Stockbridge — Twenty years from now in the Berkshires, what infrastructure will we wish we had put in place to keep the area thriving, expand its assets, create job opportunities that would attract young people, and make housing affordable, while at the same time embracing and appreciating open space and agriculture?
That was the essential issue before “Building the Future,” an economic forum organized by The Berkshire Edge at The Red Lion Inn April 9 and attended by 75 business, nonprofit, education and government leaders. Before the audience was a panel of four local business leaders, who led the discussion in what moderator and Edge Editor David Scribner termed a “mini economic summit.” The forum was funded principally by Salisbury Bank and Trust Company, with additional funding from the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire (CDCSB).
At the top of the list of essential Berkshire infrastructure upgrades, the panel concluded, was a high-speed, high-capacity broadband Internet network. In addition, access to capital was regarded as critical to a flourishing Berkshire economy, as was affordable housing and commuter rail access to the New York and Boston metropolitan areas.
The two-hour session was introduced by Berkshire Edge Publisher Marcie Setlow. The members of the panel were Main Street Hospitality Group CEO Sarah Eustis; Stephen Boyd, CEO of Boyd Technologies; Diane Pearlman, executive director of the Berkshire Film & Media Collaborative; and Tim Newman, founding member of the Southern Berkshire Technology Committee and WiredWest.
(Community Television of South Berkshire recorded the session. To see the presentations of the four panelists, click on the video below.)
In his welcoming remarks, Salisbury Bank Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer Richard Kelly said the idea for the forum was to explore what can be done “to retain that vibrancy or make it even better” while preserving what makes the Berkshires unique.
While the panelists noted other important measures, it was clear that installing a fiber-optic network into these rural hills to provide broadband connectivity was considered critical to the region if it is to become viable for clusters of new, innovative enterprises.
“In 2015 this is not a luxury anymore — this is basic,” said panelist Tim Newman, founding member of the Southern Berkshire Technology Committee and WiredWest. The lack of Internet speed and reliability, he added, are “an impediment to economic development…bad for education…”
Newman, a California native who lives in Southfield, and who used to own the Southfield Store, further said that in many towns, “people don’t understand how important it is,” and said that WiredWest was formed under the same state law that had attempted to solve the electrification issues in the mid-20th century. The good news, he said, is that the state will pony up a third of the cost to lay what is known as the “last mile” of fiber-optic in Western Massachusetts. “The bad news is that the towns have to come up with the rest.”
“WiredWest is becoming more critical,” said Diane Pearlman, Executive Director of the Berkshire Film & Media Collaborative. Pearlman, who has worked in film for over 20 years, moved here from Manhattan, having first come to the area in 1992 to work with Douglas Trumbull, the visual effects pioneer who works from his home in Southfield. Pearlman spoke passionately “about jobs, about young people and an industry that’s going to attract people here.” She wants to see a “bridge between business and school,” to begin training students in skills earlier. She agreed that high-speed Internet was a top priority.
“People would like to move back here,” she said. “But they need to be connected.”
Pearlman said she studied the effect filming the Hollywood blockbuster, The Judge, had on nearby Shelburne Falls. “For every dollar spent on the film, 63 cents went into the local economy.”
Likewise, Newman noted, another benefit to WiredWest is that “the money stays in the area,” rather than going to outside corporations such as Verizon.
Pearlman said that films leave their mark on a town, and can boost tourism as a result. “People still go to Ventfort Hall because Cider House Rules was shot there,” she said, referring to the estate in Lenox.
Where tourism is concerned, The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, that sturdy archetype of New England style and sensibility — and historical significance — has been drawing visitors to the Berkshires for more than 100 years. The Inn is now part of the newly formed company, Main Street Hospitality Group, which will operate four hotels after Hotel on North, its newest venture, opens next month in Pittsfield. Main Street Hospitality CEO Sarah Eustis said her company’s properties are estimated to generate over $20 million in annual revenue, and that the company is “wrestling with all those issues of growth.”
