Dugatto Suggests New Initiative For Downtown Derby

Democratic Mayoral candidate Anita Dugatto Friday indicated her support for a new approach to redeveloping the Derby downtown area, featuring full participation in the Connecticut Main Street Center program.

“Derby must grow its tax base and make our downtown a vibrant thriving home to new and diverse businesses that offer opportunities for our citizens and workers,” Dugatto said in a prepared statement.

“As a small businesswoman in the downtown area, my focus will be on empowering other small businesses to come and join the effort to grow our local economy.”

Derby should become a designated member of the Connecticut Main Street Center program and embrace a new approach to rebuilding downtown from the bottom up. Main Street’s proven Four Point Approach offers a smart development blueprint for Derby’s downtown:

• Organizing our downtown businesses, potential investors, and community members to foster cooperation and consensus to construct a framework for smart growth;

• Promoting the downtown through special events, retail promotions, and specific branding to enhance its image and expose opportunities;

• Designing an improved physical appeal through new construction and the rehabilitation of historic and under-utilized buildings;

• Restructuring the economic value of downtown Derby by encouraging diversity among current and new businesses, which fit the Lower Naugatuck Valley economic marketplace.

The city’s full and active participation in the Main Street Center program, its Downtown Revitalization Institute, and Preservation of Place Grant Programs will surely bring benefits to Derby.

With access to educational workshops and training sessions, and through working with its broad range of downtown experts in Connecticut and around the nation, Derby will be able to lay the framework for sustainable economic and community development.

“We need to renew our commitment to revitalizing downtown. This was supposed to have been a high priority for Derby,” Dugatto said. ​“However, Derby’s Redevelopment Agency conducted only four meetings, for a grand total of just 57 minutes, in the last two years.”

“I will seek a new approach by working across party lines to bring people together from diverse businesses to solve the challenges facing our city. I pledge to put my own successful small business experience to work,” she said. ​“By making a commitment to the Main Street Center program, we can make a fresh and intelligent start to growing our local economy.”

The writer is running for Derby mayor as a Democrat.