The GMW Interview: First Selectman Bill Brennan on Wilton’s Business Climate

A first selectman has a tough job. Balancing ceremonial duties with managing projects and employees, and keeping the town financially healthy and running isn’t for the weak or weary. Recent months have been particularly tough on Wilton’s chief, Bill Brennan. Facing tough situations and criticism–from Sensible Wilton on the Miller-Driscoll project, from critics unhappy with the town budget vote, and now the flurry of complaints around the hot-button issue of business closures and the viability of small business in town–takes up a lot of the first selectman’s attention.

GOOD Morning Wilton asked Brennan to sit down for a conversation about the state of Wilton’s business landscape. We met with him last week to pose some questions we’ve heard asked around town–overheard conversations at Orem’s and the Village Luncheonette, on Facebook pages, from worried business owners, and in emails readers have sent to GMW.com. 

He began by reflecting on his own jobs during his 38-years of experience. “Most of them were either running something, organizations, marketing sales, general manager, whatever. That was my first background, not municipal business, which, by the way, requires a lot of those same skills.”

He believes when businesses fail, it has less to do with Wilton than business sense in general.

“I go to all the ribbon cuttings in town. I’ve done this for 10 years, so I’ve seen people starting up and they’re enthusiastic. Always I’m disappointed if a business doesn’t make it, but it’s relatively little to do with the town of Wilton. It has to do with management, planning, business model, and some of the other things. Another thing that a lot of people tend to forget is that in the last 10 or 15 years the whole world has changed in terms of communications, technology, retailing. We now have big box stores. We now have the Internet. We didn’t have those things in any massive way 15 years ago.”

Brennan preferred to focus on general reasons why businesses fail. “I’m enthralled by the optimism and the courage of some people to start a a business and risk money, their hard-earned money and savings on a business that sometimes, within the first 20 minutes of just looking at the operation, retail store or the restaurant, I don’t think it can make it. Because every business, before you start a business, you’ve got to have a business model, you’ve got to have a comprehensive plan.”

He listed “musts”:  Know who is going to be competition, and whether you be competitive on a continuing basis. Know how much revenue is going to come in. Know what your fixed expenses will be–rent, utilities, other ongoing fees, salaries etc.. “Basically, if you’ve got all these expenses and then you’ve got a revenue, and it doesn’t come up to what your expenditures are, you’re not going to be profitable. You’re going to be pouring more money into it. It’s a matter of arithmetic sometimes, that some people just don’t do. It’s amazing. They simply don’t do it. They don’t estimate comprehensively what’s a realistic estimate of their revenues, and they’re usually undercapitalizing.”

He wondered if some small local entrepreneurs weren’t “too optimistic.”

“Too many times a hobby is not transferable into a business. A business is a business and I think a lot of people go in with a very, very optimistic, maybe unrealistic estimate of how many people are going to come immediately to their retail store and buy their widgets, or service. Most businesses fail within five years, and 90 percent of them fail within 10 years. It’s risky to go into a small business,” he said.

Brennan also cautioned that sometimes new business owners don’t manage their financials well–forgetting to put in place strong financial controls, or they don’t know how much money is going out the door.

“I keep coming back to the key issue:  planning, business management, and you’ve really go to think through what you’re doing before you start doing it. Lots of people go into business who don’t understand the business. Maybe they’ve been in a government position or some corporate position, and they decide to go into retail, they’ve never been in a retail business. Unless you have some really unique skills you have a high chance of failure because you just don’t have the business in your gut. You’ve really got to understand the business and every business is different,” he said.

But, Brennan said, that doesn’t mean he’s critical of the entrepreneurial spirit.

“I give them the greatest accolade of encouragement and excitement, its always fun to start a business, but my suggestion is that you really understand the business you’re going into, work in that business or field for at least several years so that you really understand the business, be sure it’s for you.”

He mentioned the key adage:  “And location, location, location. Another key thing, people set up businesses because they can get a cheap location and it usually kills them. You’ve got to have access to customers, traffic, customer traffic, and it’s got to be convenient, little things like parking is a big issue. Also when you have a business you have to be able to let people know you’re in business so you’ve got to advertise. And advertising costs money, so all these things have to be factored into the decision of ‘Why my business is going to be successful.’”

Which made for a good segue, to bring it back to the heart of the matter–Wilton.

GMW:  So, I know my business and my customers pretty well. My customers want to know about Wilton specifically, not generalities. They want to hear what you, as Wilton’s first selectman, think about what’s happening here.

