🔒Prominent downtown Waterbury office building, renovated with help from $10M state grant, goes up for sale

A six-story office building in the heart of downtown Waterbury that had been rescued and renovated with help from a $10 million state grant, is now up for sale. Five months ago, dignitaries and politicians celebrated the restoration of the roughly 35,000-square-foot building at 36 North Main St. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The property — previously known as the “Odd Fellows Building” for a fraternal organization that had once owned it — was renamed in honor of former Mayor Neil O’Leary at the April 24 ceremony. O’Leary, who finished 12 years in office in December 2023, had secured a $10 million state grant to help restore the ornate, but deeply neglected and failing building. The influential former mayor also helped negotiate the expansion of the neighboring University of Connecticut downtown Waterbury campus into 36 North Main St. as its major tenant, further enabling its renovation. Joseph Gramando, a partner in Green Hub Development, which led the $15 million renovation, said his share of profit from a sale will go toward further investment in downtown Waterbury. The building is listed with an asking price of $4.4 million, a figured Gramando said is based on its rent roll, minus expenses. “For us, we are developers, so we want to continue developing in the city,” Gramando said. “We want to pull the money and keep developing.” Funding from a sale could help finance a second phase of apartment construction of the former St. Mary’s Catholic School property next to St. Mary’s Hospital, Gramando said. It could also be dedicated to building out roughly 20,000 square feet of unused space in the former Howland Hughes Department Store building on Bank Street, he said. Gramando plans to buy the shuttered St. Mary’s School campus from the city of Waterbury and convert four antique school buildings there into 47 apartments, with the project tentatively scheduled to launch this fall. Gramando plans to build a 40-apartment building on a portion of the 1.8-acre property fronting East Main Street. The ongoing 20-year lease with the University of Connecticut gives the former Odd Fellows Building building a strong appeal, Gramando said. He has outfitted the top floor as office space for his KayBar construction management and development firm, and would consider leasing that space back from a buyer. Access Rehab Centers is also leasing one of two ground-floor storefront spaces. Green Hub, which formed in 2016, has been a major force in the city's push to revitalize its struggling downtown. It began with Green Hub’s transformation of the top two floors of the nearly 70,000-square-foot “Brown Building” on East Main Street, by the UConn campus. Green Hub in 2016 bought the top two floors, and an entryway on the first, and converted the space into dorms for 92 students as part of a $5 million project. The remainder of the first floor is retail space. Green Hub next rehabbed the 114,000-square-foot former Howland Hughes Department Store -- long vacant and deteriorating -- into office space intended for hundreds of Post University staff, a project that wrapped in late 2018. The Howland Hughes project was incentivized with a $7.7 million state grant. Once again, the O'Leary administration was key in negotiations that secured Post University as that building's major tenant. Daniel da Sa, co-founder and managing partner with New York-based HMX Realty Advisors, said the O’Leary Building has drawn “robust” interest from inside Connecticut and well beyond in the week it has been listed. The building has undergone a “tremendous” amount of investment, and is on offer at well below replacement value,” da Sa noted. The long-term UConn lease is another strong selling point. “It seems like they will be there for years to come and it’s a good, stable investment opportunity,” da Sa noted.