Eustis said that Main Street is “putting sweat equity into Pittsfield,” a town that has for years struggled for economic traction, in an effort to “stimulate optimism.” She said that she sees the town as a potential “juggernaut,” since it is the “link to north and south” counties. The average age of her company’s workforce, she added, is growing younger, and she agreed with Pearlman that young people are one key to the sustenance of a growing economy, and said that “as leaders we can train and coach” young people who will eventually keep progress going by getting “involved in town government.”
Stephen Boyd, CEO of Boyd Technologies in South Lee, and a Berkshire native, said he had also noticed that his workers were coming to his company at a younger age. He said that a younger workforce requires a shifting of work-style to lean more heavily on technology and social media, and that the world is moving towards these new models that the Millennial Generation is immersed in. “Millennials work to live,” Boyd said, adding that his company, an advanced material converter that serves mostly the life sciences and also makes battery separators, is going to a cloud-based system. “You have to do it the way they do it. They don’t pick up the phone; they tweet to get it done.” He said embracing this media “encourages young people to rattle the cages and show us how to do it.”
Education is another critical element. Boyd, who is also the board chairman of the Berkshire Innovation Center, an up-and-coming $9.7 million collaborative workspace in Pittsfield, said that manufacturing work in his company requires hard skills in science, technology, engineering and math — known as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). “This is something we have to continue to focus on.”
“I’m a manufacturer, but you don’t get dirty [working] on my floor,” he said.
Local STEM education guru, and Flying Cloud Institute’s Founder and Executive Director, Jane Burke, was in the audience, and made a “plea for the private sector to get deeply involved in [public] education.”
“There isn’t enough public funding to do the big job,” Burke said.
A few elephants had entered the room. Developer Jeffrey Cohen said there were two: access to capital and housing infrastructure. He noted the “lack of money in the towns for basic infrastructure, for replacing a water main, for replacing bridges… the roads. We don’t have it locally and we can sporadically get it from the state and only if Smitty [Rep. William Pignatelli] or Ben [Sen. Downing] are lucky enough…”
Cohen, principal of Mill Renaissance, LLC, is redeveloping the Eagle Mill complex in Lee. He suggested the idea of “independent” access to capital so that “we don’t have to be reliant on outside political authorities…”
“No one’s mentioned housing,” Cohen added, “and it’s expensive to live here.”
Indeed, at a recent Housing Symposium hosted by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission’s Mark Maloy presented the alarming stats: the average house in southern Berkshire county is 8.3 times the income of the average employee, which is $34,877.
Cohen said that the expense of housing was an impediment for people who might consider moving here, and asked how affordable housing can be brought into the mix.
Art Ames, General Manager of the Berkshire Co-Operative Market, noted that there was plenty of affordable housing in the northern Berkshire towns, but also higher unemployment and a weak transportation system. “The folks who need the jobs the most can’t get around,” Ames said.
Eustis agreed that affordable housing — especially “high quality, tasteful, and well-designed” — is a “huge challenge.”
That is why there is so much excitement about Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire’s (CDCSB) $40 million mixed-use project on Bridge Street in Great Barrington on the old New England Log Homes site, set to break ground in fall of 2016. 100 Bridge, as it is known, will include 45 affordable housing units on the 8-acre development that also plans to feature an expanded Berkshire Co-op Market, additional retail space, 28 market-rate housing units and a park-like open space at the center, along with a restored Housatonic River bank.
CDC’s Associate Project Manager Rikki SaNogueira explained that “100 Bridge is an opportunity to approach economic development from all sides” partly by generating hundreds of thousands in annual tax revenue and by creating new jobs.
The discussion kept circling back to high-speed Internet, however, and the challenges of bringing it to the Berkshires. Art Ames underscored the value of connectivity. “Even though I just run a grocery store, I couldn’t run that grocery store without the internet. We order online, we source online, we do everything online. Newman said it was important to start “educating people that even if they don’t want it or need it, the town does.”
Newman explained what has become an all too familiar story: “People see their taxes going up and don’t understand why it’s important.”
To watch the entire question and answer period, click the link below:
