New Business on the Agenda

New business was on the agenda when Waterford’s Economic Development Commission met Wednesday night. In this economy, to have four new businesses moving into town is definitely good news.

Indeed, as Commission Chairman Rodney A. Pinkham Jr. noted, “To have any development these days is not too bad."

Although some of the new businesses have experienced delays for a variety of reasons, they all seem to be back on track and moving forward.

On October 17, the Planning & Zoning Commission accepted applications for changes to allow Charter Oak Federal Credit Union to move into what is currently an industrial zone at 1055 Hartford Turnpike, and for Subway to establish a sandwich stop in the historic one-room school house, now long vacant, at 166 and 168 Waterford Parkway North across from Lowe’s Home Improvement store.

A public hearing on a zone change to allow the former and a site plan review for the latter will be held at the Planning & Zoning Commission’s next meeting on October 24. However, the Economic Development Commission doesn’t anticipate much, if any, opposition to either proposal. 

The biggest concern with Subway is parking for delivery trucks, which Waterford Town Planner Mark Wujtewicz says “is tricky” but doable. The zoning change required for , meanwhile, would merely allow corporate offices and commercial banking in an industrial zone.

As the regulations had been changed previously to allow for a family entertainment center (a project that ultimately fell through) in the same location, “Quite frankly, I don’t see a problem with this,” said Wujtewicz.

Wujtewicz is happy to report that other projects are moving forward too. Books-a-Million is slated to move into the empty space once filled by at Waterford Commons sometime in November and is working on renovating what used to be Charley’s Restaurant at Crystal Mall with the goal of opening by Thanksgiving.

“It’s going to be tight but they’re plugging along,” said Wujtewicz.

Thinking Ahead

Though much of the meeting focused on the present state of business in Waterford, commission members spent a considerable amount of time talking about Waterford’s economic future.

Dominion’s Millstone nuclear power plant is a major employer in the town and Waterford relies on heavily on the taxes it pays to cover municipal expenses. In the not too distant future, however, Dominion’s tax contributions will decrease. When that happens, members noted, Waterford needs to be prepared.

Waterford’s , which will be officially published on January 1, 2012, suggest a plan for future economic development. However, as Wujtewicz said, it’s not a great departure from the previous 10-year-plan because many proposals in the last plan were never implemented.

The new plan, which Wujtewicz helped prepare, has a section on implementation that lays out which governing bodies ought to be responsible for which projects. It also goes a step further by setting a schedule for meetings over the coming year that will require each agency to provide a progress report on the projects for which it is responsible. 

At the meeting, Pinkham suggested that the commission could enhance that by providing a roadmap for achieving goals that also measures success. At his job at Electric Boat, Pinkham uses a computer program that does just that. With a few modifications, he thinks that same program might be useful for the Economic Development Commission.  

By setting goals and then imputing data, such as the amount of available commercial space, its location and square footage, its assessed tax value, along with other infrastructure and utility information, he said, it could be used to measure the success of both existing and new developments.

“A lot of times we support a project that we think will work,” Pinkham said. However, he noted, without a way to accurately measure success that figures out what worked, what didn’t, and why, even a booming business doesn’t offer much insight for future development.

Pinkham thinks the program he has in mind could help. For it to work, however, the commission has to set goals, look at the variables, and come up with meaningful measures of success.