Commercial Property Owners, Brokers Invited to Citiesense Forum In Derby

Derby City Hall is teaming with a New Haven-based tech company to market commercial properties in Derby.

The city recently signed a $3,000 contract with Citiesense, a company founded in the spring of 2013 by Starling Childs, an urban planner with a master’s degree from Yale.

Citiesense will be creating an interactive online database for available commercial properties in Derby.

It’s a new tool to help economic development, Derby Mayor Anita Dugatto said, where people can go to research available properties, or to track development projects in progress.

Dugatto is inviting property owners, business people, investors and real estate brokers to learn more about Citisense during an info session scheduled for Wednesday, June 24 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the second floor of Derby City Hall at 1 Elizabeth St.

Commercial properties owners will be able to input property data for free, according to Dugatto’s office.

The information will be put on a website, arranged in a way that is user-friendly. Potential investors and businesses will be able to go to a single place on the web and see maps, photos, square footage, assessor info — along with links and contact info for property brokers.

Citiesense will also post the city’s land use policies and zoning map info, creating a one-stop website for potential investors or businesses. The land use and zoning map info is important because it spells out what can be done — and not done — at a given property.

All that information is available on the web already — but it’s not in one, easily accessible place.

The article continues after the promotional flier from the city.

Citiesense Forum

Childs referred to it as data fragmentation.” The stuff is out there, but it’s not always easy to find.

That is one of our core focuses — to create a more user friendly portal for all this information, and then allow the private sector to use it in whatever way they need to,” Childs said.

A key to making the data useful — commercial property owners and real estate brokers willing to use the database.

Click here for the Citiesense website to get an idea of what the company does.

Click here for Q&A Childs did with The Whiteboard.”

Click here to check out the Citiesense section of the new Derby website.

Like many other cities and towns, Derby has a varied stock of available commercial properties,” according to a prepared statement from the mayor’s office. These dormant properties hold potential for jobs, increased commerce, and additional tax revenue.”

Citiesense is already used in New Haven and Bridgeport.

For more info on the June 24 info session contact the mayor’s office at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 203.736.1450.

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