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Springfield actually has the worst of both worlds. It has all the disadvantages of Massachusetts with regard to cost of living and sky high utility rates with none of the pros that Boston has. Yes, the housing is cheap, but that's because it's a dangerous, drug infested craphole with a completely stagnant economy.
Sky high ultility rates? There's more access to natural gas and cheaper power. The green computing center is in Holyoke because HGE's rates are half of what you can find in Lexington. Yes Mt Tom closed but coal is dead in most of the country, the Yankee plant in VT closed but so is Pilgram in Mass.
Is there crime in Springfield? Sure but it isn't nearly as high as what some might want you to believe. You have to adjust for per capita. Stagnant economy? Have you been here in the past few years? Valley Venture mentors, Tech Foundry, MGM, CRRC, the medical school it all adds up. The fact that the pike isn't one way is evidence and frankly I've seen people coming here from other parts of the state for work.
"I'm a Planning Director and get calls from "conservatives" who move to my county from Massachusetts and think they are getting a great deal of land for "cheap" and their taxes are low. Then, they start complaining that it's not like Massachusetts. No kidding. You get what you pay for."
In many cases that is true but many people simply don't want to pay. Even in Mass there's a wide range of services. I know of plenty of towns without HR manager,planners, IT departments etc. There's too much volunteerism that leads to a lack of professionalism. Then add in some politics and some family members double dipping and you get what I mean. Turtleboy sports exists for this alone.
"Companies go where they can find workers who can do the work they need. If you throw some free stuff at them to sweeten the deal, all the better. That's why GE left Fairfield County. Free gifts from Mass and more college students to poach ideas from. It's why Barings left Mass., Boeing left Seattle, BoA left San Francisco. Companies moving actual headquarters are typically just moving 100 top executives (Boeing and Aetna) and leaving their 1000s of employees behind (Boeing and Aetna)."
Eh kinda sorta. GE hasn't left Fairfield County yet. Infact GE cut their dividend in half, is laying people off and delayed moving to Boston for two years. The argument was that in Fairfield people couldn't even order a sandwich and Boston would be a big change. The other reason why is when CT presented reasons to stay they supposedly showed a Pratt & Whitney engine in their presentation Obviously GE wasn't happy with that.
HQ's are considered two things. One is where a large amount of people work and the other and most obvious is where they pay their taxes. Just because a business operates somewhere does not mean that they make a fair amount. I lived in a small town that had Solar City coming in and the place thought Musk was inheriting quite a bit. The reality was it's just a warehouse and their installation crews use it. It isn't a factory, it isn't a HQ and to be honest there wasn't much for jobs there. Boston isn't getting that much in tax revenue due to GE. It's mostly to move more people into boston. Boston only gets $10K out of this. Mass only gets about 20 million. https://www.americaninno.com/boston/...ticism-mounts/
At the end of the day some companies like being in urban areas because to be blunt they want people out of higher ed that work cheap. I see it all the time, especially with startups. You aren't going to see someone in their 50's or older working for a startup unless they own it (angel investors) or run it.
"Our development regulations aren't more "friendly" outside the Northeast; looking at the crap you let developers build in your suburbs is a perfect example of this, but the process is more insane because everyone has an opinion and your local politicans are blowhards who can't get out of their own way. Taxes may be a little lower, if you make more than $250k a year, but for the rest of society, good luck. Where you uptight Yankees are moving, property taxes aren't necessarily cheaper and you'll 7.5% tax on a loaf of bread. Where property taxes are cheap, you snowflakes wouldn't last long."
I never really understood the desire to tax food and clothing. The other aspect is if things are catered to people that are cheap think of what it attracts. I knew people that were attracted to NH due to cheap houses, taxes and well...fireworks. I think they are still in the same jobs ten years later.
"Which brings us back to the "business environment" bullfantasy. Unless you live in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Asheville, Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Richmond, DC, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Tampa, and a few other metros; good luck building or running a business that requires workers who can read, or live past 60. Clean water? Maybe. Broadband internet? Unlikely."
I worked for a major retailer with their HQ out of NC. Outside of the HQ they had no clue what operations were like on the store level. Um no we don't have ms office on the computers.
Back to topic though I think the western newengland area could work. Costs are a factor and if you can put it in hartford you can pull from MA, CT and NY. Rail traffic between NYC and New Haven is going to go up considerably and the linking of Springfield to New Haven rail opens it up more. We're going to see report after reporting trying to look at a variety of states. I have a high school colleague that works at HQ 1. He has no idea where it is but the deciding crew is at the very top. We're talking about the top five to ten people are deciding this.
