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If You're Thinking of Living In Orange, CT
(The New York Times, Sunday September 23, 2001)
By Eleanor Charles
Family-Oriented Town With Farm Roots
The variety of housing styles reflects a history dating to the 1600'
Earlier this month the Orange Country Fair, the
two-day event that Orange residents say goes to their roots and defines their town, was held at the fairgrounds of Orange Center Road.
The population of mostly business and professional people delights in harking back to the community's centuries-old farming tradition and once a year gives it its due.
Cows and sheep
and goats were judged; the doodlebugs (low-slung vehicles built from old car or truck parts) and tractors, horses and oxen pulled punishing weight loads; entertainers sang; snakes scared
spectators in "the Largest Reptile Exhibit in the East;" and there were pony rides, prize-winning fruits, vegetables and flowers, and mountains of barbecued chicken.
Orange is clearly
family-oriented.
The town is 90 percent residential and very green, and it has what is regarded as one of the best school systems in the state and the hottest big box shopping strip in the region on Route 1. The town green is among the prettiest in Connecticut, and the 16-acre Little League complex has eight fields for girls' and boys' leagues, including this year's state champion Babe Ruth League.
Of the few farms that remain, the 80 acre Ewen farm, family owned since 1820, grows succulent vegetables, fruit and old-fashioned flowers like amaranthus, cleome and celosia, sold at
the roadside farm stand run by Jim Zeoli.
Fieldview Dairy Farm, owned by the Hine family since 1639, is recovering from a disastrous fire but still grows 28 acres of corn and lots of
hay and hopes to get its milk, butter, cheese and dream business back on track "as soon as we financially can," Walter Hine said.
Low dry stone walls that line many roads stand as
reminders of the cultivated fields that dominated the land and economy until World War II. Now they provide frontage for well-maintained homes and a smattering of new construction.
On
Coram Lane, for example, next to the Great River Golf Club, the first of 17 homes on one-acre lots are to be built for an opening in about nine months. Classic colonials of 3,700 to
4,500 square feet with three, four or five bedrooms, three and a half baths and three-car garages will be priced from the high $500,000's to the high $600,000's.
The development is called the Estates at Great River.
Toll Brothers has applied for permission to build 26 luxury homes at Ridge Road and Meeting House Lane. If approved by the
town's boards and commissions, the houses will measure more than 3,000 square feet on one acre lots with city water, less than a mile from the Merritt Parkway. The project had a
preliminary hearing last week.
With population growth at a minimal 3.1 percent over the last 10 years, Orange has developed an entrenched resistance to residential development.
Only commercial or industrial construction that might ease the residential property tax burden is greeted withy enthusiasm.
There are no grand estates nor million dollar homes in
town—at least not yet. Of nearly 5,000 existing dwellings in town, "less than 40 are on the market," says Frank J. D'Ostillio Jr., president of William Orange Realty.
"We are very short of inventory." Prices range from the $200,000's to the $700,000's for new construction.
Styles form an architectural record of the town's history, including
antique salt boxes, early colonials, farmhouses, Victorians and ranches, and, he said: "We are getting our share of McMansions.
Houses generally have gotten bigger—2,800 to 3,200 square feet." Minimum lot size is 40,000 square feet in the 65 percent of the town that is on the municipal water system, and 60,000 square feet with a well. Only the commercial and industrial areas have sewers.
"We have always been able to offer affordable homes in Orange," says Rita Palermo, sales agent with Arnold Peck Property World in Milford.
"But it's a seller's market, and prices went up this year by 10 to 15 percent." She is showing a three-bedroom, two-bath raised ranch built in the 1970' available for $279,900 on almost three-quarters of an acre, and a five-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath bilevel house on one acre with a main level in-law apartment and in-ground pool for $359,900.
Many people who live in Orange still bear the surnames of 17th and 18th century settlers, and people who move there often do so because they know someone who lives there, or grew up
there, moved away and came back.
Three families who bought homes between May and July of this year are indicative of such connections. The Dedomenicos, lately of Hamden, knew the
town because Keri Dedomenico grew up there and her husband, Fred, has a grandmother who lives there.
Donna and Paul Westlake are from Australia, transferred by his company. "His
boss lives here," Mrs. Westlake said. Struggling to adapt to an alien lifestyle, they were pleasantly surprised to find homes in Orange larger and cheaper than in Sydney.
Wendy
Price's family lives in Shelton, near enough for her father and her husband, Daniel, a New Haven Cardiologist, to play golf at one of several local courses, which are privately run but,
compared with many courses in the area, are neither expensive nor exclusive.
Grassy Hill Country Club charges $250 a year for a preferred weekend tee time; on a daily basis the fees are $43 on weekdays, $53 on weekends, with a cart. Lunch and dinner are served on the premises. Orange Hill Country Club has a similar system and fees.
