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Naugatuck River Valley: A River Runs Through It
Newly cooperative Valley towns seek to manage growth for all
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Business New Haven
7/10/2000
By: John Florian
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If you live or work in the lower Naugatuck Valley - that string of towns branching off Route 8 between Bridgeport and Waterbury - you know something's building there.
Valley pride is back at high tide, with the gleam of new corporate towers and light manufacturing plants settling near the highway, mostly in Shelton, the region's southern anchor. And everyone's glowing about the Valley's recent All-America City designation, which cites the region as one of the nation's top ten communities for the way Valley towns have pulled together in recent years to succeed with civic and business projects.
Yes, Valley business is on a roll again. But where is that roll headed? Challenges remain, including fears that success might choke itself, or bypass smaller towns that have few acres to wave at developers escaping the higher costs of lower Fairfield County.
Look to history for clues to the future. Next time you're speeding north up Route 8, over the bridge joining Shelton and Derby, imagine there's a “scenic view” turnout on your right, and pull into it. Get out of the car. Gaze south, down the Housatonic River to where another river, the Naugatuck, joins in from the left. These rivers cradle Derby, a triangle of land that once was the hub of Valley commerce. Now on the bridge behind you, feel the highway's hot rumble of trucks and cars. Here you see what has delivered money and life to the Valley - these rivers of water and macadam.
The All-America award comes a critical juncture, reflecting the next “river” the Valley might need to save itself - a river of regional energy and cooperation to move ahead and solve problems.
“The Valley's business and population will grow despite what we do,” says William Powanda, chairman of the Valley's seven-town Alliance for Economic Growth, one of several regional organizations. He also led the delegation that brought home the All-America City prize from the early June competition in Philadelphia. “Our job,” says Powanda, “is to maximize that potential, and to plan well, to improve the quality of life here.”
Where It Began
In its heyday, Derby “owned” much of the Valley, spawning up-river villages that grew and broke away, taking the town names we know today as Ansonia, Seymour and Oxford. The rivers brought ships to the docks and later, power to the factories that pumped fortunes to their owners, and livelihoods to thousands of workers migrating from Europe and Slavic countries.
To visualize this, keep your mind's eye at the Shelton-Derby bridge, looking south to where the two rivers flow into one. Just downstream on the Derby (east) side, is where the Valley's first major business took shape.
Was it a grist mill? A factory? Guess again. Picture ship masts and sails trailing down to Long Island Sound, and (since this is an imaginary tour) all the way to the West Indies. You're looking at the long-ago site of Derby Landing, where the Halleck family built ocean-going ships, and which in the late 1700s and early 1800s was one of the largest ports in Connecticut.
Halleck was not alone. Up the Housatonic on the Shelton side, the Leavenworth family's shipyards bustled from a spot they called Huntington Landing. Today, it's Indian Well State Park.
“The Derby port rivaled any in the state,” notes Jack Walsh, former history teacher and long-time executive director of the Valley's United Way. “The last major ship built here was in the 1850s, a boat called the Modesty. But by the end of the War of 1812, the shipbuilders were in trouble.”
New rivers of commerce - roads - began connecting people to harbors that didn't freeze in the winter like Derby's. And bridges built over the Housatonic became barricades for the tall ships. Steamboats ferried passengers from Derby to New York, says Walsh, but shipbuilding faded.
Power Rushes In
The next business cycle sprang again from the rivers, with dams and canals that let factories grab power from rushing water. Through the 1800s and first half of the 1900s, the Valley boomed with manufacturing and factory complexes, creating residential villages that became the towns.
Factories pumped out corsets, ice cream, textiles, clasps, underwear, pins, brass, copper, silver, screws, rubber, machine parts, skirt hoops, corset and shoelaces, paper, telegraph cable, fountain pens and pencils. Many of these products were “firsts,” like the friction matches invented in Beacon Falls in 1843.
(The “Valley Heritage Driving Tour Guide,” produced by the arts and recreation team of Healthy Valley 2000, a regional organization, offers a fact-filled tour of Valley town history and manufacturing lore. Take the virtual tour at www.electronicvalley.com, or get printed versions from the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce [203-925-4981] or the United Way [203-735-9331].)
By 1975: Industrial Burnout
Now bring your imagination back to the Shelton-Derby bridge, and “hop” over to the north side. To your left is Shelton, where the serene eight acres of mowed grass at the river's edge was the site of a raging inferno one spring night in 1975. That's when the Sponge Rubber Products plant was torched in a bungled insurance scam, igniting the largest arson fire ever in U.S. history and killing thousands of jobs.
“It was a devastating blow for Shelton and all of the Valley,” affecting lives and jobs in all surrounding towns, says Fred Musante, chairman of Shelton's Economic Development Commission.
The aftermath's charred rubble came to symbolize all that was going wrong with Valley business then. Manufacturing jobs were drying up, many heading south. Unemployment topped 18 percent, higher than anywhere else in Connecticut.
And that “dying mill town” reputation stuck like glue to the Valley for decades.
Another river was born to bring business back to the Valley: Route 8. Carving its way up the Naugatuck Valley in the 1970s, the highway became a fast, easy connector from I-95 hugging the shore to I-84, which bisects Connecticut's midsection.
