By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Five months ago, Renato Donzelli, owner of Brasso Restaurant and Wine Bar, and Ela Benedetti, the restaurant’s manager, had the idea that patrons would enjoy walking along a garden path — perhaps lined with art — to get from Jesup Road to Post Road East.

The upgraded path — now a simple alleyway running from Jesup Road past the restaurant and Toquet Hall teen center — could usher more people between the Main Street central commercial district and the Jesup Green area, which Donzelli said often is overlooked.

“Our initial idea was to make the alley more appealing. It seems like we are abandoned back here,” he said. “It’s not even lit. On the Post Road there are flowers and lights. Here, it seems like it’s just a parking lot. “

James Randel, landlord of the Basso building at 33 Jesup Road, thought it was a good idea, too, when originally proposed to him last fall. He offered to help with their plan to install some new lighting, remove garbage cans and other debris, and beautify the alley with artwork to make it a more inviting and safer walk, according to Benedetti.

“It would be a fantastic community project,” Benedetti said. “There are so many talented artists here.”

So Donzelli detailed the idea in a letter to First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker, who in a return letter several months later, wrote that since the alley property is privately owned, the town could not be involved in an improvement project.

Sal Liccione, a Representative Town Meeting Member from District 9, which encompasses downtown, later learned about the impasse over the proposal from Brasso’s owner and manager. 

Liccione, who Benedetti called “a community organizer,” wanted to see their plan move ahead.

“I am supporting it fully,” Liccione said. “I think the alley should be redone and should have been redone a long time ago. It needs work.”

After being contacted by Liccione and speaking with Benedetti and Donzelli, the Westport Journal connected them with Nancy Diamond, the chair of the Westport Arts Advisory Committee.

The committee recently has been discussing a new initiative to arrange public art displays with private property owners.

Subsequently, Diamond, Benedetti and Westport artist Miggs Burroughs, whose artwork is displayed in the downtown tunnel between Parker Harding Plaza and Main Street, met last Wednesday to begin considering possibilities to spruce up the alleyway, Benedetti said.

One of those ideas that appealed to Benedetti would be organizing a contest to choose artists who would display their work in the alley or possibly create a mural, she said.

“It’s an idea to use a space that is underappreciated,  to do something really lovely that will benefit anyone that comes there … and all the buildings around there,” she said.

Donzelli said many people are unaware his restaurant is located south of the Post Road, and a safer and more beautiful path could attract people not only to Basso, but to other businesses fronting on Jesup Road. “We’re trying to do something more appealing,” he said.

The town of Westport should “provide more pleasant and safer pedestrian connections from parking lots to the central business district, especially from those lots farther away,” a consultant hired by the town to study downtown parking problems recommended last month to the Downtown Plan Implementation Committee.

Because the alleyway property is privately owned, the owners must agree to allow the cleanup as well as to add lighting and artwork. Randel, whose holdings encompass half of the alley as well as the Basso site and other businesses, said he would need to review details of the improvement project before commenting on it.

Mel Meoli, the owner of the property on the other side of the alley — including the building at 48 Post Road East where the Blue & Cream Fashion Boutique and offices are located — did not respond to inquiries.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.