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HBJ022425UF

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20 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | FEBRUARY 24, 2025 ConnCORP CEO Erik Clemons stands on the Dixwell Avenue site in New Haven where he is leading a $200 million mixed-use economic development project. HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Keeping Promises For well-known New Haven nonprofit exec Erik Clemons, ambitious $200M Dixwell Avenue mixed-use redevelopment takes shape of being educated and hopefully working with young people," he said. "My dream was to teach young Black children who are in the conditions I was able to overcome." Inspiring advancement "You'll see natural light wherever you are, bright colors, art on the wall, jazz — you hear the jazz being played? That's intentional," Clemons said as he walked around the New Haven headquarters of ConnCAT, located in a 23,000-square-foot space at Yale's Science Park. " Folks who are coming from conditions that are not conducive somehow are inspired because of this place and how it feels to them — that it speaks to the soul." Right after college, Clemons worked at training organization Job Corps, and then was recruited to be executive director of LEAP, an organization that mentors young people through neighborhood-based programs — and where he himself had done a college internship. It was while working at LEAP that he was tapped to lead a new effort that was being incubated partly through the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven. Its founders, including current board chair Carlton Highsmith and now Chief Operating Officer Paul McCraven, dubbed it ConnCAT — the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology. ConnCAT's mission is to inspire, motivate and prepare youth and adults for educational and career advancement through job training and youth programs. It was modeled after the Manchester Bidwell Corp., started in Pittsburgh by MacArthur Fellow Bill Strickland. ConnCAT debuted in 2012, beginning with training programs in phlebotomy and medical billing, connecting unemployed and under- employed adults with opportunities at nearby Yale, as well as an after- school and summer program for kids. It's since branched out with Biolaunch, which provides lab tech- nician training through a partnership with Yale scientist and entrepreneur Craig Crews. It also boasts an 8,000-square- foot commercial kitchen connected to a café, which offers trainees — many of whom are returning from incarceration — skills in food-and-beverage operations and advanced culinary skills, along with a national certification. The kitchen program also has flour- ishing externship programs in several local restaurants, and is developing a catering business. Economic infrastructure As ConnCAT proved its impact, its leaders, including Clemons, started thinking about the future. "What could be the next iteration of impact that we could make to ensure that we are creating a world outside of this building, that is conducive to the hope that people have now?" he said. ERIK CLEMONS CEO & President, ConnCAT; CEO, ConnCORP Education: Southern CT State University, bachelor's degree in sociology Age: 59 By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com "P eople here have been promised things that just never happened," Erik Clemons said, looking at the city- block-sized building site around him. "This neighborhood has been lied to so many times." He's standing next to New Haven's Dixwell Avenue where his company, ConnCORP, is building an ambitious, $200 million, 8-acre economic devel- opment project that's designed to do no less than combat poverty in this underinvested neighborhood. Over the last year, this effort has cleared away a blighted shopping plaza, an Elks Club hall and numerous other buildings to create space for what's to come: mixed-income apart- ments, a food hall, performing arts center, retail space, grocery store, health center, child-care facility, and a new home for Clemons' communi- ty-building organization, ConnCAT. For Clemons, central to this devel- opment — called ConnCAT Place on Dixwell — has been talking to the people who live here about what they want. It's a process that hasn't always been easy. His team has occasionally been treated with suspicion and pushback from neighbors. "We were very intentional about community engagement," he said. "We would hold forums — there was, like, 250 people there — and they voiced their opinion about the project, about us. We never wavered in our mission. We never went away. And everything we said we were going to do, we have done." Among the key issues he's run up against is the fear that such a large-scale project will gentrify this disinvested neighborhood, forcing out residents who have lived there for years as it raises property values. That has led to a re-evaluation of the percentage of affordable housing that will be included in the plan, which he now hopes will be above 20%. Growing up poor One reason Clemons is so passionate about local engagement is that he came from a community that has a lot in common with this one. "I grew up in Norwalk in the housing projects," he said. "And grew up very poor." He describes himself as raised by community; going through evictions, moving schools and, in his final year of high school, living with his math teacher and her husband. "I didn't do well in school — actually hated school — but I love to learn," he said. After high school he got a job with the post office, got married and had four daughters. He'd been in that post office job for more than a decade when he started to think about his legacy. "What was my contribution to the world? What have I done that would inspire my children?" is the way he puts it. And so, then in his mid 30s, he went to college. First, Housatonic Commu- nity College, and then transferring to Southern Connecticut State Univer- sity, where he graduated in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in sociology. Although he kept working as he was earning his degree, he gives credit to his wife Sharon for holding things together in that period. "She was really the bedrock of our family in terms of really supporting us and allowing me to chase the dream

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