[BostonBornMassMade]

Originally Posted by norcal2k19

Plus we have by far the best public university basketball program in New England for sure (UConn Huskies) to satiate any desire for a “hometown” team.

All these niche comments about how CT needs to do x,y,z to grow are interesting but I have yet to see a “formula” that fits our state. Hope someone can share that here. I’m surprised no one has brought up how Maryland does economic development for example - just so focused on Massachusetts trying to solve our problems again even though our state is a bit different since we don’t have a primate city that’s a growth engine but also so resource intensive compared to the rest of the state. I want to see more “polycentric” growth model solutions on here because that’s CT - a distributed state.

So I often tout Maryland as a great example of how to build affordable housing in a wealthy educated state. On the MA from me and mother poster refer to Maryland as “the model” for affordability in MA. Small lots and townhomes are abundant.

Economically, however I don’t know if it’s that much different than MA, much of Maryland raps around DC, like MA wraps around Boston which is on the water- just think of Virginia as that water.

This Maryland has a bunch of guaranteed not going anywhere federal jobs CT doesn’t. Add to that it has a large primate city in Baltimore. This is sort of the equivalent to the Education sector in Greater Boston.

There are virtually no smaller “cities” approaching CT city populations. Despite it having 2.5 million more residents. The cities in Maryland outside of Annapolis are basically sparsely sunbelt type places under country rule like Frederick, Germantown, Gaithersburg- essentially mega suburbs full of subdivisions and 1980s era garden apartments. Annapolis is like if New London we’re middle class and had government jobs.

So MD concentrates basically all of its urban poverty directly into Baltimore so it more dire than Hartford, but also it makes just about all of Maryland a giant suburb. Its an even more suburbanites state than CT. CT clearly has more parallels with MA in that both have small low income traditionally urban cities scattered around the state. Places like Springfield Worcester New Bedford Lowell Lawrence Framingham Pittsfield draw more apt comparisons to Hartford, Waterbury, New London, Meriden, Bridgeport, Danbury and Torrington than anywhere in MD.

that being said there is still much to be learned from Maryland when it comes to just getting retail up and open in more remote areas which I think it does much better than CT. And that could ease property tax burden and promote more residential RE investment down the line, I’d the property tax is lower and the shopping is available and not 22 miles away in Willimantic- you could facilitate more population growth. The issue is unlike MD with county sewage and water I’d be willing to bet much of the smaller towns in CT are on septic or lack sidewalks.

[BobNJ1960]

Corps are going to Boston not due to population, but due to the RIGHT population. No city can match it cluster of Top 50 universities.

Lego won't be the last to relo there.

What we should do IMO is get more mass transit friendly and business tax friendly to attract subsidiaries, as opposed to thinking we could possibly keep hqs like Lego.

The era of Ct suburbs adding hqs, as it did mainly in the NYC was an overtaxed urban jungle era, while we advertised being income tax free on trains to NYC are over. On top of that, in the 21st century, the hqs like Lego are focused on attracting the young, up and coming talent, not the middle aged this forum's posters focus on.

For the last 3 decades, we have had no sales pitch to offer focused on the up and coming age brackets. If this state does not pivot, we will slowly recede economically and I say that as part of the older age bracket.

[robr2]

Adding more to the LEGO story. LEGO Education moved to Boston from Kansas City in 2016 after a 6 month search.

Reasons given:

to be close to a world renowned education ecosystem and unmatched education partner network
access to a technology and digital innovation environment
proximity to NA HQ in Enfield
transportation access to Denmark.

[Stylo]

Originally Posted by CTREInvestor

There is no reason why places like Dwight, Fair Haven or The Hill should exist as single-family home districts. This slows the pace of displacement as these neighborhoods can't be redeveloped. All new development has to be high density downtown as that is the only land that is financially feasible.

That’s not entirely true. There are 3 large apartment buildings proposed in The Hill right now and the Hill to Downtown area has had a ton of development, especially the City Crossing buildings.

Several large apartments have been built or planned in East Rock, Westville, Wooster Square, and Newhallville too. It’s only a matter of time before a few come to Fair Haven. The Strong School project being one new one.

https://www.nhregister.com/news/arti...l-17552973.php

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by robr2

Adding more to the LEGO story. LEGO Education moved to Boston from Kansas City in 2016 after a 6 month search.