Several Wilton business owners I’ve spoken to talk about landlords who are difficult to work with, slow to repair things, price people out of the market… where you have businesses that are viable but they go where the cost per square foot is better, outside of Wilton. Steven Mancini is not closing because they’re doing a bad job at any of the things you listed (above)–they’re moving to Westport reportedly because there are fewer ‘For Lease’ signs, better parking and foot traffic, higher visibility, better payoff for the rent.

Residents in Wilton are concerned about those things. They’re concerned about the ‘For Rent’ signs that line Rte. 7 and Old Ridgefield Rd. in Wilton Center. There’s a ‘For Rent’ sign at every single building.  

Brennan:  “Have you been down to Westport? Go take a look at the signs that are in Westport, go to New Canaan. This is a difficult period. This is not a boom time. While there are areas in this country that are experiencing really rapid growth, in this area we are still suffering from the recession. We still have some 50 families that are getting food.

I drove through Westport intentionally just to see the different signs and New Canaan also. Many of the area towns are feeling the same type of pressure. It’s difficult to set up businesses. The landlords, remember, government can’t get into the landlord, the buyers want to have a certain rent. If he keeps raising his rent he will have no stores, all vacancies. That’s not very good for his business, suddenly he has no revenue. I think landlords are obviously trying to be profitable but if they raise their rents so that they’re excessive they will lose businesses.”

GMW:  Has the town or the Wilton Economic Development Commission ever done some sort of comparison between Wilton and other towns of the number of residents and the customer base in a town, versus the going price per square foot? In terms of making a case to businesses that even though rents may be perceived to be high, it’s advantages to bring your business to Wilton?

Brennan:  “The rents in Wilton aren’t ‘higher here.’ Go to New Canaan, go to Westport, and look at the cost per square foot, I think you will find that they are higher.

My biggest concern is some of the people that come in as new landlords, there has been a couple of things that have happened. One, Kimco came in several years ago and acquired the Stop & Shop [plaza] from a private investor who owned it. Kimco is a major firm–they have shopping centers in 600 or 700 locations all over the country, Canada, Mexico. They are professionals. We told them when they came here that we wanted them to keep up the same policies that the previous owners had–that they kept the place and the environment attractive, holiday decorations, flowers, everything that makes an attractive destination. And they have basically lived up to that.

But, the town cannot tell them what to charge rents. They are business men, so they have to calculate that.

Now the town owns the Town Green; it was originally a 60 year lease and it’s got about 30 years left on it. We have had Paragon [Realty Group] come in and take over the longterm lease. They also own properties in about 14 locations in about three states. They have to come in and take a look at their property; there is some maintenance that needs to be done there and I will be meeting with the president and having a lunch with him in mid June, to go over some of the things I think need to be done, to make some of the neglected maintenance taken care of.

But, the previous owner of the lease, even though his headquarters were in Boston, he was very supportive of his tenants. Good example, at holiday time he would pay for the ads that went into the papers to say, ‘It’s holiday walk time, shop in Wilton,’ and he would list all the stores in the Town Green, and tout them as a good place to do your holiday shopping. He totally redecorated the whole area, he hired a designer to do that. He added flowers, he did stone work around one of the buildings to make it more attractive. He did a lot of things, and he was constantly supporting his tenants. And I hope that the new owner who has taken over the lease will do the same things to be supportive of those tenants. When you take a look at the tenants that were in there during the recession, we didn’t lose any of those tenants. The previous owner negotiated some of the leases down, some of them were having trouble paying rent because business was slow.  He didn’t just come in and say, ‘I am going to raise your rent 3-percent for the next year.’ He lowered it in some cases. He was very concerned about keeping his premises occupied, something’s better coming in than nothing. I’m hoping that the new organization that has taken over will be similar, that they will be supportive of their tenants.”

GMW:  That sounds great. Has there ever been thought to creating a consortium of landlords or some kind of group of landlords, to talk to all of them and say, ‘Is there some way we can all work together to make it more successful for your tenants?’

Brennan:  That’s why I’m meeting with Paragon, to explain some of the things. If someone takes over a property they’re obviously looking for return on their investment.

Sometimes we forget that all the hanging flowers baskets that make the town look very attractive, that’s basically done by five businesses in town. They pay for that, about $1,000 each. Each of those businesses–one’s a bank, one’s real estate–that’s a contribution, that a cost to them, and a lot of people do those things.

What I think people are looking for is an easy answer to say why are business failing in Wilton. Businesses turn over in all of our towns, it isn’t just Wilton. If you went to New Canaan, Westport or any of the towns, you will find business that have turned over–it’s a fact of life, small businesses turn over. It isn’t the end of the world when it happens, another business eventually comes in and hopefully will be successful. But I think people are looking for a simple answer, like it’s the sineage that’s killing everybody, it’s the taxes that are killing everybody, it’s the high rents that are killing everybody. All of those are factors, obviously, but I don’t think there is one single answer that can say. ‘This is the problem in Wilton.’

