Thomas MacMillan File Photo
The Springfield shuttle lumbers into Union Station.
Gubernatorial aide Kip Bergstrom is ready to tell other states, “We will steal your scientists” — but he wants high-speed trains to help him do it.
Bergstrom, the state’s deputy commissioner for the Department of Economic and Community Development, delivered that message Thursday night to a gathering of more than 50 people standing in the rear of The Bourse, the “coworking loft” on Chapel Street.
He was a block away from the state-of-the-art green building at 360 State Street, which towers over the Elm City Coop. He was two blocks from Artspace. And he was two blocks from the State Street train station.
The location may have been a testament to many of the things that New Haven is doing right. But it’s the train station – at least symbolically – that, according to Bergstrom, could bring the biggest change to New Haven, and to other Connecticut cities.
Bergstrom offered a preview of plans the state has in place to boost development in cities, which will include a major announcement with the governor on Monday.
His Thursday evening talk in downtown was billed as “The Magic Brew of Innovation, Place-Making and Entrepreneurship.” And much of it hinged on One Big Idea: The huge potential of high-speed commuter trains to transform our communities.
Robert Orr Photo
Bergstrom addresses the Bourse gathering Thursday night.
Bergstrom’s talk was wide-ranging, informed and challenging, and therefore difficult to summarize. (It also included a spirited discussion of the role of art and the creative economy – more on that later.) But it boils down to this: He believes that the Northeast has a competitive advantage with the tight-knit series of metropolitan areas spanning from Washington to Boston, with a concentration of biotech and bio-pharmaceutical companies that compares to any in the world. Unlike the clusters in California, however, from San Diego to Silicon Valley, the Northeast’s clusters could be close enough to each other to allow people in the industry to connect with each other and form loose networks that will drive innovation and spur more development.
Close enough, that is, if we can take advantage of the potential for high-speed commuter rail to cut commuting times from New Haven to New York in half. (Amtrak announced plans for a Next Gen High-Speed Rail project in September of 2010 that would cut travel time from New York to Boston from Acela’s three hours and 31 minutes to one hour and 48 minutes.)
New Haven (and Hartford, and Bridgeport) would then become “super regions,” hubs that would help grow the young, innovative business sectors in our region, fed by talent that could live here and work elsewhere (and be a part of networks here) and perhaps eventually set down roots here and start their own business. Development near the stations themselves, he claimed, could spur a total of 300,000 new residents and 200,000 new jobs.
These are the type of businesses we need to nurture, he said, because they create the jobs. “Most small businesses don’t create jobs and most large businesses don’t create jobs,” he said. “Jobs are created precisely by those small companies in the process of becoming larger companies.”
Bergstrom also claimed that the improvements on the New Haven-to-Hartford-to-Springfield daily Amtrak line could eventually include accommodations for intermediate high-speed rail. (Click here for a previous story on those improvements.)
Meanwhile, our cities need to become the kind of places where the creative and knowledge class want to live, Bergstrom said. Talented workers don’t make their decisions based on quality of job or quality of community, Bergstrom maintained, they consider both.
Art, he said, “is the fastest, most transformative way to bring our cities back,” and a slide in his presentation emphasized his philosophy. It read:
Art makes great places
Great places attract great talent
Great talent creates great place
Some of the ingredients he touched on are already present in New Haven. He stressed the importance of mixing new architecture with old. Keeping old stock, he said, allows for lower-rent places for artists, galleries, and grass-roots businesses. New buildings – like 360 State Street – are important because their use of new technology and non-traditional amenities that attract the prized 30 – 35-year-old worker. “When you make really dull buildings,” he quipped, “you shouldn’t be surprised when you attract really dull people.”
”We Will Steal Your Scientists”
Bergstrom and Gov. Dannel Malloy will be making an announcement on Monday about a new statewide arts initiative that he said has the potential to attract national attention, and possibly additional funding.
Connecticut has another unique advantage, according to Bergstrom. In other states, he said, “science is under siege. In Wisconsin, the place where stem cell research started, he said, there is a bill to ban stem cell research. “In Connecticut,” he boasted, “we actually believe in evolution.”
He has a message for these states: “We will steal your scientists.”
With a slightly better rail system, CT (and New Haven in particular) would be even more attractive as a place for some of the high-power academic couples who currently split their time between universities in NY, CT, and Massachusetts to settle down.
Also for younger academics, some of who settle in CT to teach here but also in part so they can preserve future access to academic gigs in NY and MA.
New Haven could be the "hub" of what is by far the largest complex of academic institutions in the world.
The new $5 Megabus from New Haven to Boston is helping, too.