Fairfield County Business Journal 060815

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FAIRFIELD COUNTY

BUSINESS JOURNAL June 8, 2015 | VOL. 51, No. 23

4 | CABBIES UBER-WHELMED

24 | GOOD THINGS HAPPENING

YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR REGIONAL BUSINESS NEWS

SIKORSKY TO SHUTTER BRIDGEPORT PLANT

westfaironline.com

Blight proves an adaptive foe

COMPANY CUTTING 1,400 JOBS WORLDWIDE

Keep America Beautiful makes call for action

BY BILL FALLON

BY BILL FALLON

bfallon@westfairinc.com

bfallon@westfairinc.com

SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT CORP. SAID IT will move its Bridgeport operations at 1210 South Ave. to its facility in Stratford in conjunction with an announcement it is cutting 1,400 jobs in the coming year, 9.2 percent of its global workforce of 15,200. The job cuts remain unspecified. Several reports cite facilities in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Poland as in the cross-hairs, with about 180 in Connecticut,

STAMFORD-BASED KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL, a national nonprofit that envisions a country of clean, green and beautiful communities, recently released a study titled “Charting the Multiple Meanings of Blight: A National Literature Review on Addressing the Community Impacts of Blighted Properties.” Its overarching theme is that actions bring results and inaction courts blight in manifestations from litter-strewn lots

» SIKORSKY, page 2

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch and redevelopment officials in front of a blighted Bridgeport property, the former AGI Rubber Co. building. Photo by Danielle Brody

» BLIGHT, page 6

Hard times morph into great expectations in Bridgeport A TOUR OF THE CITY’S ECO-TECH FACILITY HIGHLIGHTS PROGRESS

BY DANIELLE BRODY dbrody@westfairinc.com PARTICIPANTS IN BRIDGEPORT’S REJUVENATION SHARED their progress and initiatives toward transforming the city on a recent tour of its developing Eco-Technology Park. Investors, developers and government officials came for a daylong visit to learn about Bridgeport’s overtly green spin on development. The city, with a historic legacy of blighted industrial buildings and contaminated land, has courted companies involved in environmentally friendly projects that reduce the carbon footprint and bring jobs. The city now has a waiting list for development, according to Mayor Bill Finch, who led the tour. “We’re looking at how to repurpose facilities and turn them into green businesses,” said Jeff

Leichtman, managing director of New Havenbased Global Infrastructure Strategies. The city is beginning to rely on fuel cell energy with one active plant and two developing. “Nowhere else in the world will you see three power plants woven into the community,” Finch said. The 15-megawatt fuel cell facility on Railroad Avenue fuels nearly 15,000 homes and, by accounts and as the tour demonstrated, is considered quiet. The plant, owned by national energy company Dominon Resources Inc. and developed by FuelCell Energy of Danbury, became active last year. It is the largest taxpayer per square foot in the city at 1.5 acres. “I want to hug this thing,” Finch said on the tour. The city will have two other plants operating, a 1.4-megawatt fuel cell park at the University of

Bridgeport and a 5-megawatt renewable energy park on a former landfill at Seaside Park, which could attract companies, Finch said. “Instead of seeing broken buildings, people will see 9,000 solar panels and fuel cells,” Frank Wolak of FuelCell Energy said of Seaside Park. “It’s a complete transformation to a more modern city and it crates local jobs.” About 20,000 of Bridgeport’s nearly 60,000 houses will be fueled by fuel cells with almost no pollution, Leichtman said. Behind the Railroad Avenue power plant is a cluster of old factories that Corvus Capital Partners will renovate into a mixed-use “natural gated community between the railroad and the highway,” said Gary Flocco, managing partner » ECO-TECH, page 6


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