For 2 Decades, He Helped Town Rebuild

What was once a contaminated gas station on Whitney Avenue is now the Eli Whitney Museum.

What was once a burnt-down hardware store on Dixwell Avenue left to lay fallow is now a Home Depot.

Old abandoned brownfield buildings on Dixwell are now commercial space with affordable housing on top.

Those are just a few of Dale Kroop’s many successful development deals struck during his 21 years working to turn abandoned buildings and brownfield sites into economic hubs for the Town of Hamden.

Kroop, Hamden’s economic development director, announced earlier this week that he will be retiring from his position with the town in November. Kroop has been in the position since 1999, when he started as a part-time contractor. The mayor has not yet named a successor.

Kroop reflected on his 21-year career with the town during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program.

He has had a hand in most developments in Hamden in the last two decades. He pointed to a few in particular that he said he was most proud of.

The Eli Whitney Museum was his first major project, he said.

“It was a big conflict resolution issue,” he said. He had to mediate between the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the oil company that had operated the site before. Eventually, the work paid off, and what was once a defunct gas station is now a beloved museum.

He said he took a similar negotiating role when he helped bring Home Depot to Hamden. In order to get approval for a light at the intersection with Dixwell Avenue where the store would be, Benham Street had to be wider. That meant asking four property owners to let the town buy part of their yards. Three agreed. One did not, and the town had to use eminent domain to buy the strip of land.

It was tough, but now there’s a Home Depot on a previously derelict lot.

Farther south, just north of Morse Street, there was once a cluster of brownfield buildings, sitting ​“as hulks on Dixwell.” Kroop’s office helped turn those buildings into affordable housing and commercial space. There’s now a dentist and a financial management business there, among others, and the buildings pad the town’s tax rolls.

Kroop said that over the course of his time in Hamden, his and the town’s approach have changed from a transactional to a transformational approach. As he put it, a transactional approach is like giving a hungry man a fish — brokering the deals so a development can happen. A transformational approach is teaching the hungry man how to fish — giving people in the community the tools to spur further development.

Though he’s leaving his position as the town’s economic development director, Kroop is not leaving the town’s development scene. In addition to his role working directly for the town, he is also in charge of the Hamden Economic Development Corporation, which is a related but separate entity. In that role, he’ll continue a transformational approach with some of the projects he has been working on.

Last year, a longtime dream came to fruition when he and the corporation opened Borough 496, a business incubator at the corner of Morse and Newhall Streets in the southern part of town. Though occupancy is down right now because of the pandemic, he said, he plans to create a program out of the incubator that teaches economic development.

Kroop secured a $300,000 grant from the state to start the program, which will cover ​“everything from asset management to how to write community development grants to how to deal with brownfields, how to do public speaking, how to build a coalition…”

Kroop is also working on administering $4 million in unspent state funds from the Newhall Street remediation project, which has cleaned up the old toxic dump site around Newhall Street where the incubator is. The town recently discovered that there are still funds left over, and residents in the area have cracked foundations.

Kroop, State Rep. Mike D’Agostino, and Director of Legislative Affairs Walter Morton recently managed to get the legislature to pass language that will allow Hamden to use the leftover funds to repair residents’ foundations in the area that have been damaged because of the remediation and unstable soil.

The Economy Of 2030

Kroop leaves his post at a time of rapid change, when the kind of development that once sustained Hamden’s economy may not any longer. Knowing how to plan for the economy of the future, not of the present, will be crucial for whoever follows him.

“The next person coming in, the next strategy of the town, needs to look at the economy as you would imagine it would look in 2030, not in 2020,” he said.

Hamden’s economic base, especially along Dixwell Avenue, relies heavily on retail. With the oldest suburban shopping center in the state, the box stores along Dixwell are major economic anchors. But in the age of the internet, retail is suffering from the ​“Amazon effect,” as Kroop put it.

Kroop said he expects to see more healthcare-related businesses open in town, but that retail will not be the way of the future. And building more commercial space in town, as many would back, may not be a good move, he said, ​“because what you’re doing is creating vacancy in 2035.”

Hamden is an inner-ring suburb, and will always rely heavily on residential properties for its tax base, he said. That means the town will need to invest more in the housing, and not necessarily build new commercial buildings.

The economy of 2030 will also rely heavily on the internet, and that means focusing on the internet itself. Kroop said the town should invest in municipal broadband — essentially a town-run internet service that would function like a town-run utility. Residents could either remain with their current internet provider, in this case Comcast, which has a near monopoly in the area, or they could use the town’s internet.

Municipal broadband could be much faster than what Comcast currently provides, and could be cheaper, he said, though it would require investment.

As Kroop’s successor works on planning for the economy of the future, though, they will likely still be dealing with the same challenges as Kroop. That includes a tax structure that relies on municipal property taxes to fund education rather than a more regional approach. It includes zoning regulations, which are due to be overhauled in the next year.

It also includes the opposition of neighbors who want development, just not in their own backyards.

He told the story of two neighborhoods with two very active civic associations: Spring Glen and West Woods.

A few years ago, the owner of the Walgreens in Spring Glen wanted to expand the property and add more businesses. Neighbors were vehemently opposed.

In West Woods, the sewer line does not extend north of West Woods Road, making it very hard for businesses to open on the northernmost stretch of Whitney Avenue.

Kroop said he stood in front of the West Woods Civic Association and ​“took the arrows” when he suggested extending the sewer because residents were ​“dead set against any sewer expansion.”

So, he tried an experiment.

“I said ​‘What about the Walgreens plaza in Spring Glen? Shouldn’t we have better development?’ They said ​‘Oh yeah, they should build as much as possible there…’ I said fine. I went to the Spring Glen Civic Association meeting. I said ​‘What do you think about sewers in the northern part of town.’ They said ​‘Yeah, we should definitely do that.’ I confronted them both, I said ​‘Listen, this is the problem. You are very happy for your neighbor to have development, and you can still be a NIMBY… but we cannot operate like that with the limited tax base and our tax structure here.”

Watch the full interview below.