The state House of Representatives approved the nomination of Christopher "Kip'' Bergstrom on Wednesday to be the next commissioner of culture and tourism.
The current Commission on Culture and Tourism is one of 27 agencies that are scheduled to be restructured under plans by Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. The commission would be merged into the state Department of Economic and Community Development if approved by the legislature.
A holder of a master's degree from Harvard University, Bergstrom previously worked for Shawmut Bank in Hartford and served for 10 years as the executive director of a Rhode Island policy council.
With no controversy, Bergstrom was approved on a voice vote early Wednesday afternoon. No one spoke on the nomination after Rep. Claire Janowski, the co-chairwoman of the nominations committee, outlined Bergstrom's qualifications.
Bergstrom, who now lives in Old Saybrook, is passionate about developments in Stamford - the city where he worked and met Malloy.
In an article in Stamford Magazine, Bergstrom sounded off about the non-expansion of the University of Connecticut campus in downtown Stamford. UConn took over the former Bloomingdale's store on a busy corner north of downtown and has been there ever since. The school, though, has not expanded its footprint, and that was the topic of the article in Stamford Magazine.
Some excerpts are as follows:
"It's appalling," says Kip Bergstrom, head of Stamford's Urban Redevelopment Commission. "It should have expanded a long time ago." In 1998, when Bergstrom was director of economic development, UConn Stamford was finally moving from its old location on Scofieldtown Road into the former Bloomingdale's on Broad Street, a space that had been vacant since 1990. Everything looked good. Then Bergstrom moved to work in Rhode Island.