Business View Magazine | August 2019

263 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2019 NEW MI LFORD , CONNECT I CUT offer some very attractive incentives for new business development. “Locally, we offer property tax abatement,” she explains. “The state offers sales tax abatement. That tax abatement piece is very important to businesses that are going to locate in our community, because the equipment and the materials they buy can have the sales tax waived, in addition to waiving the property tax on a new construction. The maximum property tax abatement is seven years.” The Town also manages a small business loan fund and a façade grant program, and partners with other development agencies to offer larger loans. Other incentives available through the state Department of Economic Development include venture capital, bonding and loan programs and tax abatement programs. There are matching funds for workforce training through the regional Workforce Investment Board. In order to ensure an adequate workforce for the town’s growing commercial and industrial base, New Milford has recently seen the completion of a new downtown housing project and hopes to attract more investment into housing. “We do have buildings that have upper floors that are apartments, but the community really needed to have more housing downtown,” Pollard says. “That development has attracted Millennials and empty- nesters and because we do have such an attractive downtown with many amenities, Millennials are one of the categories of residents that is growing rapidly.” “We have already updated our zoning to be very supportive of new business attraction,” she adds. “We have ‘village commercial’ zoning that covers the downtown and it is very flexible for both businesses and investors to be able to do mixed- use projects. We have very creative staff people onboard who can help figure out how to make projects work even in a tight site. We just looked at one recently – a new four-story building with a coffee bar on the main floor and eight apartments above. We have numerous public parking lots so that developments can have parking requirements