City mulls expanding property tax deferrals to Wall Street

July 09--NORWALK -- The Common Council's Planning Committee has formed a subcommittee to explore possible expansion of the Norwalk Enterprise Zone.

At issue is whether the city should expand the zone from South Norwalk northward beyond Wall Street as recommended by Mayor Harry W. Rilling's development team. Within the current zone, which was established in 1982, property taxes are deferred on a seven-year sliding scale to encourage private investment.

"We are hoping to come up with a plan to attract specific development in specific areas with the use of tax incentives," Council Majority Leader John Kydes, a District C Democrat who chairs the committee, said Friday. "The subcommittee will be meeting in the coming weeks to begin the discussion."

Kydes, District E Democrat Thomas Livingston and at-large Republican Councilman Douglas Hempstead will sit on the subcommittee, which was formed Thursday evening at the recommendation of Norwalk Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Timothy Sheehan.

"One of the issues is to understand the economics, the demographics and the land-use issues of the whole Census tract," Sheehan said Friday. "And it's difficult to get a real understanding of all of that in a committee meeting with an agenda and you're last on the agenda."

Sheehan said the Redevelopment Agency will provide the three committee members economic and demographic information about Census Tract 437 and let them decide whether to recommend expanding the enterprise zone to include it.

"It's basically to give the subcommittee members information about why there is the potential need for incentives in this area from a development standpoint and then have them make a determination based on that information," Sheehan said.

Sheehan has described Census Tract 437, which is bordered roughly by Interstate 95, the Route 7 Connector, Route 1 and the Norwalk River, as a "distressed development area" despite recent redevelopment such as Waypointe along West Avenue.

"Granted, there's been a lot of development that's happened here," Sheehan said, "but it's concentrated in one area and it's basically the Waypointe project that's been the most significant."

He said there remains a lack of commercial activity -- offices and retail -- in the Census tract.

Planning Committee members have reviewed the proposed enterprise zone expansion for several months and expressed skepticism.

Livingston last month asked Redevelopment Agency staff "what is the need that we're trying to fix?"

Council Minority Leader Shannon O'Toole Giandurco, a District D Republican on the committee, described the initial tax deferment in the enterprise zone -- 100 percent in the first year -- as "kind of a crazy place to start in my mind."

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