It is a combination of small businesses are very difficult to be successful in, and you have to recognize that. And the statistics bear that out. It isn’t just the statistics in Wilton, it’s the statistics everywhere. Small businesses generally are very difficult to be successful over a long period of time. They tend to fail for all the reasons that I cited.

There is no simple answer to the question [you’re] pushing for, I wish there was then we could address it. But if someone wants to set up a business, an ordinary businessman can go in and take a look at it and say, ‘This business is not going to make it. And there have been businesses, take my word for it. They set up, you know they cannot succeed just by looking at the simple arithmetic of how much they are going to have to sell. We can’t control that, government can’t control that. Those are private decisions that are made, so I don’t think there is a simple answer to the question you are looking for.

GMW:  I hear you, I just want to make sure it gets addressed, because that’s what people are asking.

Brennan:  Let me give you some positive things that we’re trying to do.

When I first came into office here, I was concerned with the Wilton Village. I thought it was a tale of two cities. We had the Village Market, we had Stop & Shop, we had a couple little crummy houses. There was nothing that tied Wilton Village together, it was a sleepy village, dark at night. The first thing I did was I put lampposts in. I didn’t have the money to do that so it was public-private partnership–we got people to donate $5,000 per lamppost and the town contributed about $6,000. So we got all the lampposts in. My wife and I said, ‘We will do one too; if I am going to have a big idea I want to be supportive of it.’ So we had about 60 lampposts that people did, they liked the idea, we got a plaque on it. People’s resistance–we had people saying, ‘We don’t… blah blah…’ Government is not easy, but it if you get elected, you have to do it, we put the lampposts in. A lot of the people that were critical of that came to me afterwards and said they were really good and made a difference. So the lampposts did one thing, they provided an architectural element to tie the town together.

Once we got the lampposts, we could hang flowers on them, we could put banners on them to make the town more exciting. We have added sidewalks, we have added curbing, we will continue to do work. One of the things we’ve got planned right now, through a grant we got from the state, we are going to add bricks and decorate and improve the safety conditions of the sidewalks. A lot of our sidewalks are junky. We’re in the process, the designer is coming back with a plan and we’re going to be improving all of the sidewalks. So we tie what has been done down in the Starbucks area, and we will try and have one architectural element, all our sidewalks will look fairly similar. We are going to replace some of the junky sidewalks. We are going to add–the American Disabilities acts, you see the little pebbles when you come up to a curb, it tapers down, so people with disabilities can sense that with their feet. All that will be done.

We are adding a pedestrian bridge that will connect our train station, that will make it more convenient. Remember we have a lot of people that come into Wilton everyday. So now when they come to the train, they have to walk all the way around–that’s a grant too.

We have been encouraging the retail stores to add more flowers to make their businesses attractive.

What we are trying to do is make Wilton an attractive destination, to shop and to walk around. So it isn’t just us sitting around here, we do as much as we can to make Wilton a nice, attractive thing. And the town is different than it was 10 years ago. I think it is a more attractive town.

We’ll be re-paving River Rd. once we get through all this, once Yankee Gas put in their gas–which, again, is economic development. Once you put gas in, all these businesses are now operating with less cost that connect to the gas line. It’s less expensive than your old oil burner. Gas is cheaper. So that was an economic development that we’ve done.

We’ve had a number of these things that we have tried to do, we are adding sculpture to the town. We have added one piece, in June we’ll have another piece in the middle of town. Again, it’s to try to make the town a little different than somebody else, differentiation from other towns. To make people want to come over and walk around.

You can’t do everything at once, I can’t go and add 10 pieces of sculpture in the middle of town. Remember, I can’t spend the money, I’ve got a budget here. I have to do it with things like work with the Silvermine [Art] Guild, so this is a free loan to the town with this wonderful piece of sculpture that’s going to be put there. You are going to be very excited when you see it.

GMW:  All great things. I think part of it, you talk about marketing, is the need for public relations, getting that message out. 

But you talk about small business owners and others need to recognize that the time has changed and the economic situation has changed. Since I can remember, there’s been a constant hum of people who say, “There are two camps in Wilton:  people who don’t want to change a thing and keep it a ‘sleepy, semi-rural village,’ and people who come in–the stereotypical younger families who come up from the city–and say, “Why can’t we have more amenities? Why can’t we do a pop-up park in the middle of town, like New Canaan? Why can’t we have a skating rink in the winter? Why can’t we do these things?”  

