-: My name is Ron Pugliese.
I'm a Western Connecticut State College graduate in 1974.
I am presently the chairman of
the Western Connecticut State University Foundation Board.
In my real life, I am President and CEO of
the Naugatuck Economic Development Corporation.
My function and it's a public-private partnership,
which is somewhat of a unique way
to do economic development.
I do not work for the town, but I work with the town.
I have a board, and we have of course bylaws,
and the bylaws designate how many people should be
on the board, who those people should be,
the mayor of the town per his in position,
in this case his position is a member.
The fact that the Mayor is a Democrat,
then we have a Republican member of the town council
as a member.
And then we have various business people that are on it.
The public-private partnership is very interesting,
because my role is to do economic development
for the town of Naugatuck.
I run the industrial park which I believe
is probably the best industrial park in the state.
I say that and at times I get people from other towns
who feel theirs is better, but ours is very good.
We're full, we have one vacant building
that we're in the process of trying to sell.
We don't own that piece of property.
It is privately owned, so we're working with the owners
and commercial brokers.
We also are working on what is one of
the really exciting things
is a transit-oriented development.
By the name it obviously means
we're right next to a railroad station.
We have a piece of property right downtown
that used to be the Naugatuck rubber shop,
Naugatuck Unirail Rubber Shop.
And so the town now owns it.
We're in the process of working with a developer
to try to get this transit-oriented development
off the ground.
Transit-oriented development by definition basically
is commercial property, commercial businesses,
and residential, adjacent to a train station.
That's exactly what we're doing.
So that was an external.
That's where somebody came in,
knew we had a piece of property,
knew we were trying to do something
with that piece of property.
Somebody, a developer came in with an idea,
and we bought into it and takes a little while
to get everybody on board.
Took a little while to get the permits
and the approval from zoning and some other factors,
and that's really is the one, the job that I do best,
is I quarterback all this and we're excited about it.
We're excited about what's happening in our town.