Reasons given:

to be close to a world renowned education ecosystem and unmatched education partner network
access to a technology and digital innovation environment
proximity to NA HQ in Enfield
transportation access to Denmark.

Unmatched is your key word.

We need to accept no city or state can compete with an unmatched cluster of exceptional universities.

Period.

[CTREInvestor]

Originally Posted by BHW2436

No one wants New Haven or Hartford to be packed with people like that. I’m not sure what your point is.

It was just a comment that the cities are small. Existing land is already owned. Things could be bulldozed and made tighter/taller/etc but you’d be hard pressed to find many in CT saying they desire any of the towns to be much more dense then they already are.

Most people in the US want density like that. Places with density like that are universally the most expensive places in the US. People pay that much money because they want to live there.

This discussion is about why Lego moved to Boston. Among the major reasons is the talent pool and urban amenities.

The reality is New Haven and Hartford cannot provide what Lego and countless other companies want because their population density is insufficient to deliver any kind of urban life prospective employers want.

People in Corrupticut want jobs and an increasing standard of living. They may not understand how to achieve that, but we have pages and pages about how great Boston is.

Let's match Boston's population density in our cities, most of which are among the worst slums in the US.

[CTREInvestor]

Originally Posted by mdovell

There's no way that you can legitimately tell us that you want Hartford and New Haven to go up to 250,000 people. I'm all for communities growing but the size of hard for by itself is already compact. If you look at Springfield it has about 35,000 more people than Hartford but the sheer size of it is double. I'm not sure what the historical Legacy was of carving out towns that are just so small. I live in Stafford. Next to me is Union. Union is the lowest populated town in Connecticut at approximately 800 people. Personally I think they should just merge the town into Stafford because I can't see how any place of 800 people can realistically survive on its own. Yes there is regionalization and shared services and I get that but sometimes it just makes sense to merge things together.

I think that what we're talking about is more in the long term sustainability. I look around and unless you're in an urban area you probably don't have that much for retail outside of major chains. The internet changed most of that. Recently I started a discussion that got a little feisty about maybe courting Costco to go to quiet corner. Literally everybody in town gets a notice from BJ's but the nearest BJ's is in Willimantic which is 22 miles away. Costco was in controversial and it does have good wages so I really don't see what the issue of it would be.

We end up in the circular argument that businesses aren't going to come to an area if it's going to shrinking or flat population. And then people start leaving areas that don't have much. How do you reverse this? Higher amounts of Transit might help but at what cost?

I know that there's always going to be people that want the Whalers to come back but that's never going to happen. Obsessions with major sports doesn't help in the long run.

Maybe we could have some form of rapid bus transit on 84 and91

I think Hartford and New Haven can increase density to that of 200 other municipalities in the US over 10,000pp/sq. mi., but most especially Boston. This is the minimum for the kind of urban amenities most people in America want. What most people in America want is what Connecticut needs.

Connecticut since 2009 has had the lowest increase in GDP and household income. Dead last of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This is not sustainable.

County government was eliminated to better facilitate corruption. The FBI can't investigate 169 municipalities. Some will say county government was eliminated because it was corrupt, but the goal was to continue the corruption outside of the watchful eye of the Federal Government, which is precisely what happened. I advocate for the state government to assume all local functions. Connecticut should be organized a single polity given its small geographic size and small population.

Demographic collapse in much of the state is serious. But the above can be fairly easily implemented and would have immediate benefits, particularly for the least fortunate among us.

[CTREInvestor]

Originally Posted by BobNJ1960

Unmatched is your key word.

We need to accept no city or state can compete with an unmatched cluster of exceptional universities.

Period.

Yet, the entire rest of the country does.

[Johnho771]

Originally Posted by BobNJ1960

Unmatched is your key word.

We need to accept no city or state can compete with an unmatched cluster of exceptional universities.

Period.

Lego, a toymaker, is moving because of concerns of finding talent in Connecticut? Yet companies making exceptional technology like Pratt, Sikorsky, Electric Boat, etc seem to be fine getting talent in CT. There is no reason Lego cant recruit talent from Boston area schools from Enfield. They are like 2 hours away. Im afraid there is more to the movevthan Lego is telling us.

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by CTREInvestor

Connecticut since 2009 has had the lowest increase in GDP and household income. Dead last of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This is not sustainable.

That is a huge problem, long-term.

Spiking Hartford's population will not alter that.

For a few decades concurrent to this lowest increase, our business friendly ranking has stunk also. that is not a conincidence.