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www.HartfordBusiness.com November 26, 2012 • Hartford Business Journal 85 Celebrating 20 Years of Business News Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller: Downtown Hartford's menu of higher education opportunities will increase. FUTURE The in the future. We know that technology itself, which is so important to your business, of course, is also fundamental for almost everything we do. So we're making bets, not so much in saying, yes, we think bioscience will be huge, which we do. Yes, we think advance manufacturing will be here, which we do. But we're also saying let's make sure that our work- force has the skills that can follow those technolo- gies and those new innovations as they come. GRIEBEL: The great thing about this region is we've got depth of employment skills in three of four key areas. Hav- ing come out of the liberal-arts world, I still believe there's a significant value in getting people to under- stand the broader context in which we all live, in addition to having vertical skills that are critical to doing certain jobs. This is a high-cost state to do business, and why do people stay here or come here? Because you can't replicate in this kind of an area the extraordinary intellectual base that we have and the highly educated workforce that we have. LUISE: I think that it's very, very important that we look at the next level of economic boom that is probably around data. As that impacts this region, our ability to be able to capture the value, capture the tax base, capture the employees themselves in this region, is really what the fight is about. So we have to continue to want to have people live in this region, thrive in this region, and be attracted to this region. BELL: The issue of high-speed rail … New Haven into Springfield … with a stop in Hartford. What's that going to do for us? GRIEBEL: I would submit that Stamford wouldn't be where it is today without MetroNorth. Go back 20 years along MetroNorth and look how each one of those towns has grown dramatically. We can get dependable, one-seat ride service linking, not Hartford to New Haven, but Hartford to New York and Hartford to Boston … Hartford to Stamford. That's where this has to go. SMITH: If you look in other cities around the United States, if there is no infrastructure, there is no growth there. That is what we have to be thinking about. An example is Dulles Airport. I lived in Washing- ton many, many years ago, and Dulles was as far away as you could imagine. Now, when you go out to Dulles, there is a huge amount of development that's occurred along that corridor. That's what this is about. This is about planning for that. Because then businesses want to be near something that's easier to get to for their workforce, for their custom- ers, you name it. So these are long-term investments that will pay off for the state and for all of the busi- ness community. BELL: Are we going to see a Dulles-like expansion of busi- ness around Bradley? SMITH: It will start to grow. We're already seeing some of that with the new Enterprise Zone around there. I absolutely believe that it will become much more of a hub for businesses to locate. New England, and even Connecticut, is already a very large distribu- tion center. GRIEBEL: Another thing I had to say about Bradley, thank God we have it. It's probably the single most important economic asset we have, and you could never rep- licate it today. You could never build it. You could never build an airport in this day. So thank God it was done 70 years ago, but as a result of that, we've been able to take full advantage of it. KISHIMOTO: Transportation is so important for K-12 education the way that most people don't think about. But the challenge I have of recruiting new talent into the city, to fill up 3,000 employee positions [at Hartford schools], is impacted by transportation. How quick- ly families can get in and out of Hartford. When we bring folks in for interviews, the fact that they can't get from Bradley to Hartford very easily does raise concerns when they're going to Boston and being interviewed there or they're going to compa- rable cities –– even Portland, Maine, and a larger city like New York City where transportation is so much easier and more well developed –– that those become part of the quality of life. So it's everything, from transportation to access to businesses and entertainment and quality housing and safety. All of that integrated together that really is a quality- of-life issue for our young people who are consider- ing whether or not they're going to live and work in Hartford. BELL: We seem to keep circling back to the quality-of-life issue. What has to happen here to make the quality of life attractive to those people who have the choice of Boston, New York, or anywhere else? What's missing? SMITH: It's here. It's here. It's a matter of having young people recognize it's here and making it even more vibrant than it is. One of the things we haven't talked about yet, but which would be a great shot in the arm for Hartford and the region, is the newly formed Capi- tal Region Development Authority. It's got private sector/public sector people on the board that will guide it. The whole idea of that group is to look at all the issues, be they arts, culture, the venues we have here for bringing events into town, the housing and making sure we have affordable workplace type of housing here for the young people. It has already started. I mean, if you go down to Trumbull Street after six and you walk into any of those restaurants, boy, they are buzzing. There are a lot of things hap- pening. And so now we just have to build upon that. Having more university kids downtown will help that. Yale is right in downtown New Haven, and that community is unbelievably vibrant all hours of the day and night. That's what Hartford is just waiting for. Getting more critical mass downtown, which the housing will help with, which more university func- tions downtown will help with as well. KISHIMOTO We have a good start. I wouldn't say we're there yet. I do think that, still, the majority of the faces down- town, who are bringing money into downtown, are still the upper 30-year-olds to 40- and 50-year-olds. It's still a different generation, and the generation com- ing up is still not spending their time and their money here. We're still not quite there yet in terms of what do our young people want in their city? What makes this "Another thing I had to say about Bradley, thank God we have it. It's probably the single most important economic asset we have ...'' – Oz Griebel