Photo: Christian Abraham / Christian Abraham
A view of the proposed plans for the revitalization of Olson Drive, held in the Media Center of Ansonia High School in Ansonia, Conn. on Thursday May 29, 2014.
ANSONIA — He’s cut taxes and sewer fees in each of his first three years.
He’s obtained $10 million in grants and funding to redevelop the downtown, rehab a main thoroughfare and help remediate a vacant factory site.
And not long before General Electric decided to leave the state, Ansonia Mayor
David Cassetticonvinced the 166-year-old
Farrel-Pomeni Corp. to stay.
Now Cassetti, the mayor of one of the state’s smallest cities, is starting to make a bigger name for himself.
At 11 a.m. Sunday, WFSB will feature Cassetti on
Dennis House’s weekly “Face the State” program. Also appearing on the broadcast is New Canaan First Selectman
Robert MallozziIII.
“I was asked a lot of questions about what we’re doing in Ansonia and the impact of what’s happening in the state is having on us,” Cassetti, who led two Republican landslides in his heavily-Democratic city of 20,000, said of the recorded TV show.
Cassetti said he told House he’s most proud of keeping Farrel, a company that called Ansonia home since the Civil War and once employed thousands working seven days a week, from packing up and moving to Kansas.
“I told them ‘no you’re not,” the mayor recalled of a Jan., 2014 meeting with the company. “ ‘Tell me what I have to do to get you to stay?’ ”
Farrel wanted a new site with access. Cassetti had the site — R.D. Scinto’s Fountain Lake Commerce Park — but it needed an access road. So,the mayor said,he traveled to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to meet and plead with the
U.S. Economic Development Administration and the state’s federal legislators for money.
“We got $1.1 million for the access road,” Cassetti said. “Now Farrel is building a state-of-the-art facility there, and I have three other 20-acre parcels for anyone else that wants to come here. I’m hoping to see a rebirth of manufacturing in Ansonia.”
The mayor said he also talked on “Face the State” about the money the city’s gotten to begin remediation and demolition of the 60-acre, vacant Ansonia Copper and Brass — another century-old foundry.
“That’ll be a gem,” Cassetti said. “It runs into Route 8 ,which leads to I-95 and I-84.”
Closer to City Hall, the nearly vacant Main Street he inherited is filling up with restaurants, specialty shops and apartments.
“I’ve got a developer ready to spend $9-10 million to turn the city-owned ATP and Palmer buildings into street-level businesses with upper-floor apartments,” Cassetti said. “Hopefully, that will be completed in the next two-three years, and they’ll be back on the tax rolls.”
Elsewhere, Cassetti said, nearly 60 percent of the design for a refurbished Wakelee Avenue — the two-lane road that runs from Seymour to Derby — is completed.
“We’ll have a public hearing in March, and hopefully go out to bid shortly after that,” he said.
March is also when Ansonia hopes to bid out demolition of the few remaining buildings in the city’s once crime-infested public housing project on Olson Drive.
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