New Haven Independent

Michael Morand (pictured), the university’s 41-year-old assistant vice-president for New Haven and state affairs, becomes the board chairman of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Thursday as the 2,000-member organization holds its annual meeting.

Both Morand and Chamber President Tony Rescigno said that they know of no previous Yale official to run the board.

“It’s hard to say. It’s 213 years old,” Morand said of the organization said during an hour-long chat with reporters Wednesday in the group’s 10th-floor conference room overlooking the Green. .

“We’d have to go back to the archives,” added Rescigno (at left in photo).

Morand did volunteer an historical tidbit to describe part of his agenda as board chairman over the next two years.

In 1794 the chamber was “founded by shipping interests to petition the then-nascent federal government for help at the time of a British blockade,” he said. “The genetic fabric of the chamber is that it engages the government” on behalf of a broad group of local business people.

Morand said he and Rescigno have the background to do that. Rescigno served as the Republican first selectman of North Haven before joining the chamber seven years ago. Morand was once a Democratic alderman in New Haven. He also ran the city’s library board and currently sits on its economic development commission. Between the two of them, perhaps even individually, they’ve established relationships with just about every civic mover and shaker from the city up to Hartford.

Morand said he hopes to use that capital to “help create a cultural revolution in New Haven and the region that brings us back to our entrepreneurial roots… We need to have wealth creation as a primary goal of our community.”

Toward that end, he’d like to see the chamber offer “economic development 101” briefings for local elected officials, as well as lobby for upgrading train service and general improving transportation.

Rescigno (pictured) also spoke of the chamber’s emphasis on helping to improve education in the region and address fixing the state’s health-care woes.

Would that include supporting a single-payer plan?

No, Rescigno said. “I don’t think a majority of our members would [support that].” But he added that the chamber has told “focus working on universal health care” that it wants to “be at the table” to help find a solution.

Morand and Rescigno saw the ascendance of a Yale official on the board as reflecting three trends.

One: Yale’s role as the top business in town. “Yale is first and foremost a “fabulous” educational institution, but it also employees 11,000 people and has an estimated $2 billion annual economic impact on the region, Rescigno said.

Two: The leading role that not-for-profit colleges and universities play in the regional economy, period. Morand noted that not only is Yale New Haven’s largest employer, but Quinnipiac is Hamden’s, and University of New Haven is a leading West Haven boss. Southern Connecticut State University has been expanding.

Three: The role that Yale has increasingly played as an active part of the civic community, since Rick Levin became university president in 1993, Morand said.

Then he offered another historical tidbit to suggest that what’s new is also old: “[Yale] President [Ezra] Stiles stood on a look-out when British ships came into the harbor.” The British may not be coming these days, but plenty of other challenges — from the harbor inland — greet the chamber’s new board chair.