Rather than try to compete with Boston or New York to hold onto big employers, New Haven should embrace and build on its identity as an “incubator.”
Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, publisher of La Voz Hispana, offered that take during a discussion on WNHH radio’s “Pundit Friday” program about the decision of Alexion Pharamceuticals to moves its headquarters from 100 College St. to Beantown. She invoked the New Haven institution once known as “birthplace of the nation’s hits.”
The Alexion discussion has prompted public debate about the state’s strategy of seeking to lure or keep large employers like Alexion — which hatched in New Haven’s Science Park and has now twice moved its headquarters out of town — with millions of government dollars. Rodriguez-Reyes argued that the incubator identity can be central to the city’s economic development strategy.
“We need to accept the fact that we cannot compete with Boston or New York,” Rodriguez-Reyes said on the program. “But what we can do is what the Shubert Theatre used to do. All the shows started here. If they made it here, then they go to Broadway. There’s nothing wrong with us accepting the fact that we’re a good incubator” and promote New Haven as a place where great ideas hatch and develop.
“We have to get away from this big bulk employer” focus, agreed panelist Joe Ugly. “Small and middle-sized businesses carry the tax base.”
Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the full episode of WNHH radio’s “Pundit Friday” program. Discussion of the Alexion issue begins at the 25-minute point.
Or click on the above video to watch the Facebook Live version.
We agree and often ourselves when talking to groups here and across the country make the connection between the historic "creation" role of the Shubert as a tryout and experimentation locale for "commercial" Broadway shows to our present role in bio and internet technology for all the reasons you suggest.
Today, hundreds of cities are vying to be centers of knowledge creation, centers of knowledge commercialization or both. The Yale connections makes us viable for the former at a global level and if we can build a critical mass of small but growing companies we can break through on the latter. Talent, infrastructure, housing, transportation, urban excitement, etc., are all part of the equation.
Keep sending ideas!
Our master plan and all of our work in developing aspects of the city and region is to enable New Haven and its environs to do both (creation and commercialization) well even if our circumstances as a smallish town between Boston and New York suggests that the creation side may always a bit stronger than the commercialization side.