Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com February 29, 2016 • Worcester Business Journal 25 Build upon Worcester's digital advantage E D I T O R I A L The Worcester Business Journal welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Please send submissions to Brad Kane, editor, at bkane@wbjournal.com. T he largest single transportation facility in Worcester, and arguably that with the most potential, Worcester Regional Airport (airport code ORH) is a critical element in Greater Worcester's transportation tripod of road, rail, and air. Founded as a municipal airport in 1946, ORH was acquired by the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) in 2010 following a decade of joint city- Massport control. While passenger traffic peaked at 354,000 in 1989, the airport struggled at times in the face of competition from Logan International Airport and the expansion of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire and T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island. Worcester Regional Airport is now poised for its own expansion with increasingly reliable air travel as a result of the launch of JetBlue service in 2013 and with a state-of-the-art navigation system under construction allowing for instrument-only landings regardless of visibility conditions. The Worcester Regional Research Bureau's recent brief on ORH presents a snapshot on the airport. While commercial air traffic has been limited at various points over its history, ORH handles tens of thousands of operations annually, mainly from private flights and local traffic generated at the airport itself. In 2015, ORH averaged 110 operations daily. Load factors at the airport, or the percent of passengers to available seats, are consistently high and only slightly beneath that of other national and international airports in the region. Importantly, they continue to increase. Massport CEO Thomas P. Glynn has said that Massport is not only a transportation agency but an economic development agency. Greater Worcester needs to embrace that philosophy as well. ORH has a potential market of 2.2 million people. While JetBlue offers flights to vacation markets in Florida, there is an unfulfilled – and unquantified – demand for strategic flights connecting to markets throughout the country for individual, business, higher education, convention and vacation travelers. As Worcester assembles a team to attract new businesses to the region, stakeholders should craft a similar, sustained initiative to attract new flights to build on Worcester's unique value proposition. Working with Massport, the region should target airlines and destinations to offer strategic routes and competitive alternatives for travelers in Central Massachusetts, MetroWest and beyond. Like any industry, airline activity is guided by economic forces. New routes must be financially viable. Rectrix – a private, Massachusetts-based entity providing aviation services at ORH and currently offering charter operations – offers a unique opportunity. As Rectrix expands to provide scheduled services that compete directly for individual travelers, local civic and business leaders may be able to identify, secure and support flights to critical markets and at critical times. Local conversations might unlock national destinations. A successful run of new flights would prove Worcester's strength and eventually draw additional competitors to the field. ORH is taking off. So is Greater Worcester. With the right strategy and implementation, the sky's the limit. n Timothy J. McGourthy is the executive director of the Worcester Regional Research Bureau. Worcester needs to unlock airport potential BY TIMOTHY J. MCGOURTHY Special to the Worcester Business Journal V I E W P O I N T Timothy J. McGour thy A ccording to a study by the Obama Administration, Worcester is one of 10 cities in Massachusetts – and one of 495 in the country – with an installed broadband network, and the city is part of a much smaller subset whose broadband is a fiber network, which offers significantly higher Internet connectivity speeds than cable or DSL. Further benefitting Worcester still is the city is home to networks of dark fiber, which – as opposed to lit fiber – is a digital infrastructure not controlled by an Internet provider such as Spectrum Business. Dark fiber networks essentially give users the opportunity to manage their Internet connections and speed in-house, without having to rely on a third-party provider. This can be attractive to large business and institutional users that need fast, reliable, large and cheap Internet access, like hospitals, technology companies and colleges. When it comes to economic development, Worcester – just like every other municipality – needs to play to its strengths. Central Mass. is home to an educated workforce, significant amounts of commercial and developable space, lower costs than other areas of the state and has significant transportation advantages. Fast, large – and potentially cheap – Internet speeds that can be delivered to businesses large and small can become an important competitive plus to that list of competitive advantages. The Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce has been pushing for the city to further leverage its fiber network ever since it released a report on the matter in November. Chamber President and CEO Tim Murray is working with the city to create a broadband task force, similar to one in Cambridge, that can guide the growth of the fiber network to maximum economic advantage. Currently the existing fiber network is being expanded to city schools and the airport and its surrounding industrial park. Further expanding that network across the city, and working with its vendors to assure that it is competitively priced for commercial users will be a key component to making the city more attractive to developers and end users. For a municipality that just further widened the gap between the business and residential tax rate, pushing this initiative forward sends a message that the city is making Worcester more attractive to the emerging high-tech and innovation economy. Attracting new companies to any region is a mix of art, science, hard work and an ounce or two of luck. Focusing on leveraging the city's existing fiber infrastructure to its advantage may not land Worcester the next GE, but there are plenty of emerging companies looking for an affordable, hip urban center to grow. With its overall momentum and clear affordability when compared to the greater Boston area, Worcester has got a pretty good story to tell. When looking outside the state, Carolina's Research Triangle also scores well on affordability and has an educated workforce, but many New England firms find it hard to move their teams many states away. For companies feeling the pinch of a red hot residential real estate market and tight commercial space around Route 128, Worcester could well become a nice alternative. The importance of a robust and competitive fiber network can be a real factor in attracting companies. The chamber found 70 percent of businesses consider Internet access critical when choosing a new location. Infrastructure development and maintenance are important parts of a region's economic viability. Just like roads and bridges are key to moving people and goods, digital infrastructure like fiber broadband networks and data centers are vital to an economy increasingly relying on technology and connectivity. Worcester has a headstart in its existing digital infrastructure, and now is the time to double down on making that fiber expansion happen. n Nevada is Mass. solar's worst nightmare I t's all too easy to turn a deaf ear to the skeptics who cry "The world is ending! Massive job losses will happen if this bill is passed!", a diatribe that we hear now and then at the Massachusetts State House. But out in Nevada, the solar industry's nightmare scenario is turning out to be very real. Policymakers there have been having the same basic argument we are in Massachusetts: How much should solar array owners contribute toward the centralized power grid infrastructure, since renewable subsidies are primarily borne by utilities and their ratepayers? Very recently ,Nevada decided to change the deal with its solar incentives. In a radical shift, owners now will receive less than one- fifth the price they previously received for selling electricity back to the grid while paying triple in monthly fees to utility to connect their solar systems. The new legislation is retroactive, meaning customers who already had installed a solar array on their roof will get the new, much lower return. This means investments that were made when the projected ROI was a just few years are now looking at decades before they earn any return. Ouch! Now major solar installers are shuttering their operations and laying off thousands of people; new solar projects have ground to a halt; and solar customers are left in the lurch for what they thought was a wise and eco- beneficial investment. How will the current stalemate play out in Massachusetts? We don't know, but Nevada stands as a cautionary tale of how a legislative decision can cause an industry to collapse and consumers and investors feel betrayed. We believe cooler heads will prevail in the Bay State, and that Massachusetts' position as a leader in the installation of renewables is seen as an asset to sustain, not a misguided program to be thrown out with the bathwater. A thoughtful, gradual scaling back of the generous incentives currently in place for the renewable industry is a prudent path, but a plan that decelerates those incentives too quickly has many risks, almost all of them negative. It is important the legislature and the governor move thoughtfully, but also with alacrity toward a solution that all sides can live with. n

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