5 percent in 2000.
l In 1990, children 14 and younger made up 16.2 percent of all residents; in 2000, they made up 20.5 percent.
l The average family size notched up from 3.04 in 1990 to 3.07 in 2000.
Local school enrollment figures tell the same story.
Elementary school enrollment rose from 3,138 to 4,205 and is expected to peak at 4,479 by 2005-06. High school enrollment increased from 1,637 in 1990 to 1,926 in 2000 and is expected reach about 2,700 students in 2014-15.
By comparison, the rate of growth in the town’s senior citizen population was scant. The town had 9,155 residents 65 and older in 1990 and 9,347 in 2000.
The racial composition of the town, however, changed little during the decade — the percentage of whites living in Fairfield declined only slightly, from 97.6 percent to 95.3 percent.
Blacks made up 0.8 percent of the town’s population in 1990 and 1.1 percent in 2000. Asians rose from 1.3 percent to 2 percent.
And Hispanics, who are counted in the census not as a race but as an ethnicity, rose from 1.9 percent to 2.3 percent of the overall population.
"The demographics of our community have shifted dramatically," First Selectman John Metsopoulos said. "A large proportion of our town now has school-age children, or soon-to-be-school-age children."
Assistant Town Planner James Wendt said the 7.3 percent population increase was caused mostly by a change in the number of people living in households, rather than in the number of homes built in the 1990s.
The number of households in town grew by 1,026 from 1990 to 2000 — from 19,371 to 20,397. The average rate of 100 new housing units a year is unremarkable, Wendt said.
Instead, town officials said a strong economy and stock market for most of the 1990s made the town affordable for many young families.
"Everything has to do with the economy," said John A. Jensen, a luxury and international property specialist with Prudential Connecticut Realty/Jensen-Smith in the Southport section of Fairfield. "In 1986, we were at the top of the barrel. From 1986 to 1991, it was all downhill, just plummeting," he said of real estate sales in town.
But during the rest of the ’90s, home sales boomed in Fairfield, according to the consolidated multiple listing service.
The number of single-family homes sold in town soared from 51 in 1992 to 981 in 1999. Average sale prices climbed from $200,919 in 1992 to $490,645 in 2000.
"A lot of people have come up here because prices are lower than Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan," Jensen said.
Metsopoulos said he believes the more mobile nature of today’s families could keep Fairfield a younger town for many years to come.
Sturges also believes the town’s population has become more transient.
"It’s not a, per se, bedroom community to commute to New York for 30 years or a bedroom community for an office in Bridgeport — where you’re here and the family stays in a house until you sell it and go into 3030 Park [a Bridgeport retirement home] and live out your years," he said.
Jensen said Fairfield is the town farthest east that most people who commute to New York City will live in.
Increasing numbers of children in the 1990s not only drove major school construction projects — the town’s Recreation Department also started dozens of new programs aimed at the younger set, including the "Peanut Butter Jam" concerts at Sherman Green and movie nights at the beach.
Existing recreation programs grew as well. In 1991, 1,424 children played soccer, while 2,090 played in 2000. And membership in the town’s Fitness Center grew from 375 in 1990 to 1,389 in 2000.
Nevertheless, the department is contending with a shortage of playing fields and long waiting lists for many programs.
Recreation Director Gerald Lombardo said he would love to have more playing fields. "The problem is, where do you go? They’ve got to find land for us," he said. "In 10 years, all we’ve really done is redone existing fields."
The town formed a Land Acquisition Commission in the late 1990s to curtail new residential developments, but none of the tracts bought by the town were developed into fields.
There is now enough buildable land for about 1,000 more homes under existing zoning regulations, according to a town document from last year.
Metsopoulos said the town’s decision to open a second high school — rather than having one larger high school — will "continue to keep our small-town feeling."
This feeling, though, is reflected in more than just Fairfield’s geography.
Jeanne and Mark Lynch of Sturbridge Lane initially rented a house in Fairfield while they looked at homes to buy in Fairfield County.
After a year, they decided to buy in Fairfield in 1995 because they and their children had made friends while renting, Jeanne Lynch said.
Maggie Ford found it easy to make friends as well.
"Midwesterners think that East Coast people are standoffish and maybe aloof and keep to themselves, and we haven’t found that to be true at all," she said.
But the future cost of accommodating the changing face of Fairfield has some wondering if the town will remain affordable for senior citizens and families who aren’t in their peak earning years.
The town is facing $275 million in new debt over the next five years, and $200 million of that is tied to school construction, when repairs to existing schools are included. Fairfield’s current debt is about $62 million.
Metsopoulos said there is no way to avoid the new construction, but he hopes that tax revenues from a planned $250 million commercial development at Commerce Drive and Black Rock Turnpike will "substantially offset" the future tax burden on homeowners.
Patrick Lennon, whose wife, Tracy, and two young daughters, moved to town in 1994, said he is concerned about the tax impact of all the planned construction.
And Cathy Coyle said she would favor senior tax relief to help those on fixed incomes. But school construction is needed because "we’re busting out of portables. Portables can’t be a solution to our space problems," she said.
In the meantime, the school board is making do with portable classrooms — the town will have 45 in place this fall — and by using art and music rooms in elementary schools as classrooms.
The Lennons’ younger daughter will enter Mill Hill Elementary School this fall, which will have the largest number of portables — six — at a local elementary school.
And a housing development calling for 21 new homes on Mill Hill Road, which could further swell enrollment, is heading for a hearing Thursday before the Conservation Commission.
Fairfield’s drawbacks, as cited by residents, may be the result of its popularity — a lack of parking spaces for rail commuters and downtown shoppers, and a congested Post Road.
The town hopes that a proposed new train station and 1,200 rail commuter spaces in the eastern end of town will help solve those problems.
With Recreation Department programs geared toward younger children, some town teen-agers believe there are not enough activities for them.
"The only thing there is to do is movies, the beach and bowling alley," said Dave Bernstein, 14, who attends Fairfield Prep. "Everybody’s bored of that."
Asked what he would like to see, Bernstein said a go-cart track, miniature golf course and arcade would interest many teens. He added that new stores in the downtown commercial complex where the Fairfield Store once stood — except for Borders Books Music & Café — are mainly geared to adults.
Chris Lane, 14, who goes to Fairfield High School, said, "There needs to be more activities to do — something you can spend the whole day at."
Joe Johnson, 14, who goes to Fairfield Prep, said he thought there was enough to do, though he’d love a town swimming pool with water slides.
Bernstein agreed. "I’d be there every day. That’d be the best thing the town could do," he said.
The town tried to build a municipal swimming pool several times in the 1990s, but the plans never got past local zoning scrutiny and funding requests.
Big-ticket recreation projects that never came into play in the 1990s include a $12 million recreation center with two swimming pools, an ice skating rink and a new swimming pool on the Fairfield YMCA’s property.
One of the biggest challenges Fairfield faces over the next decade is to remain affordable for young families, said Board of Finance Chairman Samuel Lazinger.
"I’m afraid real estate costs in Fairfield are starting to become prohibitive. If you compound that with a real increasing tax burden, I think it makes it more difficult to maintain the more middle-class homeowner, and certainly makes it more difficult for seniors who are living on fixed incomes," Lazinger said.
But James Lee, a Board of Education member who has studied census data from 1950 to 1990, doesn’t believe Fairfield will become a grayer community in the foreseeable future.
"As houses turn over, they’re going to turn over at a price that somebody’s going to buy them. If we price families out, nobody’s going to buy them," Lee said. "That piece of the market mechanism has adapted."
Andrew Brophy, who covers Fairfield, can be reached at 330-6255.
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