Jasmine Wright Photo
The Ansonia Shopping Center at 403 - 495 Main St. has sat mostly empty for years.
ANSONIA – A proposed ordinance in Ansonia would require commercial landlords to pay annual fines if they don’t fill their properties.
The ordinance would also impose these fines on vacant residential properties that haven’t been lived in or worked on for six months.
The Board of Aldermen referred the ordinance to its ordinance committee at their regular meeting on Dec. 10. It requires commercial landlords to register their properties as “vacant” if there hasn’t been any business for six months. Then, it imposes a series of gradually increasing annual fines.
A public hearing will need to be scheduled before the ordinance can become law.
Mayor David Cassetti’s administration first proposed going after landlords in July, after two major storefronts – Stop & Shop and Bob’s Stores – separately announced that they were leaving Ansonia.
Jasmine Wright Photo
Ansonia's Stop & Shop at 100 Division St. closed in October. It was the only major grocery store in town.
Stop & Shop’s departure has left an empty, 61,000-square foot shell on Division Street. Meanwhile, the Ansonia Shopping Center on Main Street has been emptying for years – Bob’s Stores’ closure follows the departures of Rite Aid (in 2023) and The Big Y (in 2019), leaving Marshall’s/HomeGoods as the largest remaining store.
City officials hope the new ordinance will force the owners of these properties to fill the spaces.
“We want to make sure we’re applying uniform expectations – that property owners are accountable for their properties if they go vacant,” city corporation counsel John Marini told the Aldermen.
After six months of vacancy, the ordinance requires property owners to pay $500 to register their property as “vacant.” Then, they must renew the registration each year until the space is used. The renewal fee is $1,500 for the first year, $3,000 for the second, and $5,000 each year after.
The ordinance defines a storefront as “any area within a building or structure that may be individually leased or rented for any purpose other than residential use.” Marini said the exact definition may need to be further defined – it’s not clear, for instance, whether the Ansonia Shopping Center owner would pay two separate fines for the former Big Y and the former Bob’s Stores, which are connected to each other, or whether the owner would pay a single fine.
Alan G. Schwartz, the owner of the Ansonia Shopping Center, told The Valley Indy in a phone call that the measure is counterproductive. He said it isn’t business-friendly, and that he’s been trying to attract tenants to the plaza.
Cassetti has accused Schwartz in the past of refusing to fill up the plaza, and of passing up on an opportunity to get Hobby Lobby to move in.
The ordinance would also fine owners who fail to register their vacant properties at “less than $100 and not more than $2,000” for each day that they fail to register.
The City of Ansonia is not the first government to threaten fines.
In 2018, voters in Oakland, Calif. approved a measure that created an annual vacancy tax of $3,000 to $6,000 on residential and nonresidential properties. Click here to learn about the Oakland law, which includes 10 exemptions.
Bridgeport officials discussed vacancy taxes in 2014, according to The Connecticut Post, and Hartford’s city council talked about it in 2021.
In 2023, state Sen. Herron Gaston introduced a bill that would have imposed a vacancy tax on residential properties other than single-family and duplexes. That bill did not appear to make it out of committee, according to this link.
Jasmine Wright Photo
The closed Bob's Stores on Dec. 10.
