Enfield Patch Questions the Candidates - Town Council At-Large, Part 1

On Oct. 12, 2011, Enfield Patch sent a series of questions to all 25 candidates for the Enfield Town Council and Board of Education. Responses from the candidates are being published throughout this week.

Today will feature comments from at-large candidates for Town Council. This article will highlight answers to the first question posed; later today, responses to questions two and three will be published.

Key: D - Democrat; R - Republican; I - Incumbent

Question 1: What ideas do you have to stimulate business growth in Enfield, particularly in the re-use of the town's numerous empty commercial properties?

Cindy Mangini (D-I): We need to make it more attractive for businesses to come to Enfield in order to stimulate our economic climate. This means we must work hard to help facilitate local businesses’ plans and objectives. Furthermore, our town’s development office needs to be more “user friendly”, and this can be accomplished through better communication with local business leaders and town staff. Another way we can stimulate growth in Enfield is to better advertise our empty commercial properties. An example of this is Moe’s restaurant. This is where a local franchise renovated an abandoned property which once was a bank and turned the property into a viable, family-friendly restaurant. To encourage this type of growth, we should work towards making our empty commercial properties appealing through such things as tax incentives and credits. This will bring jobs into our community and show our residents that Enfield is a vibrant and friendly place to live, work and socialize.

Greg Stokes (R): One of the things that I stated when I first announced that I was running for Town Council is that Enfield  continues to have many of the required ingredients needed for positive business and commercial growth. We have an inventory of buildings for manufacturing use, access from main highways and we’re centrally located between New York City and Boston. We have a great advantage in having a local community college that is strong in providing a skilled work force. Our  town leadership and staff  have become more proactive with their customer service, which is critical to attract business and even families to Enfield.  I think we can step up our efforts further by marketing directly to businesses looking to relocate or expand. We have to work with our State Representatives and State Senator to generate interest in Enfield. We need our Congressman to be an advocate in Washington, D.C. in getting businesses in Connecticut and Enfield. I am not one that likes all types of tax incentive to draw in businesses, but when used effectively it can be a useful tool in enticing interest. The final result has to be a long term commitment from the employer and securing permanent  jobs for the Enfield workforce.

Bob LeMay (D): I feel that maintaining open communication with local businesses is the most important element that will stimulate business growth. This will allow our town to better understand the needs of the business community, and this will then help our town develop a plan that will foster economic growth. Open communication and working in partnership with local businesses is something that will lead to mutual success for our entire town. In order to eliminate our recent suburban blight, our town must pro-actively recruit businesses to relocate to Enfield in order to fill our many empty commercial properties.  There are many ways for us to make this work. For instance, engaging our local Chamber of Commerce is a great way to reach out to the business community in order to encourage growth from businesses throughout the state and nation. This will then show that Enfield is an ideal business friendly town.

Ken Nelson (R-I): I believe the best way to stimulate business growth in Enfield is to continue to hold the line on spending and still maintain the level of service residents and businesses are accustomed to. This has been beneficial for the town in the past as we are one of the lowest towns in Connecticut in regards to unoccupied commercial real estate. In addition, this past year has been one of the most profitable for Enfield in its collection of Building Permit fees. This proves that businesses are willing to invest and expand within our town.

Patrick Crowley (D-I): I do believe helping business to locate or expand here by providing tax abatements is a positive step. We in Enfield are faced with the same problem as other CT towns, taxes in this state. Our geographic location, a large supply of qualified residents in the work force, with the ability to provide training for those who need it, helps tremendously. It is important for our Town staff to identify possible tenants, to pursue them and promote the Town of Enfield. As community volunteers, we as Councilmen have limited roles in the initial involvement with these companies. Town staff is usually the first line of involvement; however any assistance that I could provide, I would.

Bill Lee (R-I): In my opinion, Enfield’s retail climate has weathered the downturns of the last few years reasonably well. In an annual market conditions study published each September by KeyPoint Partners LLC, Enfield’s retail vacancy rate was reported to be about 5.7% of the 2.9 million square feet, which is the third lowest vacancy rate in the region. The most recent report pegs the regional vacancy rate at an improving 11.8%. While Enfield merchants may be continuing to struggle with things like on-line competition, they have not vacated the Enfield market and based on 2011 trends, are keeping just about all of our plazas and storefronts occupied.

Enfield has improved the process and the manner in which a building project is undertaken and managed.  To further stimulate growth and interest in Enfield as a place to start or grow a business, we need to understand and promote our market data better.  As soon as the details of the 2010 Census are released, I believe we need to spend some effort to evaluate and understand what the data shows. What are our demographic trends? There’s not been a dramatic drop in population, and we know homes in Enfield are owned by families of an increasing age group - so what are the likely impacts to the municipality, and how does that translate to our economy?   

We have ample neighborhood-level opportunities for small local business activity in Thompsonville, Hazardville, Scitico and the North Thompsonville gateway zones.  Providing technical assistance to entrepreneurs may be critical, but also providing targeted incentives for the types of businesses that would coincide with rejuvenating a neighborhood might also help. I still appreciate the principles and structure that programs like the Main Street USA and the Connecticut Main Street Center promote and teach, and I continue to support their adoption by the Enfield community as a way to use heritage and historic preservation as means to develop economic activity.

There are some notable larger commercial buildings empty including the Westvaco site, the plaza next to North Thompsonville Fire Department (I’d say Roller World, but it’s had many lives), and substantial potential along King Street in the southwest corridor. Ideas here could include tax-increment-financing to facilitate the public improvements that a project may require. The State’s local energy production partnerships are worth exploring so that the Town, industry, and perhaps the Corrections Department benefit from price stabilization over a long period of time.

There are plenty of small things that Enfield has been doing better at that have big impacts on the local business climate: keeping streets cleaner, keeping trees trimmed better, improving lighting conditions, improving traffic signals, cross walks and parking areas. In the future, improved way-signage, and promotion of our various destinations and amenities can improve the “Enfield experience” of a visitor, resident, or business recruiter.

I look forward to the improvements of the general economic and lending conditions so we can revisit the Town’s redevelopment of the Higgns School building, and the private redevelopment of the Strand, the North School building, and the Brainard School building. 

Tom Arnone (D): We need to offer financial assistance, such as grants encouraging businesses to relocate to Enfield, in order to stimulate economic growth.  Grants are a good method to entice businesses and corporations to move to a particular area, and it fosters municipal revitalization. In particular, we need to use grants as a means to encourage businesses to relocate into abandoned buildings as a method to combat the suburban plight problem that faces Enfield.

Carol Hall (R-I): To start with, we have a great Economic Development office. This department works diligently to seek out and collaborate with local business  looking to expand and grow. The perfect examples here are Lego and Eppendorf. These efforts became reality when our town hall staff working hard to streamline the process brought these opportunities to the council. By bringing these opportunities forward, we were able to elicit tax abatement plans and employment requirement numbers to benefit the town in the long run. These business will grow and flourish in the future which will help offset the private homeowner's taxes. Another example of some of the abandoned buildings being utilized is the lease to CREC of the Harriet Beecher Stowe building. This was a school that was going to be left empty with the town's restructuring plan. We nnew this training school was looking to grow and expand and this was the perfect fit. We are always looking for these kind of opportunities to utilize these buildings.