NAUGATUCK — Kammetal, a full-service metal fabrication company, left the crowded streets of Brooklyn, N.Y., for an expansive property in Naugatuck’s industrial park.
Founder Sam Kusack’s motivation to move to the borough — a strong talent pool, space to expand and business-friendly incentives — are encouraging signs for local economic development officials.
“I think from an optics standpoint, it’s a great thing to be able to say we recruited people from outside the state,” Naugatuck Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Ronald Pugliese said.
With Kammetal’s arrival in October, the industrial park is down to a single vacant space. This is the second company to move into the borough from New York this year — Custom Dean Awnings, an awning manufacturing company based in Orangeburg, N.Y., bought the property at 550 Spring St. for $1.2 million in February. They expect to move in next spring.
Economic development agencies in Naugatuck and beyond have cited the need to pull businesses and young professionals from New York City and other areas as crucial to growing the local economy and reversing aging population trends. The two companies expect to bring 45 additional jobs to Naugatuck.
“I’ve made eight or nine hires. It wasn’t super hard,” Kusack said. “I’m getting a lot of applications, at least from my perspective. Brooklyn was pretty tough. If I put an ad for fabricator, it would be slim pickings. Out here, I had like 200.”
Kusack, who said he plans to expand his staff from 10 to 25 or 30, is looking for employees of all kinds, from machine operators to office administrators and bookkeepers, on Indeed.com.
Space is another advantage Naugatuck and other small Connecticut towns have over metropolitan areas. Both Kusack and Vic Santiago, head of commercial and residential sales for Dean Custom Awnings, listed the need for a bigger facility as a prime reason for moving.
“We needed more space; New York was very tight on space,” Santiago said.
On a recent Wednesday morning, workers in jeans and dark sweaters at Kammetal assembled metal sculptures in the company’s new, cavernous, 55,000-square-foot factory. A pair of employees crouched to examine a half-built conical sculpture, destined to hang in a museum atrium. Another welded structures together, from under a protective mask and thick work gloves.
Property records show Kusack purchased the building at 300 Great Hill Road for $2.3 million. Kusack said he also invested more than $1 million in renovating the formerly derelict plant. He said the expense was worthwhile since the building is twice the size of his former facility in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.
“We were restricted by the space we had there,” he said. “We were renting, and all the rents have been going up and up and up, and it’s less conducive to actually having manufacturing equipment.”
Kusack founded the company in 2001 after attending The Cooper Union School of Art in New York.
“It was a one-man show,” he said. “I had a little loft area in Williamsburg and decided I was going to make a go of this.”
The company, which crafts ornamental and architectural metal structures, has grown considerably. Past clients include the Chipotle Mexican Grill chain, which hired Kammetal to build tables, stools and lighting components. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey hired Kusack to build an ornamental stainless steel and glass encapsulation placed on top of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
“We’ll do anything from furniture and lighting to enclosures for point of sale displays,” Kusack said. “”Moving up here, we’re trying to branch out into more manufacturing.”
