Waterbury On Target To Get $5 Million Boost – Bill 241 – Testimony from Jim Smith, President of HWSF.
Source: By Steven Goode, Staff Writer Republican American
Date: March 19, 2026
WATERBURY-Since 2022, the Waterbury Land Bank Authority has been quietly going about its charge of identifying and returning distressed properties in more than a dozen struggling city neighborhood to productive use.
The authority, as an economic development tool, has acquired and stabilized 32, parcels over the past four years and has sold 13 parcels with several more sales pending. The agency is also analyzing several more for sale, and holding several for future use or development, said Waterbury Land Bank Authority Executive Director Nancy MacMillan.
But land costs money.
The authority has received more than $1 million operating funding and capital support from the city since its inception and was also awarded more than $1 million from Connecticut's congressional delegation in 2024.
Now a bill that raised by the legislature's commerce committee could provide a $5 million boost to the agency's efforts. Land banks in Hartford and New Haven have received identical grants from the state.
Senate Bill 241 is now with the committee on finance, revenue and bonding after receiving a unanimous favorable vote in the commerce committee.
If approved by the finance committee, the bill would then go to the state senate for a vote. If approved there it will be voted on by the house and move on to Gov. Ned Lamont's desk for signing and then put on the agenda for the state bonding commission.
MacMillan said the agency is already showing the impact of its efforts through litter reduction, housing rehabilitation and putting properties back on the tax rolls. But increased state funding would enable the land bank to hire staff, accelerate its acquisitions and dispositions of city and private parcels and initiate a robust housing rehabilitation program, she said.
The possible leap in funding would come at an opportune time as the land bank has embarked on its first housing development project in the blighted Walnut Orange Walsh - also known as WOW - neighborhood, which is one of 13 that were identified as areas of extreme need due to the factors that cause blight, including a high level of poverty, abandoned properties and crime.
Another factor, MacMillan said, was that as the agency started analyzing parcels to acquire, they saw that they could assemble parcels in the neighborhood, either for the land bank's own development or for other developers to build affordable housing.
At a February public hearing on the bill, James C. Smith, chairman of the Waterbury based Harold Webster Smith Foundation, testified about the effectiveness of urban land banks in slowing the advance of blight and improving life for city residents.
Smith, whose foundation also provides funding to the Waterbury authority, said that properly funded urban land banks can support their municipalities concerted efforts to reverse blight's pernicious effects, including declining property values, increased crime, persistent public health and safety hazards, social erosion and reduced tax revenue.
We can bend the 'net new blighted property' curve by effectively recycling vacant, abandoned and dilapidated properties into single and multi-family homes owned by community residents or rented from vetted, responsible landlords," Smith said.
He added that the sizing property values, increased crime, persistent public health and safety hazards, social erosion and reduced tax revenue.
We can bend the 'net new blighted property' curve by effectively recycling vacant, abandoned and dilapidated properties into single and multi-family homes owned by community residents or rented from vetted, responsible landlords," Smith said. bend the 'net new blight curve' I mentioned, as dozens more properties can be processed and restored to productive use in three to five years," Smith testified.
Developer Bryan Dufresne is also a supporter of what the land bank is doing.
Dufresne said he purchased a vacant, dilapidated residential lot at 159 Cooke St. from the land bank in 2025. The property was adjacent to another vacant parcel that he planned to develop into rental housing.
"Purchasing the adjacent lot from the land bank allowed me to substantially increase the amount of affordable apartment units that I could get approval to build from the city on the newly conjoined lots" Dufresne said, adding that the acquisition also allowed him to plan the apartment building construction to make better use of the limited city space to benefit the future tenants and passers-by.
Dufresne said that the process of purchasing land through the land bank was straight forward, but added that he had a relatively difficult task of getting zoning board approvals and surveys completed while being under contract with the land bank.
However, he said, MacMillan proved to be very helpful.
"Her knowledge of the local market, city regulations and her background in real estate development helped to assist me handsomely through the transaction," Dufresne said. "She was also prompt, willing to suggest solutions when speed bumps arose and made it very clear that she is passionate about making Waterbury into a community that anyone would be proud to live in."
State Sen. Joan Hartley - D Waterbury - said she supports the funding for the land bank for several reasons.
Hartley believes that cities can't do it all on their own and that land banks can partner with them to fight blight and reinvigorate urban neighborhoods. But she also believes the Waterbury Land Bank will be a success because they were seeded by Harold Webster Smith Foundation, which has a long and positive track record for this type of work.
"This is a very solid model," she said."
Jim Smith Testimony
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Commerce Committee Hearing
Senator Hartley, Madame Chair – Thank you for including an Act Concerning the Waterbury Land Bank on today's agenda, and for inviting me to testify on the land bank’s behalf.
I'm Jim Smith, chairman of the Waterbury-based Harold Webster Smith Foundation, a legacy foundation devoted to community revitalization, which has been a long-time proponent for CT-based urban land banks and is the inaugural funder of the Waterbury Land Bank.
Joining me today to answer any questions is WLB Exec Director Nancy MacMillan (and WLB Chair Fred Luedke, a lifelong contributor to Waterbury’s well-being).