People talk about the restrictive zones–like the design enterprise zone along the corridor near Outdoor Sports, that doesn’t allow retail there (with the exception of Outdoor Sports). Is it time for everyone to look at how things have changed? You said small business need to know when there’s a big box store down the street. Is it time for Wilton to recognize that maybe we need to compromise on the semi-rural village ideal?

Brennan:  Towns evolve and they evolve to meet the demands of the citizens, what people want. If I talk to 50 citizens I get probably about 30 different points of view. So you can’t satisfy everyone and do everything. There are some people that say, ‘We should have a skating rink.’ Okay, that’s fine, but remember there’s a cost. There are people who come to the annual town meeting who say our taxes are too high, we’ve got to cut back. Two minutes later someone will get up and say there’s not enough money being given to the seniors. So one wants to add cost, the other wants to cut cost.

So what government wants to do, we try to balance that, so we try to balance it that way, for all the different factions. Yes, we would have liked to have had a new community center, but when the recession hit, we couldn’t afford $25-30 million, we had to cancel the program. People forget that what we have done at Comstock, we are doing for $10 million. When Comstock is finished, I guarantee you everybody will be saying that it really came out great, that you did a terrific job, and now we have a terrific community center. Now that’s $10 million that we are spending there, but the building had to be repaired. The heating systems were shot, the windows were single glazed, the heating and air condition systems were all shot. It had no sprinkler system. We have children there, age 4, to seniors in their 90’s and no sprinkler system. We had to make these repairs. When Comstock is finished at the end of the year, it’ll be a dramatically improved building. It will not be perfect, it will not perhaps meet everybody’s needs but it will be a substantially improved facility that will give us a lot of use be good for another 30 years.

There are ways to do things that sometimes are less costly but are sufficient. We relocated the food pantry which is serving a lot of residents who are having stressful times and was terrible the way we had it. It was in the corner of the building, people had to walk through the front lobby and it was embarrassing and inconvenient. We moved it to a location downstairs, totally redid it and it enabled people to be able to put a shopping cart and discretely go out the back door without having to go out the front door and run into a neighbor. We greatly improved the pantry and it’s been very, very successful.

We made a senior center, two floors and we’re improving it. We’re putting a bathroom downstairs. We did the whole senior center with cooperation from the seniors for about $40,000. Not $4 million, not $40 million–$40,000. When I first got into this job, the most frequent comment I got any time I talked to the seniors was, ‘We need a senior center, it’s terrible, we have horrible conditions,’ and it was, it was bad. I have had almost zero complaints since we did the senior center. Almost zero, I think I had one person say that they wish they could have a bathroom downstairs. Well, we are doing that. A lot of people have said to me, ‘The senior center is terrific, Bill.’ So you can do things differently at less cost.

But it isn’t easy trying to satisfy a lot of people. Somebody wants a skating rink, thats great. Someone wants a pool for the town, add up the cost. If the town is willing to pay for it, all of us, we all pay taxes, then the town will act on that. But if it’s something that is going to add another couple points to our mil rate, there’s going to be resistance. We have to balance everything. There’s a lot of people who live here now who are on fixed income who are no longer working in the big money, they are on savings, investments, social security and all that. We have to be very conscious that we don’t drive them out of town. There is an effort to do that. Our senior program for our elderly and our disabled people is one of the best in the state in terms of its generosity. And we are going to look at that next year again, it’s time to review it and see if we need to make any changes. So that’s on the schedule for next year.

I get sometimes disappointed because in order to do the roads, which are our assets, all of us have property, so you own a piece of the roads, they have to be maintained. A few years ago the roads were starting to get very serious. We had over 40-percent of our roads over 20 years old. It took a lot of effort to get a 5-year road restoration program going. There was resistance from a lot of people. Eventually we prevailed and we got this program and we have now repaved 33 miles of road and we will do another 10-12 miles this year and another 10-12 the following year. So by the end of all this we will have paved probably 53-55 miles of road on this program, greatly improving our roads.

Roads are part of the operating cost of the town. But there are people that are against everything. They are against road repairing, they are against any type of capital expenditures, they are agains the schools. I can’t be sympathetic to those feelings because when we came here, three kids into the schools, there were seniors here who were paying the taxes at that same time, so now I feel it’s my turn to pay the taxes for the children that are here. It’s only fair, it moves on. My children went through the schools. It isn’t like, ‘Get your children through the schools and then move.’