“The Valley had been tucked away for its early life, and then suddenly the commercial and residential developers found this virgin territory,” says Powanda. “You don't have to be brilliant to say, 'Wow, look what's accessible to us now.'”
With its Fairfield County address and available land, Shelton was - and continues to be - first in line for the corporate towers, high tech company pizzazz and service businesses working their way up Bridgeport Avenue. A recent report on the Valley and its challenges, prepared by Mt. Auburn Associates of Somerville, Mass., with a grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, charts this advance.
“Behind much of the Valley's job growth has been the tremendous development along Bridgeport Avenue in Shelton,” the report notes. “Many of these jobs are a result of overflows from the prosperous and booming 'Gold Coast' - the lower part of Fairfield County closed tied to New York City's economic base.”
Of course, Route 8 commerce flows both ways. Noting that the “service sector” today accounts for a quarter of the Valley's economy, the report finds much of it “the result of new computer, engineering, management and other business-service companies locating in the region to service corporate headquarters in Stamford and the rest of Fairfield County.”
Valley residents don't necessarily work in Valley, either. “Clearly, what we see every day [on Route 8] is a north-south migration in the morning, and a south-north migration in the evening,” observes Powanda. “So people are moving up the corridor for more value for their property.”
Where It's Going
Powanda has had a lifelong view of the Valley. In fact, he was born in his office 60 years ago. Literally. As vice president of Derby's Griffin Hospital, his office was formerly the hospital's maternity ward.
Griffin has long been a major employer in the region - until recently, the largest. Its peak of 1,300 has now receded to around 1,050. American Skandia, the growing insurance and financial services corporation based in Shelton, boasts 1,300 jobs today. Another employee heavyweight is Physician Health Services (PHS), with about 900 employees at its 70-acre Shelton campus.
The Valley's come a long way from the Sponge Rubber fire days. “The unemployment rate in April was only 2.5 percent,” says Powanda. “Currently, 52 percent of the Valley households earn $50,000 [annually] or more. And almost half of them earn $75,000 or more.”
However, Shelton's prosperity spikes the averages and masks what's happening in other towns. In fact, notes the Mt. Auburn report: “Without Shelton's explosive growth over the last five years, the Valley economy would have lost 270 jobs.” For instance, Derby lost 430 jobs from 1994 to 1998, and 210 jobs fled Ansonia. Meanwhile, Shelton gained 4,320.
Moreover, the Mt. Auburn report catalogues many challenges ahead for Valley planners, including serving the working poor, cleaning up industrial wastes, the loss of open space and revitalizing blighted downtown areas.
“The region's economic-development efforts have focused very extensively on attracting new companies to the region and have spent limited time on retention and small-business development,” the report asserts.
But the report also notes strengths in voluntarism and regional organizations that can be models for other communities in the state. And the Valley's Alliance for Economic Growth, it says, “provides a strong foundation for expanding collaborative economic development efforts in the region.”
Nancy Valentine, Ansonia's mayor from 1995 to 1999 and now executive director of Yale University's Women's Campaign School, agrees that regional cooperation is the key to moving ahead.
“We're in a positive mode now,” she says. “The strength of that is communication. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. If something works for one town, it's important to share the idea.”
The United Way's Jack Walsh, who was a delegate to the All-America City competition, adds that “Regional cooperation was the single biggest factor” in winning the All-America award.
The Valley's major non-profit regional organizations include the Valley Council of Health & Human Service Organizations, with more than 55 members providing such services; Healthy Valley 2000, focused on quality-of-life issues; the Alliance for Economic Growth; and the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce, which, of course, promotes new business opportunities and administratively supports the Alliance.
The Alliance's accomplishments include persuading the state legislature to designate more than 400 Valley sites as Enterprise Corridor Zones, and obtaining a $900,000 federal grant to help clean up industrial waste sites.
Local Challenges Remain
Not all can be solved regionally, though. In Ansonia, for instance, Valentine sees a major challenge in “enhancing what we have, redeveloping what exists.” That includes, in her opinion, keeping the downtown alive with more residences, and finding a way back to the river where it all began. The town is “landlocked,” Valentine explains, lacking large parcels to develop.
“Ansonia was devastated by the flood of 1955, so the Army Corps of Engineers built huge walls along the river to make sure it would never happen again. But this took away the beauty,” Valentine says, along with public access to the water. In October there will be a multi-town “celebration of the waters and rivers in our communities,” Valentine notes.
Even Shelton has concerns. “We don't want to overbuild,” says the Economic Development Commission's Musante. “We're very conscious of conservation and have put aside hundreds of acres for no development. This gives the town a rural aura - making it a wonderful place in which to work.”
Meanwhile, Derby - Connecticut's smallest city - is being pegged as a new commercial center. Home Depot and B.J.'s Wholesale Club plan to build there, while Wal-Mart and Shop Rite will be moving into previously vacated sites.
Seymour is trading on its past with a downtown antiques center. Favored with an airport, Oxford is projected to grow in both population and business sites. And Beacon Falls is eyed for corporate development.
Despite all this, Walsh, the former history teacher, says some people still look down on the Valley as “an old industrial” region. “Our values are strong here,” says Walsh. “Maybe that's too corny for some people. But they need to wake up and realize that the Valley is quite different than they thought it was.” Indeed, the Valley's economic evolution continues. BNH
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