Developer Joseph Gramando may be from New York, but he has been adopted and embraced by Waterbury political and business leaders over the past decade as his company has tackled some of the largest redevelopment projects in the city’s downtown.
Gramando is the face of Green Hub Development, which he co-founded in 2016 with Louis Forster, an investment executive and longtime friend.
The partners’ first project in Waterbury was a $5 million redevelopment of the top two floors of a mixed-use office building, at 20 E. Main St., near the downtown Waterbury UConn branch campus.
Green Hub converted vacant office space in the upper floors of the Brown Building into a privately run dormitory for up to 92 college students. The bottom floor has remained retail.
Green Hub followed that project up with a roughly $15 million transformation of the 114,000-square-foot former Howland Hughes Department Store, on Bank Street, into office space leased by Post University.
Just over half of the cost for the project — which was completed in late 2018 — was covered by state grant funds.
This past December, Green Hub wrapped up a redevelopment of a 130-year-old, six-story downtown office building, at 36 North Main St., into a mix of classroom and lab space for the neighboring UConn Waterbury campus, along with first-floor retail space.
Gramando claimed the sixth floor of the former Odd Fellows Building as office space for his development efforts. From there, he is negotiating with the city of Waterbury on a plan to buy the shuttered St. Mary’s Catholic Grammar School, at 55 Cole St. and 320 East Main St., and convert it into apartments catering to medical workers.
Gramando said he’s eyeing additional multifamily development projects in downtown Waterbury.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity here,” Gramando said. “I care about the city. I care about the people here. I enjoy coming here. That’s really my motivation in Waterbury. I enjoy it.”