FAIRFIELD COUNT Y
BUSINESS JOURNAL
YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR LOCAL BUSINESS NEWS • westfaironline.com
Vol 48, No. 29 • July 16, 2012
Johnny Appleseed of solar?
FCBJ TODAY High-speed rail route shifts, but not in Connecticut … 2 The prefab foundation for 300,000 jobs? 2
Darien business aims to sow sun power nationwide
Sikorsky lands $12B+ in contracts entering July ... 3
BY ALEXANDER SOULE
casoule@westfairinc.com
Green energy loans pegged to property taxes … 6
“Bridgeport’s been in transition for a while,” said Marianne Brunson Frisch, executive director of the Bridgeport Arts + Cultural Council (BA+CC). “But it’s poised to take off.” Now with the help of two state grants, the BA+CC launched two large-scale art projects July 12 to get people excited about coming downtown and the arts. B2 features free art and cultural programming, Economic, page 7
Johnny, page 6
Gold coastal property: a historic moment for Bridgeport? 8
Dan Sherman
In the field: Nat Lipman sets succession at Affinion … 10
House and gardens and in-between BY MARY SHUSTACK
The List: Triangulating on area bioscience innovators … 12 Also … “Will it offend enough people so that the amount of money you lose by doing it is greater than the amount of money you gain by doing it?” 16
mshustack@westfairinc.com
V
eteran landscape architect Dan Sherman has opened a new garden center in Greenwich. But don’t head to Carriage House Gardens looking for a new shovel or a bit of sod. “We don’t intend to be a garden center that has rose spray,” says Sherman. After all, there are plenty of chain and specialty stores that have that mass-market formula down.
Instead, the principal of Daniel Sherman Landscape Architect in Valhalla, N.Y., is crafting a destination garden center that he thinks will offer something distinctive. Sherman is quick to hand out a card that describes Carriage House Gardens as “a special place that features landscape architects, contractors and artists in an environment with select plant materials, garden antiques, sculptures, ornaments, stone and masonry samples.” And a wander through Carriage House House and gardens, page 6
Economic palette Bridgeport leverages the arts to bring visitors downtown BY JENNIFER BISSELL
jbissell@westfairinc.com
MEDIA PARTNER
T
he arts community is working hard to turn around Bridgeport’s image through community development. Some might think of the area as a place where crime has filled the void manufacturing left. But for the arts, it’s the place to be.
F
or Jeffrey Mayer, the dawn of Soluxe Solar arrived with the departure of a New Hampshire company from his Westport house, following the installation of photovoltaic panels – but with the system not connected to the grid and dozens of building code violations for which Mayer had to call in a Connecticut company to fix. Now it is Mayer’s Darien-based Soluxe that is looking to establish a national platform for the sale and installation of residential solar panels, as well as for small commercial systems. Mayer is one year removed from the sale of Stamford-based MXenergy, which sold electricity and natural gas in 16 states. Constellation acquired MXenergy last summer and last month jettisoned the MXenergy name. Mayer says he did not envision running his own solar company before the snafu at his own home. “Did I have it in my mind? I can’t say I did,” Mayer said. “I looked at the solar business for years and had hoped to put MX into it, but we decided to stay focused on the retail energy sector.” MXenergy regularly touted its environmental efforts – for instance planting “carbon offset” forests in Georgia and Montana, creating an online “cable channel” that tackled environmental topics and backing a Fairfield man’s efforts to convert an old Toyota to battery power. “I guess it was an epiphany when I real-
UConn tempers Stamford expectations • 13