A long-simmering effort to redevelop a roughly 40,000-square-foot downtown Waterbury office building will take a few more years to materialize, along with another $250,000 in taxpayer support.
The administration of Mayor Neil M. O’Leary will ask the Board of Aldermen at its Sept. 11 meeting to adjust terms of a 2019 tax-fixing agreement to reflect the long delay in the sale of the former Odd Fellows Building at 36 North Main St. to Green Hub Development.
The administration is also asking aldermen to approve the use of $250,000 in city funds to defray redevelopment costs. The administration also wants aldermen to push back the substantial completion date set in the 2019 agreement from July 1, 2021 to Dec. 31, 2025.
The project’s roots trace back to 2018, when state officials agreed to provide $10 million for the renovation of the Odd Fellows Building. The city-owned antique structure was vacant and rotting away just off the downtown city Green.
In 2019, the city picked Green Hub Development as its partner in the redevelopment. Green Hub would buy the building for $900,000 and spend another $5 million on redevelopment. The city would spend the state’s $10 million to pay down renovation costs.
Green Hub – a partnership between New York financier Louis J. Forster and his brother-in-law Joseph Gramando – had already made a name in Waterbury.
Hoping to capitalize on the potential of Waterbury’s often overlooked downtown, Green Hub had previously renovated a large, long-vacant downtown Waterbury building into dormitory-style housing for college students, aimed predominantly at students attending the UConn Waterbury campus.
In early 2018, Green Hub purchased the 114,000-square-foot former Howland Hughes Department Store building on downtown Bank Street. The building was renovated into offices for Post University in a $15 million project, with state taxpayers bearing $7.7 million of the cost.
The sale of the vacant and deteriorating building at 36 North Main St. has been repeatedly delayed, with officials and Green Hub blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for slowing negotiations.
In June, Green Hub landed the anchor tenant needed to make the deal work, as the University of Connecticut agreed to a 20-year lease, with options to extend, for 26,300 square feet in the Odd Fellows building. The lease will allow for an expansion of the neighboring campus, with plans for teaching areas, laboratories, research space, interview rooms and incubator spaces.
UConn plans to use the Odd Fellows building for psychology, allied health and nursing programs beginning in January or August of 2025. The base rent in the first year will be about $370,000 .
The COVID-19 pandemic tore away the focus of local and state officials from the Odd Fellows negotiation, forcing a delay, O’Leary noted. The closing is now taegeted for Sept. 15, O’Leary said, crediting the tenacity and vision of UConn President Radenka Maric and Waterbury UConn Director Fumiko Hoeft.
“I’m just really excited about it because the plans for the building are beautiful,” O’Leary said. “It just goes to show you that you can never give up. There were a lot of peaks and valleys in the project, but everybody persevered and I feel really good about it.”
In a memo to the Board of Aldermen, Waterbury Finance Director Michael LeBlanc justified the request for $250,000, noting materials and labor costs have increased since the deal was struck, and the building has deteriorated further.
“The City believes the expansion of this program to the property at 36 North Main Street will provide great educational and economic development opportunities,” LeBlanc wrote.
