Corporate tax break usually go to developers of big projects in big cities.

But now one has been given for the first time to a developer in Haddam, the town on the Connecticut River best known as home to the Goodspeed Opera House.

The partial abatement covering six years went to the ownership of The Riverhouse at Goodspeed Station, a high-end banquet facility that opened last year and has a market value of $3.3 million.

Ordinarily a property assessed at that value would pay about $58,000 annually in property taxes. But Haddam voters at a town meeting by a better than two-to-one margin approved a break that allows Riverhouse to phase in its taxes so that it will be paying the full bill by 2013 compared to 25 percent to start.

Over those six years the town still expects to collect about $242,000 from Riverhouse. Its ownership pursued an abatement before the facility opened, but town officials asked them to delay their request until after construction.