Economic Development Chief for Waterbury, Conn., Takes Post in North Carolina.

Apr. 6--When Robert M. Van Geons became the Brass City's first economic development director in more than a decade in December 2002, the Waterbury native said he viewed his return to the city as a homecoming.
Next Monday, when he becomes the economic development director of Stanly County, N.C., near Charlotte, Van Geons will be enjoying another homecoming of sorts.
Van Geons, 28, began his professional career as the planning director in Spencer, N.C., a small town just west of Stanly County, while still an undergraduate at Catawba College in nearby Salisbury, N.C.
"In leaving Waterbury I'm leaving my hometown, the city where I grew up," he said. "But I'm going to a place that I'm very familiar with, and where I'm very comfortable. I guess you might call (North Carolina) my second home."
Van Geons last day in Waterbury was Feb. 27. Before heading to North Carolina last week, he worked for four weeks as a temporary replacement for Torrington Economic Development Director Christina Emery, who is on maternity leave.
Van Geons' one-year contract with Waterbury ran out in December, and was extended for 45 days but not renewed due to the city's push to consolidate its economic development efforts into a single city department. That department, the Waterbury Development Corp., is slated to be formed over the summer.
Van Geons has moved between Connecticut and North Carolina several times. Following a three-year stay in Spencer, he moved back to Connecticut to become the assistant town planner in Southington for about a year before returning to North Carolina to work as a planner and grant writer for Benchmark Inc., a private municipal planning and community development company based in Kannapolis, N.C.
Then in January 2002 he headed north again to fill the economic development director's position in Ledyard, before being named the head of the newly formed Waterbury Economic Resource Center the following December. WERC, which was run out of an office at the Waterbury Regional Chamber, was created in July 2002 with $250,000 in state and local funding, but now will be rolled into the Waterbury Development Corp.
Van Geons' new job description is not markedly different from the positions he held in Waterbury and Torrington over the past 15 months. As was the case in Waterbury, his main focus will be to help strengthen the local economy by retaining existing businesses and helping to recruit new ones.
"Being very familiar with the surrounding region, I feel confident that I can get up to speed quickly and help to develop a strategic plan for economic development based on both retention of existing industries and recruitment of new industrial and commercial ventures," he said. "Having left North Carolina to return to Connecticut a little over two years ago, I have maintained a number of contacts around the region."
Van Geons, who is in the process of selling his Waterbury home and buying a new one in Albemarle, N.C., the county seat, said Stanly County consists of 10 communities and 59,000 residents. The county is about 395 square miles in size, an area that includes a state forest and about 10,000 acres of lake.
Van Geons will oversee a two-person staff and said he will earn about what he made in Waterbury, when benefits and other inducements are factored into the compensation package. Van Geons was paid an annual salary of about $75,000 in Waterbury.
"I see this new position as a significant professional opportunity for me," he said. "There's a lot of potential here in Stanly County. There's a lot of room to grow."
-----
To see more of the Waterbury Republican-American, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.rep-am.com
(c) 2004, Waterbury Republican-American, Conn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.