Waterbury, Conn., Officials to Continue Outreach to Real Estate Agencies

Oct. 4--They sent out 25 invitations, received three confirmations, but only one company showed up.
Still, city officials believe their campaign to reach out to commercial real estate agencies across the nation was an admirable first effort. The city Friday conducted the first of what it hopes will be many guided tours of commercial sites in Waterbury available for development.
"Nobody guaranteed us that this process wouldn't have peaks and valleys," Mayor Michael J. Jarjura said Friday. "We obviously would have preferred a larger turnout, but we were hurt by the hectic schedules these people maintain and some unfortunate timing."
Robert M. Van Geons, the city's economic development director, said his office sent out invitations to about 25 real estate firms within a three- or four-hour drive of Waterbury. In all, six or seven firms expressed an interest in touring the city, though some said they would prefer to visit at a later date, he said.
Three companies agreed to participate in Friday's tour, but two of them decided to postpone their trips until a later date, Van Geons said. In the end, two agents from Cushman & Wakefield, a New York City-based commercial real estate agency with 158 offices in 48 countries, actually came.
"We've had a good response from a number of firms that have expressed an interest in touring Waterbury, but finding a date that works for everyone is nearly impossible," he said.
Van Geons said the city would conduct similar tours for the two companies that canceled, as well as other real estate firms from across the region, over the next few months.
The morning portion of Friday's tour included stops at:
n the 98,500-square-foot former Teleflex Inc. headquarters at 105 Progress Lane in the Captain Neville Industrial Park, now partially vacant;
n the vacant former Duracell building at 562 Captain Neville Drive;
n the vacant 420,000-square-foot, 17.5-acre Anamet complex on South Main Street.
A later excursion Friday took the visitors to the Sovereign Bank building at 81 West Main St., the former Centerbank building at 36 North Main St., and the five-floor Howland-Hughes building at the corner of Bank and Grand streets.
"It's helpful to get out and take a close look at a community," said Michael Henderson, one of the two Cushman & Wakefield representatives to make the trip. "It gives you a little more first-hand knowledge, a little better feel."
Henderson said he has participated in similar tours of Denver and Erie, Pa., in the past three weeks.
Henderson and an associate, Hillary Roberts, arrived Thursday night and were housed at the Courtyard by Marriott on Grand Street, where they were greeted by Greater Waterbury Chamber of Commerce President Stephen R. Sasala II, Van Geons said.
The event was expected to cost about $1,100 in hotel, restaurant and other costs, but that was before two of the three expected companies postponed their visit. Because the tour group was smaller than originally anticipated, the cost of conducting the tour was in the $500 range, Van Geons said. The money came from the Waterbury Economic Resource Center budget, which is made up of state, municipal and private funds.
The city intends to pool the experience and information it gathers in conducting the smaller, regional tours and eventually host a larger tour that will include companies from across the nation, Van Geons said.
Jarjura said he wants to see the tours of the city's industrial sites continue and is confident they will eventually produce tangible results.
"This program is very comprehensive, very well-prepared," he said. "It's exactly the type of initiative we need to market the city, highlight its many attributes, and put us in a competitive position with other municipalities."
Aside from helping prepare city officials to host larger events, Friday's "first run" tour spurred the development of things like maps and diagrams of available properties and a bound statistical profile of the community, Van Geons said. It also helped the city tweak and further develop the model under which future tours will be conducted, he said.