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88 Hartford Business Journal • November 26, 2012 www.HartfordBusiness.com Celebrating 20 Years of Business News FUTURE The GRIEBEL: You know about what could happen if the TIGER Grant moves forward, as it is today, and some of those parcels that are down around Pulaski Circle that the city owns becomes available, both existing stock and land that could be changed differently, there's opportunity to grow. The high water mark for the city was 170,000 people roughly in 1955. We can get to 170,000 people in 10 years? No, but I bet we get a shot at 150,000. That ought to be an ambitious goal to be able to bring the population back up that way. KISHIMOTO: As we increase that population, the demand for high- quality public transportation will also increase. What is being proposed now is just the start of it, right? It's one piece of it. But the ability to move eas- ily around the state is going to be important to keep- ing our young people here in Hartford. BELL: Jack, what's going to happen to New Britain in 10 years? MILLER: Well, some of the things that we're talking about in terms of FastTrack will have a similar impact there. There are already lots of people looking at, I've heard about a number of different proposals. In fact, some of them have been brought to us to see if we want to immediately move students down there rather than building additional facilities on the cam- pus. So you'll see a change in housing patterns. It's like anything else. It's critical mass. Really, that's kind of what we're talking about across the board. It's like how do you get this? What starts momen- tum? Something starts it. Then when you capitalize on it, then something else feeds it and then, once you get things going the right way, it's fairly easy to keep the ball rolling. The problem is the same thing's true when it's going the wrong way. It's harder to get it stopped and turned around. But any one of these things––the improvements in the public school sys- tem, the transportation system, the different types of industries, more educated workforce––any one or all of those things can turn it around. Then, as I've heard everybody say, capitalize on it. How are we going to capitalize on this? BELL: You're spending a lot of state money and time and effort trying to jumpstart this economy. How much priming of the pump do we need and where is it going to pay off? SMITH: So yeah, we've set aside through the Legislature in a very, a very bipartisan effort last year with, last Oct. 26 to be exact, we set aside some money to do a whole host of different things to stimulate the econ- omy. Some of it was First Five, which was geared toward the large companies. The Small Business Express has been widely popular amongst small businesses with over 1,400 applications in and grow- ing. We've done some things on the startup side of the equation as well. Not to mention spending $50 million to improve bridges and do a few infrastruc- ture-related investments as well. I would like to hope that the economy everywhere in the United States will start to rise. Our goal is to be in the top quartile of the states as they come out of the recession, and because of the work we're doing, we have a very good shot at that. In fact, last year, we were ninth in terms of state GDP growth. But we shouldn't view these as long-term programs. We're constructing these types of financial assistance programs with real teeth in them as well as being beneficial to the company. If they don't deliver, they owe us back the money. They have to repay. Or, if they don't create the jobs, same thing. We're trying to step into an economy that has really needed that little bit of boost. But our hope is that, in fact, the companies will get the traction on their own and will really propel us into a better economic development scenario. But having said that, we are part of a global economy. So, if Europe decides to go under, if the United States goes back into recession, it's going to be hard for Connecticut to resist that. But right now, I'm cautiously optimis- tic that we're going to see an improvement here that we again, will lead the nation, maybe not at the top one, two or three, but we'll be in the top quartile of states coming back out of this recession. BELL: Do we need to do something differently to spur ven- ture capital? SMITH: Well, we're announcing our Innovation Ecosystem, which we'll be investing in. We've always been a state that has led in terms of developing patents and being innovative throughout our entire history. Thus, Still Revolutionary. Which was a very nice tagline for so many reasons for the state. But in recent years, we've found that as ideas come out of Yale or UConn or Wesleyan, in fact, sometimes people who start those companies have followed their [venture capital] money to Silicon Valley or 'Silicon Alley,' or another part of the world. So, some of the things we'll be talk- ing about with our Innovation Ecosystem are really geared towards helping those young entrepreneurs or older entrepreneurs decide to build that business here. Again, it's about critical mass. It's about mak- ing sure they know who else is in the environment. It's about attaching them to help if it be, what kind of a lawyer do I need to talk about whether I set up an LLC or an 'S' [corporation], or whatever it might be. Marketing. Technology. Those kinds of things. So we're going to make an effort to try to spur that kind of gazelle-like business development here in the state. It's ripe to happen. It's already hap- pening around Yale. It already is happening up in Storrs. So how do we build on the momentum that's gotten started? LUISE: There's a really good story here that I don't think is well under- stood broadly. There's a wonder- ful story that's happened, that's been happening in the education side. The state has been making some huge strides in terms of the START program and some other ones. You asked a question ear- lier about are there other places that might be a role model? One of them where you've seen some leadership that's come out of the private sector is the City of Christina Kishimoto sees high-quality public transport and other viable mobility modes as key to keeping young people in Hartford. Oz Griebel, MetroHartford Alliance. "You'll see a change in housing patterns. It's like anything else. It's critical mass." -- Jack Miller