Waterbury, Conn., Hires New Economic Development Director

Dec. 3--A Waterbury native and 1994 graduate of Wilby High School has been hired as the city's new economic development director.
Robert M. Van Geons, 27, who has been the economic development director in Ledyard since January, began his new job in Waterbury Monday.
Van Geons, who will earn about $75,000 per year in salary and benefits, will handle business recruitment and retention in the city. He will be headquartered in an office at the Greater Waterbury Chamber of Commerce, but also plans to maintain a presence at City Hall.
The position was created in late July when the state and city jointly announced the formation of a new economic development program called the Waterbury Economic Resource Center, seeded with $250,000 in state and local funding.
"He came across as a very organized individual who understands exactly what needs to be done in Waterbury," said Waterbury Mayor Michael J. Jarjura. "He's from here, he knows the city and he's familiar with its strengths and problems. He's very well-positioned to hit the ground running."
Susan C. Radocchio, the chairman of the chamber's board of directors, said Van Geons' knowledge and experience belie his young age. "He's a very dynamic and energetic individual and he had the background and experience we were looking for," she said, noting that Van Geons was chosen from a field of 52 candidates.
Van Geons plans to spend much of his first 30 days on the job reaching out to business and municipal leaders throughout the area to let them know what the economic resource center is and what it offers.
"I'll probably be spending a lot of time just introducing myself to people and building lines of communication at first," he said.
Other short-term goals include developing materials to help market the city; creating a Web site as a far-reaching marketing tool; compiling a directory of the city's industrial parks and brownfield sites and completing a labor-market study of the area.
Because the economic resource center was conceived as a two-person operation, Van Geons said he will begin the process of hiring an assistant within the next two or three weeks.
"Waterbury has a lot of positives in its favor, including its location, its infrastructure and the price and availability of real estate," he said. "The biggest part of my job is getting that message out to as wide an audience as possible. The most important function of this office is to spread the word, to let everybody know, 'This is where you need to be.'"
A 1997 graduate of Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., Van Geons began his professional career while still an undergraduate, working from 1996 to 1999 as the planning director in Spencer, N.C., a town about 40 miles northeast of Charlotte with a population of about 3,500.
He then moved back to his native state 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. Two years later, in January, he headed north again to fill the economic development director's position in Ledyard.
"We're going to miss him; he had a big impact here in a relatively short period of time," said Deborah Donlon, director of administrative services and an assistant to Ledyard Mayor Wesley Johnson Jr. Among other things, Van Geons wrote the proposal that enabled Ledyard to receive a $500,000 Small Town Economic Assistance grant from the state, Donlon said. "Waterbury's gain is definitely Ledyard's loss," she said.
Being named the city's economic development director completes an eventful fall for Van Geons, who was married Oct. 5. His new wife, Tara, a faculty member at the Rotella Interdistrict Magnet School in Waterbury, is a Crosby High School graduate. The newlyweds are in the process of selling their Niantic home and will live in Waterbury, he said.
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