🔒With third major project completed, Green Hub Development becomes major player in Waterbury’s downtown revival efforts

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When James Nardozzi toured the six-story former Odd Fellows office building in downtown Waterbury five years ago, the long-vacant structure was in severe distress.

“The last time I was in there it was 2019 and it was raining inside, and there were mushrooms growing on the walls and the ceilings,” said Nardozzi, who is executive director of the Waterbury Development Corp., the city’s quasi-public development agency.

In another tour this February, Nardozzi saw a clean, freshly renovated building, with small-group instructional and research spaces, student lounges and mock hospital settings for nursing, allied health and other programs offered by the neighboring UConn Waterbury campus.

The city claimed the neglected building, at 36 North Main St., from a New York investor in 2013 for unpaid taxes. With lobbying from former Mayor Neil O’Leary’s administration, Gov. Dannel Malloy dedicated $10 million in state bond funding to help defray redevelopment costs. And, in 2023, the city sold the decaying property to Green Hub Development for $900,000.

Using the state’s money, and about $5 million of its own, Green Hub performed an extensive overhaul of the building. Work wrapped up in December, well ahead of schedule, and UConn began relocating programs there in January.

“The only word I can think of is transformative,” Nardozzi said after his recent tour. “It’s amazing what they have done. The quality of work was very impressive.”

While impressed, Nardozzi was not surprised. This is the third large downtown Waterbury building Green Hub has redeveloped since 2016.

Green Hub Development is a partnership between experienced builder Joseph Gramando and his longtime friend Louis Forster, both residents of New York. The firm is playing a major role in Waterbury’s downtown revitalization efforts.

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. The first floor is set up for retail. 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.

Green Hub next rehabbed the 114,000-square-foot former Howland Hughes Department Store on Bank Street into office space intended for hundreds of Post University staff, a project that wrapped in late 2018.

There are other developments in the works.

“They’ve all been transformed into quality work, with a lot of attention to detail and maintaining of historical details where possible,” Nardozzi said. “That’s a pretty good track record.”

Forster is a general partner with San Francisco-based Green Visor Capital, an investment firm focused on early-stage technology. He also chairs the board of trustees at Johns Hopkins University.

Gramando started his professional career in the mid-1980s as a union carpenter. He later led redevelopment projects for the New York City Housing Authority, before taking a job as director of facilities for healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente. Later, he worked for New York State overseeing various public school construction projects.

In the early 2000s, Gramando and Forster began investing in smaller-scale construction projects, starting with a focus on high-end homes in Westchester County.

An architect friend working on a Waterbury project convinced Gramando to visit the post-industrial central Connecticut city in 2015 for lunch. During that visit, Gramando was introduced to Waterbury Economic Development Director Joseph McGrath.

Gramando later returned for a tour led by McGrath, and then a third time — with Forster — for a lunch meeting with O’Leary.

“We were so impressed with Neil and his passion for the city,” Gramando said. “You knew they were open for business; they were welcoming development.”

Gramando — who has led the Green Hub projects — said Waterbury continues to live up to this initial impression. O’Leary and his successor, current Mayor Paul Pernerewski, have had open doors. Permitting, inspection and development staff have never left him waiting. The cooperation of UConn leaders was key to creating the dorm and rehabbing the Odd Fellows building.

Pernerewski praised Green Hub as a “great partner,” and said the city is working with Gramando on additional potential apartment projects.

Taking root

Gramando has built out a headquarters office on the sixth floor of the Odd Fellows building.

Green Hub’s three major projects — the dorm and two office buildings — all received 10-year tax deals from the city. O’Leary managed to secure $7.7 million in state grant funds to defray costs of renovating and retrofitting the Howland Hughes building, and then $10 million more for the Odd Fellows rehab.

In return, the city has seen iconic buildings rescued from decay, and occupied by users that will draw workers and visitors downtown.

The roughly 26,300 square feet being leased by UConn in Odd Fellows will give the university room to grow its in-demand health programs, while also reinforcing and growing its community partnerships. Waterbury high school robotics club students are using the former Odd Fellows banquet hall as practice space, for example.

“UConn Waterbury’s expansion into this historic space is an investment in our students, faculty and the greater community,” said Fumiko Hoeft, UConn Waterbury’s campus dean and chief administrative officer.

Access Rehab Centers — a partnership between Waterbury Hospital and Easterseals — is renting 4,000 square feet of ground-floor space in the Odd Fellows building, where it offers occupational, physical and speech therapy to an underserved population, especially those without ready access to transportation, said Brian Emerick, president of Access Rehab.

Not all Green Hub projects have come off without a hitch, however.

In December 2018, Post University celebrated its move to the rehabbed Howland Hughes building and pledged to bring 400 office workers downtown. Local retailers and restaurants looked forward to a much-needed boost. But Post sent its workers home with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the university has not mandated a return.

Today, about 50 Post workers use the downtown office on any given day, according to the university.

Post said it anticipates increasing that number to support growing enrollment at its Waterbury campus, but did not provide specifics.

Gramando says the university still pays its rent, but he would like to see more use of the building.

“We want the people because we want the city to do better,” he said. “We are working hard to work with them and see what they want to do.”

More to come

Meantime, city officials recently selected Gramando as the preferred developer to convert the former St. Mary’s Grammar School campus on the edge of downtown into apartments for healthcare workers.

Forster isn’t involved in the project.

St. Mary’s closed in 2018. The city purchased the 2.2-acre property on Cole and East Main streets, near St. Mary’s Hospital, for $1 million in 2023. The property hosts four brick classroom buildings ranging in size from 7,875 square feet to 15,525 square feet, and dating back between 1936 and 1945. The city issued a request for proposals seeking a development partner last September.

Gramando offered the city $1.6 million for the property and believes he can fit 44 apartments inside the existing buildings in a redevelopment effort he hopes to launch this summer.

In a second phase, he would add a new 48-unit building. He hopes to tap more state funding for the project, and include space for a day care and recreation center.

“I’m trying to build a little community there,” Gramando said. “Even though this is affordable housing for healthcare workers, I’m going to build them the highest-end I can. I want them to be a showcase.”

Gramando said he also has his eye on another downtown Waterbury building for conversion into 10 apartment units. He is considering state grant programs to make the numbers work.

Gramando said government support has been necessary for his Waterbury projects because rents for housing and office space in the city are not yet equal to renovation costs. At the same time, Waterbury leaders, like officials in many cities, see housing as crucial to their downtown revival efforts.

O’Leary said the success of Green Hub’s efforts, particularly with the Odd Fellows building, demonstrate the value of perseverance, since each project took years to come together.

“They (Green Hub) have become really attached to Waterbury and invested millions of their own dollars in these projects,” O’Leary said.