Simsbury: Land of missed economic opportunities

Simsbury seems to consistently lose economic development opportunities to other towns. Just look over the Simsbury/Avon town line on Rt. 10 where Avon has seen the development of a hotel, a medical complex, a cancer treatment facility, & a popular health club all developed within the past 10-15 years. There's no reason why some or all of that could have been developed in Simsbury, and those are all high tax paying businesses with a low impact on town resources and low traffic footprint.

As the Town of Simsbury will soon see its tax base shrink due to The Hartford moving from its Simsbury campus and the possibility of the building’s demolition, I and many Simsbury residents wonder what Mary Glassman and The Simsbury Economic Development Commission (EDC) are proactively or reactively doing? It appears as if they're doing very little.

For some reason the leadership in Simsbury and our EDC still believe that retail is what Simsbury needs and the answer to the Towns tax woe's (be it another supermarket or Big Box retailer). This is simply lazy thinking, factually erroneous and will not yield any significant tax relief for Simsbury homeowners, nor will it sustain the Town's future financial health while maintaining the Town’s character and lifestyle.

Recently I've seen 2 huge opportunities which would be a great fit for Simsbury, however it appears that Simsbury isn't even a consideration, nor has Simsbury’s EDC even tried to be a part of the equation.

The first opportunity: A recent Hartford Courant article announced a $368 million health technology park anchored by a state-of-the-art "proton therapy" cancer treatment center (the first in Connecticut), creating as many as 2,500 jobs and potentially requiring up to half a million square feet (about the size of The Hartford's Simsbury building). To be located somewhere in North-Central Connecticut. The Center itself would require 75,000 sq. feet and cost about $150 million to construct. And initially create over 200 high paying jobs for oncologists, physicists and technicians with the average salary about $100k (nearly double the state of CT average). These are people who would appreciate living and working in Simsbury.and whose business would generate precious and high value taxes for the Town.

The second opportunity was the recent "Connecticut-Israel Technology Summit", a conference put together by the Metro Hartford Alliance and Greater Hartford Jewish Federation to bring Israeli startup companies to Connecticut. With over 4,000 active startup's in Israel, many are looking to establish a presence in the U.S. and have found Connecticut attractive due to its location between Boston & New York, lower cost office space and well educated population.

One Israel based company (located in Farmington) is Briefcam; which develops technology to "summarize" surveillance video. The company recently made headlines in The Hartford Courant as their technology assisted in identifying, locating and tracking the Boston Bombing suspects. And the company is expanding into civilian uses for retail loss prevention and retail analytics. This company will likely grow and create many more high paying jobs for the Town of Farmington. I, myself, had the opportunity to speak with representatives of several companies, including the CEO of a company based in Israel who is looking to move his family here and locate a US office in CT.

With over 200 people in attendance, a mix of CEO's, business people, investors and economic development people from other towns, I was disappointed to see that I was the only person from Simsbury in attendance (other than Simsbury resident Oz Griebel who was there representing The Metro Hartford Alliance and Greater Hartford). While I'm not a member of Simsbury's EDC, I have become increasingly involved in startup & entrepreneurial efforts. Where was Mary Glassman, who was interviewed in 2010 by the Jewish Ledger about her Jewish roots, and/or the Simsbury Economic Development Commission?

Economic development isn't rocket science, and the opportunities mentioned above should be a no-brainer for Simsbury.  But our Town has to care about it, give it more than lip service and, most importantly, has to try to be successful with it.