Norwalk’s Workforce Training Center seeks trade school tenants

Last month, 25 Van Zant Acquisitions LLC received unanimous approvals from the Norwalk municipal government to turn its 25 Van Zant St. commercial property into a vocational training space.

The five-story, 265,000-square-foot building, now called the “Workforce Training Center,” offers spaces ranging from 1,400 to 30,000 square feet. The five-acre property has 500 parking spaces, 24/7 security, an on-site restaurant and caterer, with local amenities including a bus stop at the building; the property is also a short walk to the East Norwalk Metro North train station.

Winthrop E. Baum, the site”™s owner and developer, noted that the property has always been a reflection of economic trends ”” when it opened in 1923, it was a hat and uniform producing facility that was part of the region”™s larger manufacturing environment. Today, he added, it is being positioned to highlight the new importance being traced on vocational education.

“We’re looking for vocational schools,” Baum said about the property”™s potential tenants. “There is a shortage of that type of education in our community, and I think it’s necessary to bring that back. Whether it automotive arts or mechanical arts or culinary arts, hospitality, nursing. Even English as a second language, would be helpful to the community here.”

Baum cited Germany”™s approach to vocational education as the inspiration for the Workforce Training Center.

“They have a very unique program in how they delineate where children are going through education,” he said. “What’s interesting is when a child is 12 or 13 years old, they’re given an aptitude test and their performance in that test determines whether they go on to university or they get put into a trade academy.

“In the trade academy,” he continued, “it’s based on industries in their home region. The interesting part is 80% of the children go on to trade school and only 20% go on to university. That was an eye-opening statistic and I thought, ”˜Wow, that’s the missing component in our workforce ”” we have no workforce training.”™”

Baum worked for more than three years to secure municipal approval on this concept, and he noted there has been a “national campaign to attract schools from all over the country to provide a variety of vocations” at the Workforce Training Center. He stated there has already been “quite a bit of interest” from vocational schools, but the ongoing pandemic was disrupting his efforts to secure leases.

“If it weren’t for Covid, we would be signing leases already,” he said. “But Covid has created a delay for the rollout of our number programming.”

One key element regarding Baum”™s positioning of the Workforce Training Center is the conspicuous absence of any public funds in making the property ready for its new goals.

“We don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “I think it can be adequately sustained by the private sector.”

Baum said he expected the Workforce Training Center to be “oversubscribed” within a year and confided that he was already “marking out a template” for similar centers around Fairfield County.