WLB’s Mission is to strengthen neighborhoods by returning distressed property to productive use, promoting economic development, increasing real property values, and improving the quality of life for Waterbury residents.
I filed written testimony and WLB filed a slide presentation that I’m screen-sharing now. I’ll leave the Sources and Uses summary slide in place for now and just talk for a few minutes about the funding request. Then I’ll briefly skim the slides, which are available for your detailed review, as am I, if you have questions beyond what we cover today.
The $5mm in requested state bond funds is equal in amount to the initial grants made to the Hartford and New Haven land banks. It would be used by DECD to provide a grant-in-aid to the Waterbury Land Bank Authority to acquire, maintain, remediate or develop real property, and for related projects in the city of Waterbury.
WLB is an independent, tax exempt 501-C-3 organization formed in compliance with the state Land Bank law enacted in 2019. Waterbury then passed a land bank ordinance in 2021, which enabled creation of WLB and the appointment of a board of directors approved by the Mayor and the Board of Alderman. The WLB board in turn appoints WLB’s officers and oversees its activities.
After signing an MOU with the City, details of which appear in the presentation, WLB was chartered in 2022, and went to work.
The Land Bank’s mission is to strengthen local neighborhoods by acquiring, remediating and returning distressed properties to productive use, including by containing the ugly scourge of blight that poses a dire threat to the stability of our neighborhoods and to the viability of our distressed community.
WLB has a stable annual budget of about $500k, expected to increase as available capital increases, funded primarily by the City and the HWS Foundation, and augmented by other generous funders, also noted in the presentation. Our primary market is the thirteen inner-core neighborhoods closest to downtown, where the incidence of blighted properties is high. Within those 13 neighborhoods are 16 ‘qualified census tracts’, defined as tracts where either 50% or more of the households have an income less than 60% of the AMI or have a poverty rate of more than 20%.
Properly capitalized urban land banks support their municipalities’ concerted efforts to slow and ultimately reverse the pernicious effects of blight that we’re familiar with, including declining property values, increased crime, persistent public health and safety hazards, social erosion and reduced tax revenue. Collaborative cities can bend the ‘blighted property’ curve by recycling vacant, abandoned and dilapidated properties into single and multi-family homes owned by community residents or rented from vetted, responsible landlords. The tipping point is when the number of annually remediated parcels exceeds newly designated blight parcels, effectively reducing the blight inventory. We will measure this in Waterbury.
The size of the blight threat in a given community can be broadly measured by tax liens. WLB estimates that Waterbury has over 1,000 liened properties, of which several hundred have residential liens that exceed appraised value. We’ve conducted an assessment of nearly 300 properties to determine their level of blight. These properties represent not only visible blight, but also a substantial and ongoing loss of municipal tax revenue. Resolving liened properties and returning them to productive use allows the City to convert dormant parcels into revenue-generating assets, directly supporting the tax base.
Even without meaningful capital support to date, which is the lifeblood of any successful land bank, WLB has proven itself as a worthy candidate for state funding, having acquired over 30 blighted properties in the last two years, thanks to its extraordinarily productive working relationship with the City. These properties are in various stages of remediation and disposition. The land bank expects to match that number in 2026. The $5mm grant will go a long way to bend the ‘blighted property curve’ I described, because it will directly enable remediation of more than 100 additional properties in three to five years. Our efforts are intentionally data-driven, focused on reducing the net new blight curve and intervening at the block level to prevent neighborhoods from tipping into decline and dragging down surrounding property values. In addition to completed acquisitions, WLB has a growing pipeline of properties at various stages of evaluation, acquisition, remediation, and disposition, reflecting a dynamic and continuous operating process rather than one-off transactions.
Regarding sources of capital, and as you can see on the slide, in addition to the state grant request, WLB was awarded over $1mm in a federal CDS grant, with U.S. Senator Murphy’s backing, for a housing development project in our primary market. And recognizing the need for capital, the City of Waterbury has provided over $300k in capital support, in addition to more than $1mm in operating funding since inception. The land bank is confident that the City will consider further capital support based on the results we’ve achieved together to date.
One final point: WLB is much more than a passive intermediary that receives, cleans and disposes of properties as directed by the city. With a sustainable capital base, our land bank will realize its potential as a proactive organization that City agencies and local housing advocates can rally around to advance the cause of affordable housing for all, working collaboratively and assertively to identify and remove blight influences, promote enforcement of property maintenance standards, increase and preserve home ownership while improving the quality of the housing stock, attract developers, funders, lenders and investors, and engage with residents and neighborhood councils to implement community-centered strategies that will arrest the downward spiral caused by urban blight. The state grant we seek will allow us to put action to words. This coordination includes close alignment with the Department of Housing and other community-based initiatives, positioning the land bank as the missing and now essential tool in the City’s broader strategy to combat blight and stabilize neighborhoods. WLB complements City efforts by aligning property acquisition and redevelopment with infrastructure investments, neighborhood planning priorities, and targeted redevelopment initiatives, ensuring that public resources are mutually reinforcing rather than fragmented.
This is our vision for WLB and with your support, we can bring it home. Together, we can transform blight into stable housing, stronger neighborhoods, and renewed economic value for the City.
Thank you.