🔒Highly touted aquaculture business Ideal Fish quietly disappears from Waterbury

For years, Waterbury officials touted Ideal Fish — a fish-farming venture set up in a former brass factory — as an example of the innovative business growth in the city.

It was a good story.

Former investment banker Eric Pedersen launched the business that harvests European bass, commonly known as branzino. The fish is popular among high-end restaurants and grocery stores that largely rely on farming operations in the Mediterranean Sea for their supply.

Ideal Fish, which has benefited from state and federal funding, in 2016 established an elaborate setup in a 65,000-square-foot portion of an industrial building in Waterbury’s East End. The facility, at 64 Avenue of Industry, housed schools of European sea bass swimming in 27,000-gallon tanks.

The company attracted news coverage from various outlets. Pedersen and Ideal Fish were featured prominently on Waterbury’s marketing website.

The company also had plans to significantly increase its presence in the city.

At some point last year, however, Ideal Fish quietly pulled out of Waterbury, leaving behind an upset landlord.

Mark Drouin, of Middlebury, said he signed a deal in December to forgive months of back rent just to get Ideal Fish to surrender its lease at 64 Avenue of Industry, and allow him to bring in a new manufacturing tenant.

Between the condition Ideal Fish left the building and missed rent payments, Drouin estimates he’s out more than $2 million. He said he took out a $1.7 mortgage from Holyoke-based PeoplesBank to make repairs needed to get his building ready for its new tenant, which he declined to disclose.

Drouin also claims Ideal Fish took equipment and fixtures, including industrial water chillers and cabinets, that should have remained in the building under the triple-net lease. Drouin said he hasn’t filed a civil lawsuit, fearing a legal battle would cost more than it’s worth.

He said he did file a complaint against Ideal Fish in February with Waterbury police. That investigation has not reached a conclusion, police confirmed.

“At the end of the day, the thing that upsets me the most is they are still selling these fish and saying they are raising them here, when they said they didn’t have money to do anything,” Drouin said.

Waterbury Economic Development Director Joseph McGrath said he received word about five months ago that Ideal Fish had shut down its Waterbury operations.

“The city was obviously taken by surprise and very disappointed,” McGrath said.

McGrath said he contacted Pedersen, who told him that Ideal Fish moved to a location in Southington, at 240 Atwater St., and hoped to eventually raise enough capital for another attempt in Waterbury.

There was nobody to be found at the roughly 4,000-square-foot Southington warehouse around noon on May 9.

There was an Ideal Fish box truck in the parking lot, and a company sign, labeled with its former Waterbury address, leaning against the building front.

Government aid

What’s happened to Ideal Fish in recent years isn’t entirely clear.

On its website, the company still claims to be raising sea bass at its former Waterbury site.

Pedersen responded to phone calls and emails from Hartford Business Journal with a text message saying he “left Ideal Fish some time ago” and has “not been engaged with the business.”

Pedersen referred questions to David Lasky, who he identified as the company’s CEO. Attempts to reach Lasky and others affiliated with the company were unsuccessful.

Great American Aquaculture has been the beneficiary of state and federal support, particularly during the pandemic.

The state Department of Economic and Community Development loaned the company $175,000 in 2020, through its Small Business Express program, for the establishment of a hydroponics operation.

In return, the company promised to create seven full-time jobs, retain five within 18 months, and maintain an average of at least 12 full-time employees for another two years.

Great American Aquaculture (doing business as Ideal Fish) last made a payment on the state loan in January, but is not current on its payments, said DECD spokesman Jim Watson. To date, the company has repaid $59,546 in principal and interest, Watson said.

Additionally, Ideal Fish, under its formal name Great American Aquaculture LLC, received two rounds of forgivable loan funding from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, created during the height of the pandemic to support small businesses hurt by the public health crisis.

The first $138,175 loan was approved on April 15, 2020, when the company reported nine employees. That debt was eventually forgiven, federal records show. A second $129,577 PPP loan was approved on March 16, 2021, when the company reported eight employees. That loan was also eventually forgiven, according to federal records.

Appealing vision

It was only a few years ago that Ideal Fish was in talks to significantly expand its presence in Waterbury, a city that has struggled with the collapse of its once-powerful brass manufacturing base.

In 2022, city officials picked Great American Aquaculture as a tentative redevelopment partner for a roughly 16-acre brownfield just off the southern edge of downtown. The former Anamet manufacturing site features a 190,000-square-foot, high-bay industrial building.

Ideal Fish’s redevelopment of 698 South Main St. called for a large-scale investment: more than $55 million in construction, $100 million in equipment, 290 new jobs and $31 million in tax revenue over a 10-year period, according to a project application.

But negotiations on a sale or lease of the building to Ideal Fish fell apart by September 2023. That led then-Mayor Neil O’Leary to restart the search for new development partners of the Anamet property.

In its project application at the time, Ideal Fish said it employed 20 people producing 100 tons of European sea bass annually.