WATERBURY AWARDED $200K GRANT TO STUDY FREIGHT STREET CORRIDOR

WATERBURY, Conn. – Mayor Neil M. O’Leary praised the announcement Tuesday by Governor Dannel P. Malloy that Waterbury will be awarded a $200,000 state grant to assess and determine the cost of cleaning the Freight Street corridor.

Waterbury recently competed among 34 applicants that requested a total of $15 million. In the end, 12 applications were chosen to share $7 million.

 “I’m proud of the collaborative effort that resulted in Waterbury being awarded this grant,” Mayor O’Leary said. “It was an extremely competitive process. Receiving this grant says a lot about the hard work of everyone on our team.”

The Mayor led a team of representatives from Waterbury that traveled to Hartford earlier this year to make the City’s case for the grant. Among team members were CEO Todd Montello of the Waterbury Development Corporation, Mayoral Advisor Kevin M. DelGobbo, noted land-use attorney Gary B. O’Connor and the City’s environmental consultant Arthur Bogen.

Waterbury leads the state in identifying and redeveloping brownfields, which are contaminated industrial sites that have been abandoned.

“Remediating and redeveloping these sites helps jumpstart local economies by rehabilitating areas, putting them back into use for development and creating jobs for residents,” Malloy said.

The grant will give Waterbury the opportunity to assess the level of contamination on the site and bring it forward to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

“For 30 years this property has sat dormant. My administration is moving forward with plans to redevelop it, bringing business and residential development that will add to our tax rolls,” O’Leary said. “It’s been a long time coming.”

The Freight Street corridor has a development potential like no other site in the Central Naugatuck Valley because it sits in the heart of a transportation hub: Route 8 and Interstate 84 are literally seconds away by car, the Metro-North train station is just around the corner on Meadow Street, bus locations are nearby, and it will be near the planned Naugatuck River Greenway.

 “The Freight Street corridor represents our last major redevelopment opportunity with the potential to transform our City,” Mayor O’Leary said. “We are grateful to Governor Malloy for recognizing the importance of Freight Street to our City’s future and for all he has done and continues to do for Waterbury.”