While the Prices looked for a house in surrounding towns, Mrs. Price said, "we like Orange – it has that country feel, and prices are so much lower than the Boston suburbs we came
from that we doubled our square footage. They paid $569,900 for their brand new 3,550 square foot house. A bonus was the reduction of Dr. Price's commuting time to work from an
hour to 15 minutes.
Top priorities for the first selectman, Mitchell Goldblatt, the first Democrat ever to hold the office, are control of growth and an in-town Metro-North railroad
station. "New subdivisions are being proposed," he said. "That would mean the loss of more open space and wildlife. Consequently, we will be holding public hearings on
increasing the minimum lot size to reduce the number of lots in a subdivision and minimize pressure on schools and services." In the past six years the town has bought more than 400
acres for conservation.
A train station, he said, "would be great help to the region."
Orange, in New Haven County, is midway between Milford and New Haven, the longest stretch without a station on the Metro-North New Haven line. The Connecticut Department of Transportation is considering a station in either Orange or West Haven, but claims it has no money at present. Meanwhile, a succession of environmental, parking and traffic studies and assessments of land costs and eminent domain possibilities are under way.
Orange was named in 1822 for William, Prince of the royal Dutch House of Orange, who helped the colonists secure a charter in 1689.
Orange has an ecumenical smorgasbord of
houses of worship, including the Church of the Holy Infant, Roman Catholic; Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses; Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church; Zion Lutheran Church; Temple Emanuel, a
Reform synagogue; Congregation Or Shalom, a Conservative synagogue; and Orange Congregational Church, which has overlooked the green since 1810 and is currently undergoing a $1 million
restoration.
Entertainment opportunities include the 10-screen Showcase Cinema and the Orange Community Players, a 27-year old group, which has about 100 dedicated members who produce
three full-scale productions a year.
Residents also have access in New Haven, only 15 minutes away, to the Long Wharf, Shubert and Yale Repertory Theaters; the Symphony Orchestra; museums; and art galleries.
Andrea
Shiffrin, a past president of the Community Players, is trying to establish a performing arts center in town. Such a facility would also benefit the New England School of Ballet, which,
lacking a local auditorium, will give its 10th "Nutcracker" this Christmas at the Parsons Government Center in Milford.
A multitude of mostly free recreational programs take place at
the High Plains Community Center, where an eight-lane indoor pool and fitness center are located along with 63 acres of fairgrounds, nature and jogging trails, soccer fields, tennis and
basketball courts, children's summer camp, July 4th fireworks, the annual four-day Firemen's Carnival in August and summer concerts at the gazebo.
Along Route 1, among dozens of stores
including Home Depo, Lowe's, Circuit City, Best Buy Electronics and Burlington Coat Factory are some of the more than 30 restaurants in town.
Orange takes unabashed pride in its
schools.
A large sign at the Peck Place Elementary School, one of three schools for Grades 1 through 6, continues to proclaim its 1998 Blue Ribbon Award for Excellence from the United States Department of Education. The Mary L. Tracy Preschool for 3 and 4 won in 1997. Racebrook School and Turkey Hill School did not choose to apply for the award, which was given to seven schools in Connecticut in 1998.
"We focus on family," said Nicholas Tirozzi, principal at Peck Place School, "nurturing children individually according to their needs.
We have an experienced staff - 92 percent of our teachers hold advanced degrees and 30 percent are mentors for new teachers who go through two-year internships before they can become tenured in Connecticut." Spanish is taught from kindergarten through sixth grade, a strong music program includes choral singing at 7:30 a.m. in Grades 3 through 6. Each classroom has four computers, and children have access to a lab with 22 computers connected to the Internet. The ratio of teachers to students is about 1 to 20.
Upper-level students attend the regional Amity Junior and Senior High School in Woodbridge, serving Orange, Woodbridge and Bethany. According to Dr. Rolfe Wenner, the
superintendent of this year's 326 graduates at the high school, "95 percent go on to higher education, usually four-year institutions.
Students are accepted every year in the National Merit Program and enroll in most Ivy League colleges and universities."
The latest College Board scores of 511 in verbal and 557 in
math are higher than state and national mean scores, but Dr. Wenner regards them as "only one indicator." Some students participate in oceanographic studies aboard vessels in New Haven
harbor or fine arts at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven or internships at Yale in media, medical, financial and other disciplines.
The state, school and parents share the cost. "Fine arts," Dr. Wenner said, "runs the gamut of photography, art, music, theater, and we place a heavy emphasis on independent thinking and developing technology skills." French and Spanish are in the curriculum; Latin, he said with some surprise, "is so popular at the high school that we are offering it in junior high."
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