🔒Amazon project part of effort to reshape Waterbury’s image

It was at a U.S. Conference of Mayors convention a few years ago that Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary realized his city had a lingering problem.

His fellow chief executives still associated the Brass City with a series of 20-year-old scandals that sent two mayors to federal prison and left the municipality all but broke.

“It’s unusual to have one mayor go to prison,” O’Leary said from behind his desk on the second floor of Waterbury’s magisterial City Hall. “It’s really unusual to have two in such a close period of time. It’s hard to recover from things like that.”

O’Leary decided his city, which has made major strides in recent years, needed to tell its story better while washing away the taint of its disgraced former leaders. In short, it needed a rebrand.

The result was “The Waterbury” marketing campaign and website, a joint effort of the city and business community. Created by the local marketing and branding firm WORX, the project has proven successful in reshaping the city’s image and attracting investment, even earning a recent graphic design award, O’Leary said.

“The Waterbury brand showcases that the city is fiscally stable, open for investment discussions, is culturally vibrant and is full of visionary leaders,” said O’Leary, mayor for the last 10 years.

There’s substance behind the sizzle, city officials say. Over the last decade, the once maligned Brass City has undergone a quiet renaissance, attracting a strong line up of new businesses, shoring up its still important manufacturing sector, adding apartments downtown, improving housing stock and tearing down and cleaning up abandoned and contaminated factory buildings.

A key element in the city’s ongoing revival has been leveraging the city’s location as a rail and road hub and its hosting of major educational and medical facilities, O’Leary said.

Another important factor: Waterbury has gotten its fiscal house in order — O’Leary views the state oversight board of the early 2000s as key to that transformation. The city hasn’t raised local taxes in six years, and its once moribund grand list is growing, officials said.

The tax rate — at 60.21 mills, still the second highest in the state — remains a challenge, but officials have found creative ways to get around that, including tax abatements, inexpensive property and other forms of assistance and persuasion, O’Leary said.

That includes the personal touch such as when O’Leary showed up unannounced at an Oxford hot water company looking to move and asked them to relocate to Waterbury. He succeeded, and the firm has since expanded thanks to its purchase by industry giant Rheem, he said.

“That’s what businesses need to make decisions,” said Tommy Hyde, executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Regional Development Corporation. “They want stable leadership and the tax rate not going up.”

Amazon opportunity

Hyde’s organization — another innovation that seeks to mimic the Capital Region Development Corporation’s regional approach to economic development — is undertaking the biggest and most ambitious of Waterbury’s recent projects, bringing an Amazon fulfillment center to the city and neighboring Naugatuck.

In January the city and Naugatuck announced a tentative deal to transform a 150-acre parcel located in both communities into an Amazon hub that could eventually employ as many as 1,000 people and bring in significant new local tax revenue.

“Amazon is very exciting,” Director of Economic Development Joseph McGrath said. “That parcel has been sitting there for years.”

There was a time when Waterbury’s economy rested overwhelmingly on manufacturing, especially giant foundries that produced much of the nation’s brass. Those days are over and the city’s biggest employers today are municipal government, St. Mary’s and Waterbury hospitals, Post University and the University of Connecticut’s Waterbury branch, McGrath said.

But manufacturing remains a major employer and important part of the local economy that the city has sought to nurture, O’Leary said. The city, with state assistance, opened a high school, Waterbury Career Academy, and started a program at Naugatuck Community College to train young people for careers in manufacturing, he said. Both have been highly successful, he said.

“Kids are going straight from high school to making $55,000 a year with full benefits and no student debt,” O’Leary said. “Sometimes they’re making more than mom and dad.”

Waterbury’s manufacturing base includes both traditional factories but also unconventional ones, like Ideal Fish, McGrath said. The company — located along the city’s eastern I-84 corridor, which has seen growth in recent years — grows fish for sale to restaurants and suppliers throughout the Northeast, McGrath said. Its specialty is branzino, a popular Mediterranean fish the company receives from overseas as guppies, grows to full size and then sells, he said.

Part of what attracts businesses like Ideal Fish is Waterbury’s location at the nexus of I-84 and Route 8, giving them easy access to the entire Northeast, city officials said.

Another increasingly important factor is improved rail service on the Waterbury Line, which takes passengers down the Naugatuck Valley with connections to New York City and the rest of the Northeast.

Last fall, the state completed signaling and other improvements that allowed for revival of freight service, yet another powerful selling point for manufacturers and other businesses, O’Leary said.

There remains much to do, city officials said. Improving downtown, including demolishing and cleaning up old industrial buildings in the Freight Street area to create a 20-acre developable parcel, and bringing the Amazon deal to fruition are top priorities, Hyde said.

The city would also like to do something with the struggling Brass Mill Center shopping mall and has received inquiries about the property, but has so far been unable to connect with its owners, he said.

“I think 2022 is going to be a huge year,” O’Leary said.