RIDGEFIELD — Talk to Ridgefield old-timers, and they’ll tell you their once rural city has seen some invading hordes in recent years, monsters who fill formerly open fields and farmlands with houses.
On Wednesday night, they were right. Sort of. It was Halloween, which means the rapidly growing Ridgefield was full of pandas, robots and Batmen. With so much change in the city, what has happened to trick-or-treating in Ridgefield? That depends on the part of the city. Once-popular destinations have calmed a bit as the crowds spread out to developing neighborhoods. Houses once left alone now pump out candy like Willy Wonka’s factory.
When Pat Freeman moved to the Heron Ridge development 10 years ago, his was one of two houses built in the development’s third phase. That first year, he got six trick-or-treaters, three of whom were his grandchildren.
“No one was coming here,” Freeman said. “It was empty. We had more eagles and coyotes than people.”
Ridgefield, much like a werewolf in a full moon, is changing. The city had an estimated 7,959 residents as of 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest population estimates. In the 2010 Census, Ridgefield’s population was 4,763, up from 2,147 in the previous Census taken in 2000. Ridgefield’s median age was 35.5 years old in the 2000 Census, and dropped to 32.4 years old in the 2010 Census. Earlier this year, the Census named Ridgefield the fastest-growing city in the state, as the city’s population grew 13 percent between 2016 and 2017. Ridgefield earned the same honor for population growth between 2013 and 2014.
Freeman’s house now gets more than 200 visitors each Halloween, partly because the development has filled in and other developments have popped up nearby. In the last decade, Ridgefield has added 26 new subdivisions built in a total of 32 phases overall, according to information from the city. In that same time frame, the city has added 1,505 new houses and approximately 70 new roads.
That gives families plenty more options for trick-or-treating than just sticking to their own neighborhood, like Casey Mollet did with her three kids when they were growing up. She used to hand out six to eight bags of candy from Costco on Halloween while living in the Bellwood Heights development.
“Bellwood was the only development for the most part of their childhood. There wasn’t a whole lot out here,” Mollet said. “It’ll be interesting to see with all these other developments going in what happens. Even in Bellwood Heights, when we were leaving there last year, we saw a decline in how many kids were there.”
Mollet and her family moved to Hawks Landing, a development with 57 houses that opened in November 2016. She has a long driveway with no lights, so Mollet and friends sat at the end of their driveways to hand out candy last year on Halloween, the first in Hawks Landing.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “We bought less last year. We knew it wasn’t going to be as big as Bellwood. We only went through a couple bags of candy.”
On Wednesday, Hawks Landing residents felt like the second Halloween in the neighborhood drew a bigger crowd to the development.
“There are more cars here than last year,” said Kirstin Lillie, who moved into the development more than a year ago. “If you don’t live in a development, I guess going to one is the way to go.”
Lillie, who has three kids, said she’s also comfortable letting them walk around the neighborhood to go to friends’ houses. Her 11-year-old son spent part of Wednesday night riding a scooter around the development. Hannah Wolski took her two kids on a few trips around the circular development along with a few other families.
“It’s the perfect number of houses to go around a few times,” she said.
Amy McCann said the development is a tight-knit community with a lot of kids around the same age. She compared Halloween night to a “rave for kids,” and while there were plenty of flashing neon lights at houses, the most ravelike quality in the development Wednesday night was probably the Jell-O shots one house was handing out to adults accompanying their kids.
McCann moved to the development more than a year ago with her family after living near the Fairgrounds neighborhood of Ridgefield for the previous six years. She used to take her son, Case McCann, 6, trick-or-treating to businesses handing out candy in downtown Ridgefield.
“I like it more here,” Case said of Hawks Landing. “There are much more houses and more candy.”
Halloween is also busy for the Ridgefield Police Department, especially with all these new developments. Ridgefield Police Chief John Brooks said he tries to have as many officers on duty as possible on Halloween since there are so many young kids out walking around. What’s different on Halloween is that the officers don’t stick to their normal patrolling areas the whole night.
“We direct all our attention to neighborhoods, where little kids are walking around,” Brooks said. “It makes families feel more comfortable when they see a police car out there.”
There was one exception to that last year, though. For his first Halloween in the city, Brooks wanted to go out into the community and hand out candy while on patrol, but he made one mistake: he tried to hand out candy in an unmarked police car.
“It’s just a blue car, but inside it feels like a police car,” Brooks said. “It has the computer in there. It’s got all the police stuff in there. From the outside, it just looks like a blue car, especially at night.”
After getting playfully called out by a few parents, Brooks put on the car’s red and blue lights to let families know the guy handing out candy from his car was the city’s new police chief.
“I confess to my very first Halloween out there having mixed success,” he said. “It’s a mistake I won’t repeat.”
