Norwalk builds on development successes

The 125 attendees at the recent 2016 Economic Outlook & Development Review event at the Norwalk Inn & Conference Center in Norwalk in a two-hour lunch bore testimony through applause and rapt attention to the thrall of the dismal science ”“ economics ”“ as practiced in Norwalk, where it lately is a sunny subject.

“A lot of people are moving from the state,” said Norwalk”™s Director of Economic Development Elizabeth Stocker. “But we”™re seeing a lot of people moving into Norwalk.”

Norwalk was portrayed as a city with much already accomplished toward accommodating the ongoing shift to urbanization and much in the pipeline. Its plans were laid out briefly in remarks by Mayor Harry Rilling ”“ introduced by chamber Chairwoman Terri Polley as the business community’s biggest backer ”“ and in more detail by Stocker and Norwalk Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Tim Sheehan.

All were upbeat.

The event was hosted by the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Webster Bank.

The lunch’s keynote speaker was nationally known economist and, more pertinently, Webster Bank Economic Adviser Nicholas S. Perna. Webster”™s Regional President Jeff Klaus introduced Perna, citing his economic and Borscht-belt bona fides; Perna may stand alone in economics as a liberal quoter of Henny Youngman, he of the violin and the one-liners.

“The doctor called,” Perna said later in a declared moment of levity. “He said your check came back. So did my arthritis.” (Enough time has passed that Perna asked how many knew of Henny Youngman.)

More seriously, Perna said there was not a time in the last 20 years ”“ dating to the early 1990s administration of Gov. Lowell Weicker ”“ that Connecticut was not in a fiscal crisis. “Unfortunately, we’re in a period of permanent fiscal crisis,” he said. One suggestion: “I’d like to see a spending cap we have to live by with very few exceptions.”

Sheehan and Stocker, if drier, offered plenty of easy-to-digest economic development news.

Sheehan said there was an effort to “stitch and strengthen” Norwalk’s urban character. In some instances land use regulations “must be reconsidered,” he said, terming some of them “dated and cumbersome.”

Sheehan said a challenge for city officials, who must think a decade and more into the future, was to use land use planning and not to be driven by individual projects.

Sheehan checked off a list of growth accomplishments that included the mixed-use Waypointe District on and around West Avenue; the proposed GGP 700,000-square-foot mall to include Nordstrom and Bloomingdale”™s department stores, plus 80-100 other retailers and restaurants, a 150-room boutique hotel and a public area of two exterior pedestrian plazas and three interior courts for gathering and public events. Also benefitting the public in the GGP plan is streetscaping, education space, performance areas and public art.

The evolving Norwalk is one in search of new urban uses, Sheehan said, and one that is “less obsessed with parking.”

Stocker ran down a list of a dozen site-specific successes that included Frontier Communications taking 85,000 square feet in the Merritt 7 office park and Waypointe, where incoming tenants earn an average $160,000 per year. She said the city had both the labor force and the transportation to attract growth-potential companies.