So there is a lot of different opinions. I don’t have all the answers, we do the best we can, it’s not easy. There is a lot of differences of opinions, but if people have real strong feelings about anything, I say to them, ‘Get involved, raise the issue, form an advocacy group, anybody can form an advocacy group for any type of a capital project and then it has to run on its merits and it has to be sold to the town and it has to be sold by the advocacy group and it has to be sold to the town leaders because if we are going to put it in the budget it’s going to have an impact.’ People have to balance that out.”

GMW:  Explain what the Economic Development Commission is doing right now. What’s the status of that effort?

Brennan:  They are working on a website, and they’ve been working on it for a long period of time and it’s getting very close to be put out. But keep in mind one thing:  economic development in Wilton over the last 7-8 years has been very successful. We have taken the commercial segment of our tax base from 11-percent to 14-percent. But that’s on roughly $4 billion of grand list. So multiply that out and you’re up to $150 million of taxes that are being paid by commercial [entities], that aren’t being paid by residents. Right now the vacancy rate on class A office space–executive offices and buildings you see on Rte. 7–is 6.9 percent. The vacancy rate in most communities is around 20-percent. We’re one of the lowest. Fairfield is the lowest, I think, but I know Wilton is either the second or the third lowest.

GMW:  Are there similar figures on retail space vacancy?  

Brennan:  They have to be careful because some of the numbers that they compile, I get them from a different organization through a realtor who gets it for me. They sometimes mix the area rather than Wilton per se, so you have to be careful. But I am very comfortable with that 6.9-percent, because it’s been repeated a number of times. It’s mainly because we have all these office buildings along here, these have been very successful.

I failed to mention one other thing that the town has been very supportive of and that has been the Norwalk River Valley Trail. When I heard about it I was in office maybe four days, it wasn’t the highest thing on my priority list at that time. I thought it was a good idea because I was very familiar with the areas of Aspen and Vail in Colorado, and also Seattle, and the number of trails that they have in these states. Many of those areas are so popular, everyone is out running, jumping, jogging, biking, skateboarding, It’s an activity that people love.

Wilton now has two sections of the trail and we’ve done probably the most of all the towns. We have the largest segment through Wilton. When this is done it’s going to be a great asset to the town. The amount of funds that have been raised, Mike Lindberg has done a fabulous job of raising the funds which isn’t easy to get corporate contributors to do it. Cannondale Bike just contributed $25,000. We are just so excited about it. It becomes just another asset to the town, it makes it more attractive.

These things take time to do, and when we get this pedestrian bridge in and get these sidewalks done, again, it’s making the town a little better. But people who are of the mind to complain, what I say to them is, ‘Get involved.’ So many of the people that are complaining, the repetitious, serial complainers, I never see them on any boards or commissions; in fact I never see them at any fundraisers, I never see them at the Library events, any place where there is any involvement. They just complain. That is their right, and I respect it. But better that they should be involved and be more active on positive things and campaigning for something they think is better. People will listen but we’re doing the best we can to try to balance all of these conflicting interests and needs, and needs that people feel are needs but aren’t. It’s a difficult function being in government and trying to respond to everything. Government can respond to some things but but it can’t respond to things that are in the province of the private sector.

GMW:  Is there anything else you want to say to Wilton residents?

Brennan:  Get involved. Really, it’s so important. There are certain people in this town who have gotten involved, who have really made a difference in our town. I can’t speak highly enough of Judy Zucker. This is a woman who has just really made a difference. She has been so important to the Comstock development. She’s been on the social services commission, she was the chair of the commission. She was involved with seniors, now she’s chairman of the Comstock building committee. What more can you do? She’s an involved, active, positive citizen.

The Miller-Driscoll Project, which has been controversial, but stop for a moment and think of the complexity of this project. Karen Birck and Bruce Hampson–two very qualified people, have spent two and a half years of their lives, almost full time, on this project. They are involved. They are distinguished, great citizens of Wilton and they are making a difference in this town.

“Thats what I encourage other people to do. There is so much talent in this town. Unfortunately this period of restlessness has caused some people to get turned off. Somebody who’d be very good to get into government–a former corporate executive, just retired, interested in using his skills–he said to me, ‘Bill, I was interested, but not at the moment. I don’t want the abuse.’ People get turned off seeing the shots that people take on a regular basis on the officials. As [BoF member] Richard Creeth said, ‘We try our best to keep the taxes down. We watch everything we spend.’ When people get up and say we’re all out of control, then get involved. Get on a board, and see that it isn’t so simple when you just look on the outside and you throw a hand grenade, and go back home and say, ‘Well, I’ve said everything is bad.’ It’s not so easy.

Wilton has great potential, and gets better and better every year. We just gotta keep being optimistic, and working together. This is about working together. It’s as simple as that.