The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Building a 21st century technology hub
Connecticut has a unique opportunity to create a world-class 21st century live-and-work technology hub adjacent to New Haven’s Union Station — perhaps a satellite headquarters for Amazon — by developing the contiguous acreage that has just been cleared across the street from the station, and using the close nexus to green rail transportation, the junction of I-95 and I-91, and Yale University.
The demolition of the former Church Street South housing development has opened for reuse acres across the street from a high-capacity train station serving Metro-North, Shoreline East, the Hartford-Springfield line and Amtrak, including regular and high-speed service to New York, Washington and Boston. A location with prime access to rail transportation, interstate highways, a major global university and the young talent attracted by that university to a city is a unique business asset. Marketing that business asset as such would be Connecticut recognizing its strengths and defining a future with jobs and opportunity.
Beyond the cleared land of Church Street South, there is a large footprint of vacant or readily developable land close to the train station, and this dovetails with the state’s recent and anticipated investments in rail and the Pearl Harbor Bridge interchange, as well as Amtrak.
Connecticut’s economic development strategies have often been based on tax breaks and giveaways in a high tax state with Hartford as a driver for development. Such big “gets” as Infosys and Jackson Labs were brought to suburban Hartford locations. The natural path forward uses the global reach of Yale University, with its particular appeal to international investment and role in educating global business leaders, and New Haven’s confluence of strengths as a tech hub.
Gov. Ned Lamont and his Yale business school classmate Indra Nooyi, the former PepsiCo CEO he has tapped as an ambassador for Connecticut economic development, have a special relationship to New Haven and Yale with the global business ties to get the focus needed to make this kind of development innovation happen. And its impact would radiate through transportation corridors to grow business opportunity across the state.
A new gubernatorial administration is a moment to reset long-established policies. Whether Connecticut can attract Amazon, the state has the capacity to reach out both nationally and internationally to advance New Haven as a uniquely positioned tech hub, either tied to one leading business, or as a world trade center tied to multiple leading businesses, using the synergy of location and transportation access with the global powerhouse of Yale. The new economic development commissioner, David Lehman, is known for his real estate creativity at Goldman Sachs. Nooyi is partnered in business outreach with Jim Smith, former chairman of Webster Bank, who relates to small and mid-market business across the state that would also be served by this initiative. This is a team ideally suited to market this kind of opportunity.
Thinking out of the box, Connecticut can leverage the strengths that have converged in New Haven and attract businesses by focusing on offering them a business asset worthy of investment. How novel it would be to again offer businesses what once attracted them to our state, the opportunity to harness Connecticut’s strengths to complement their own. Mark A. Shiffrin is a New Haven attorney and former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. He can be reached at mark@markshiffrin.com. Avi Silberschatz is the Sidney J. Weinberg Professor of Computer Science at Yale University and former vice president of information sciences at Bell Labs. He can be reached at avi@cs.yale.edu.