Lessons for Conn. as giants stun N.Y., Boston

For entirely different reasons, two of the best known, blue-chip names in corporate America — Amazon and General Electric — stunned nameplate cities of the Northeast on Thursday, hours apart, with news about their headquarters that could send a lasting, unified message.

It could all be good for Connecticut — which has offered Amazon an alternative plan for Stamford — but it also sends a warning to the entrenched, expensive Northeast. There’s a limit to how much cost, and how much political hassle, companies are willing and able to endure.

Amazon, the mighty online retailer facing a hostile reception from many residents and politicians in New York City, pulled out of its plan to build a head office and development campus in Long Island City, Queens. A promised 25,000 jobs, a big deal even for the nerve center of American business, vanished in a poof before lunch.

By mid-afternoon, GE announced what the teetering industrial behemoth should have said months ago: It’s not going to build a glitzy, 12-story world headquarters in Boston’s most prestigious busi-

ness zone after all. The number of jobs falls only from a promised 800 to 250 — seemingly no big deal for one of the fastest growing markets in the East — but Boston takes a hit to its pride.

That’s similar to what happened when the New England Patriots duped Connecticut 21 years ago with the promise of a move to Downtown Hartford. Maybe not quite so bad, as GE will stay in the Seaport district, but the company give back $87 million offered up at the corporate altar by Boston and Massachusetts.

Don’t gloat, Connecticut. Even though Boston stole this tarnished prize from Fairfield, they still have all those Super Bowl rings and they’re still light years ahead of us.

Do pay attention to what all this means.

We’d be wrong to overstate a link between these two events. GE simply no longer needs or has the money for a statement headquarters, having lost two-thirds of its market value in just over two years. And Amazon, the definition of 21st century wealth, was simply reacting to chaos.

Still, there’s a common picture of high cost — in money and infighting. Let’s face it, this part of the country is known for both of those issues and it matters to the people moving thousands of jobs around the globe.

Connecticut, having lost GE and never having a shot at Amazon, happens to be mounting a massive effort to attract corporations under Gov. Ned Lamont, and Lamont’s people are thinking about the value proposition for companies.

“Connecticut is less expensive and

more receptive than these other places,” said Jim Smith, one of the two point people in Lamont’s recruitment push.

We’re still plenty expensive and full of the entrenched interests that come with density and long history. The state needs to position itself in a middle path — not cheap and regulation-free like Wyoming, but with geographic benefits at less cost and less political noise when it comes to getting things done.

It’s a narrow but clear path for a state trying to dig out from the disaster of a lost generation.

As the Amazon plan faltered over the last two weeks, “Connecticut got to move in SWAT-team fashion,” said Smith, co-chairman of the Connecticut Economic Resource Center. “The benefit to Connecticut of being engaged is that we’re getting better and we’re getting better fast.”

Smith declined to give details of Connecticut’s offer to Amazon. But this much we know — it’s all about Stamford. Sorry, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, nice Valentine to Amazon but this isn’t about the former Hat City. And sorry, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, but believe me, if thousands of Amazon employees come to Stamford, you’ll come out a winner.

Amazon announced it’s not yet looking for an alternate location, if it ever will. That could work to Connecticut’s advantage, if the 200 cities that hoped to snag “HQ2” go away. Connecticut — in Stamford — has the ability to present a plan that lets Amazon stay in New York, perhaps even working with New York, as Joe McGee of the Business Council of Fairfield County suggested last week.

General Electric, famously in 2016, pulled its world headquarters out of Connecticut, saying taxes were the issue

but proving that argument a bald-faced lie by moving to a much more expensive place. Still, the message about taxes and costs matters because corporate location is about value, not price.

As for Amazon, it’s “unfathomable” to Norwalk business owner David Lewis that New York would lose the Seattlebased company after it picked Long Island City and northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. for prizes every metro desperately wanted.

Lewis, founder and CEO of OperationsInc, a human services outsourcer, and a close watcher of economic development, sees a lesson for Connecticut in New York’s nightmare — especially in Stamford, where expensive new buildings are replacing an old neighborhoods.

“If I am Lamont, I look at the concerns, for example, that exist right now in the lower part of Stamford, where we are building all these buildings,” Lewis said. “Figure out a way to placate and at least address any concerns like this in the future.”

Then there is cost.

At the conservative Yankee Institute for Public Policy in Hartford, which advocates limited government spending, CEO Carol Platt Liebau worries about the economic model in the Northeast. To some degree, Thursday’s developments bear that out if they give the region a black eye.

It’s just one of many swirling factors, she said, but she noted, ”I do think it’s going to be difficult for the Northeast because we’re competing with states that have lower costs.”

That, too, is a lesson for Connecticut as the newly elected, strong Democratic majorities in the General Assembly fulfill campaign promises. The answer is a middle ground.