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Brassed Off
Hank Paine elected to differentiate his Connecticut Store from generic mall offerings.
Is Waterbury new Brass Mill Center a boon or bane to the future of the city center?
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Business New Haven
3/23/1998
By: Susan Banfield
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Until recently when you approached the city of Waterbury on I-84 coming from Hartford one of the first things you saw was a dilapidated factory - the old Scovill plant.
Today you are greeted by a sprawling new mall with more than a million square feet of retail space, three major anchor stores with a fourth yet to come, and a 12-screen cineplex. Just what has this major facelift done for Waterbury?
Certainly the new Brass Mill Center, which opened last September, has been a boon to the city - “outstanding,” according to Robert Mezzo, director of economic and government affairs for the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce. Just to start, General Growth Properties,
which built it, assumed the considerable cost of cleaning up the old Scovill site, a burden which otherwise would have fallen on the city.
The Brass Mill Center created several thousand new jobs. It will bring Waterbury an estimated $4 million in tax revenue a year. Perhaps most important, it has brought a tremendous number of new visitors to the city.
Initially, however, the plan was that the new Brass Mill Center would be a downtown mall. While the mall is not exactly in the center of town (it is half a mile to the east), it is still fair to ask, Has it revitalized Waterbury's ailing downtown? The answer is yes - and no.
When the Brass Mill Center opened, at least two major downtown merchants, Michael's Jewelers and Pottery One, left to move to the new mall. “At that point we were pretty grim,” says Hank Paine, owner of the Connecticut Store, also in the downtown area. “It has definitely hurt downtown business.”
Not everyone agrees, but the best thing people are willing to say is that the mall's effect on downtown business so far has been neutral. “I don't think the new mall has had any effect whatsoever,” says John Lombard, managing partner for the Lombard Group, a real estate investment company which recently purchased and moved its offices to an historic building in downtown Waterbury. “We haven't seen an increase or a decrease in traffic.”
The reason for the lack of spillover effect downtown has been the half-mile gap between the Brass Mill Center and the city center. It is an area that is run down to the extent that visitors are apt to feel insecure passing through it.
Yet the new mall, although it began by stealing away retailers and perhaps even customers, has actually proven to be an effective catalyst for the revitalization of Waterbury's downtown. It has jump-started both city and private initiatives to bring the center of town back to life.
“It's really only the beginning of plans for the revitalization of the downtown,” says Mezzo. This includes a major overhaul of the corridor between the Center and downtown. Mezzo points out that a new state courthouse has just been built in this area, to open in late summer, and that a new state office building will also be built, with construction slated to start this spring. There is also $31 in bonding money available to help “make the connection.”
The city has designated the non-profit Naugatuck Valley Development Corp. [NVDC] as responsible for managing the development of the corridor. “We're trying to develop a transition area [and make] a good connection,” says Jeff Cugno, NVDC executive director.
One of the major problems that plague downtown is poor parking. What there is is insufficient, and the existing garages are in need of refurbishment. “We're doing improvements to two of the parking garages, and providing additional on-street parking,” says Cugno. There is also a $1.6 million study in the works which is looking at various traffic and parking solutions. The study is due to be completed by early summer.
The NVDC is also looking to assemble some areas for new development. To begin, it has targeted properties on East Main Street. In addition, the group is working to bring several major new attractions to the area between the downtown and the mall. Cugno hopes to create a new entertainment center on the site of the old Palace Theater.
The NVDC has also entered into an agreement with General Growth Properties and Timex to develop a “Time Expo” museum in buildings left on the old Scovill site. The museum would showcase methods of time-keeping and time-keeping devices from ancient civilizations up to the present.
Construction on Time Expo is to begin this spring, with the museum ready to open by early 1999. Funding will be through a combination of state grants and NVDC's own money.
Just as exciting as initiatives coming from the city are the efforts being undertaken by local businesses.
Waterbury's city center had been on the decline long before the Brass Mill Center was built. But “Ironically, it was the mall that spurred us to change our identity downtown,” says David Obarowski, partner with the firm of Gager & Peterson. Obarowski is manager of the Waterbury Downtown Initiative, a two-year-old private association of downtown businesses that sees its mission as giving downtown Waterbury a new identity, one that is compatible with the Brass Mill Center.
The initiative's first project has been the creation of an information-technology zone (ITZ) in the center of the city which allows the government to offer tax advantages to information-technology companies who elect to move to the zone. Although it was a state statute that made the zones possible, Waterbury is the first city to have acted on it.
“We're pleased with the response of the marketplace to the ITZ,” says Obarowski. The ordinance establishing the zone was passed by Waterbury's board of aldermen just a few weeks ago. “Already several new companies are looking for 30,000 to 35,000 square feet of space,” he reports.
Obarowski is also confident that once new businesses begin to move in, the development of retail - restaurants, stationery stores and the like - will follow naturally.
John Lombard purchased the building at the corner where North, South, East and West Main streets meet a year ago. “I thought it was kind of an historic structure,” says Lombard, whose firm specializes in taking run-down properties and turning them into shopping centers.
He expresses confidence that the downtown area is going to come back. “There is more effort today than there's ever been in the past,” he says. Still, he would like to see more. “It's going to take more people to take a position, take a building. Let's save one building at a time.”
Hank Paine's Connecticut Store is one that took the cue to revamp its identity in light of the new mall's impact. Formerly a general department store like G. Fox - actually, the last downtown department store left in the state - Paine decided to convert his business to one that sold only items made in Connecticut rather than try to compete with the mall.
Today, with 235 artisans exhibiting, the business is doing better and Paine has confidence that the Connecticut Store will come to be seen as an attraction drawing visitors to the downtown.
Although the Brass Mill Center has not proved to be the quick fix to Waterbury's beleaguered downtown some might initially have hoped for, it has certainly proven to be an effective catalyst for positive change. The range of initiatives currently in the works and targeted at revamping the city's downtown are truly impressive and a sure basis for new hope.
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