Despite the continual effects from the 2008 economic downturn and the “tough year” for Naugatuck due to weather-related disasters in 2011, there was some good news shared during the Naugatuck Economic Development Corporation’s annual meeting on Monday.

Corporation CEO David O. Prendergast announced that four Naugatuck businesses — YoFarm Company, Chemtura Corporation, Vivax Medical Corporation and Vitek Research Corporation — have all expanded their facilities or relocated to the borough through a state-sponsored tax abatement program.

The program, titled the Enterprise Zone Program, gives a five-year, 80 percent tax abatement to businesses that agree to relocate their facilities to a Connecticut community. Naugatuck will be reimbursed 60 percent of that amount from the state Department of Economic and Community Development, which oversees the program, Prendergast said.

Chemtura spent over $10 million to renovate two borough buildings earlier this year, while Vitek completed an 18,000-square-foot high tech coating facility at 33 Sheriden Drive.

Meanwhile, Vivex relocated from Torrington to 54 Great Hill Road, in the Naugatuck Industrial Park, and YoFarms completed a 21,000-square-foot warehouse space for is dry foods operation at 50 Rado Drive.

These business expansions also make Naugatuck one of the top four “Enterprise Zone communities” in Connecticut in 2011, Prendergast said. The borough is secondly only to Bridgeport and Waterbury, both of which had eight businesses apiece that relocated to those cities under the same program, he said.

“Those were very big cities that we were competing with,” Prendergast told the corporation members — which included business owners, public officials and DECD Chairman Catherine Smith — during the meeting at the Naugatuck Train Station. “So we should be proud of what we’ve done.”

The NEDC has worked with each of these companies to assist them in securing the incentive benefits and to find locations in the borough to move to, Prendergast said.

Mayor Robert Mezzo noted that, much like other behind-the-scenes economic developments, these advancements don’t always go noticed in the public eye.

“There’s very little understanding in the community on how difficulty it is to take a business that’s looking to expand or relocate, and work them through the Enterprise Zone process, or work them through the location difficulties they are going to encounter,” Mezzo said during the meeting. “And that’s what we’ve done here.”

But what about if those four businesses decide to leave after their five-year tax incentive is up? Jay Carlson, chairman of the Naugatuck Economic Development Corporation, didn’t rule out the possibility of that happening, however he said it would cost a business more to leave after five years than they would gain from the the tax incentives.

“Potentially there’s a fear of businesses leaving after the five-year period,” Carlson said. “But these tax benefits are not huge when compared to the costs of relocating to a new place and hiring new staff.”

During the hour-long meeting, the Prendergast talked briefly about Renaissance Place plan, however it wasn’t a major focus of the meeting. The plan, to renovate the borough’s downtown through a multi-million dollar private-public partnership, has seen some developments in the past year, however to the general public it seems like very little has happened.

But Mezzo and Prendergast noted that these aspects of economic development aren’t done quickly.

“Nothing happens overnight,” Mezzo said. “Success takes time. It takes hard work. It takes cooperation and it’s easy to forget that in the midst of the economy that we’ve all had to endure for the past five years.”

He added, “We’ve made some strides here in a very a difficult economy that go unnoticed, but they don’t go unnoticed when they look at our tax base which has remained stable in terms of our manufacturing and industrial core here in Naugatuck."

Prendergast closed out his portion of the meeting by noting that — after a heavy winter snowstorm in January, a tropical storm in August and a freak snowstorm in October — it’s been a “tough year” for the borough.

But, he said, the corporation continues to make progress with Renaissance Place, particularly with the first phase being the St. Mary’s Medical Center and a municipal parking garage.