"That's what low taxes and regulations will get you. If the GOP has it's way, you won't have to leave anymore, your states will be "business friendly" just like Alabama soon enough"
Well I've seen my share of NIMBY democrats as well. Historical districts there's a love hate relationship. They can work if people can pay the money for them but if they cannot afford them it falls apart. The sad thing is when it comes down to it is that in many respects businesses do not always work with each other, especially with smaller ones. It's like herding cats. Many don't want to make a move until someone else does. Make no mistakes there are some companies that do significant investment but even then they cannot do that everywhere and a fair amount of that is for PR. Public private partnerships can work but involve quite a bit of negotiations and are pretty hard to dissolve.
Affordability and taxes don't always go hand in hand. Sometimes regulations play a significant role. The Jones Act for example contributes greatly to the higher cost of living out of the continental USA. Alaska can try to offset it with the oil dividend but it is getting harder.
You haven't shopped for houses in the places you think are so wonderful, in the kind of neighborhoods and towns where you wouldn't stick out as a lily-white, espresso sipping, Yankee, have you? Once you leave the containment areas for Yankees real estate might be cheaper but then you'll be calling me whining about your neighbors' dogs, sofa on the porch, all night gun range, and chicken slaughtering bizness. And I'd get to tell you that you have to live with it and welcome you to low tax, low regulation business friendly nirvana and that I hope you have no children or elderly parents who want to come live you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanmyth
I'm a Planning Director and get calls from "conservatives" who move to my county from Massachusetts and think they are getting a great deal of land for "cheap" and their taxes are low. Then, they start complaining that it's not like Massachusetts. No kidding. You get what you pay for.
It’s not like the South is just “containment areas for Yankees” and the inspiration for Deliverance. There’s a pretty continuous transition between those two extremes. It’s also not the case that Massachusetts is exclusively full of espresso sipping bespectled philosphy professors.
Places like Houston and Atlanta are both a lot cheaper than Boston and still a fully functioning modern cities. When someone says they want to go somewhere south because it’s cheaper that’s the sort of place they’re describing, not way out in the deep country.
New Hampshire's bid is to bash Boston traffic and costs but say out of the other side of it's mouth:
We've got great colleges - in Boston
We've got a great airport - in Boston
We've got great culture - in Boston
We've got great dining - in Boston
We've got great workers - in Boston.
Great colleges and some good culture I will give you that, but you have to get out more. There are plenty of cities with better dining and just as good workers. Logan airport is average to subpar at best. Culture, you can get that in pretty much any major city now, so you have exaggerated that.
Can you imagine Amazon trying to get approval, in Boston, for a 2nd Phase after the first building is (eventually) up?
"Why does it have to be so bi-i-g?" "I can see it from [location]!" "But it looks sort of like the first one. N-o-o." "It doesn't have bricks. Where are the bricks?" "It's too tall."
Can you imagine execs bracing themselves for regular 6 hour transcontinental flights to Seattle from an airport with connections to nowhere?
That's a lot of triple deckers. Where do the locals live?
Yup, and that is a big problem. It will take forever to get approval for anything in Boston and in the northeast. The unions will eat everything alive. I think it will stay with a state with low regulation.
Great colleges and some good culture I will give you that, but you have to get out more. There are plenty of cities with better dining and just as good workers. Logan airport is average to subpar at best. Culture, you can get that in pretty much any major city now, so you have exaggerated that.
How is Logan Airport sub-par at best? Sure it's not the nicest facility in this country (then again US airports lag big time behind those in Europe and Asia) but we are fortunate enough to have a wide range of air service. Multiple year round non-stop flights to Europe, Asia and now South America once LATAM to Sao Paulo comes online next year. Apart from San Antonio, Memphis and Louisville you can get to every major city in the US non-stop and most cities have more than one carrier.
Yes, get out and you will find Boston stands pretty high on the culture list. Cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, Salt Lake City, Tampa among other cannot match Boston imo.
I think Boston ranks high on pretty much every measure other then cost, and possibly infastracture (though most us cities are **** poor in this aspect).
If they just bought out the whole town of Saugus they could probably make a really awesome kind of headquarters. A whole town-sized campus. It'd be an improvement, and it would employ more people than there are currently living there.
How is Logan Airport sub-par at best? Sure it's not the nicest facility in this country (then again US airports lag big time behind those in Europe and Asia) but we are fortunate enough to have a wide range of air service. Multiple year round non-stop flights to Europe, Asia and now South America once LATAM to Sao Paulo comes online next year. Apart from San Antonio, Memphis and Louisville you can get to every major city in the US non-stop and most cities have more than one carrier.
Yes, get out and you will find Boston stands pretty high on the culture list. Cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, Salt Lake City, Tampa among other cannot match Boston imo.
Look at every airport rating and Logan airport ranks in the bottom term. Stop trying to thing its a top notch airport. It is a mediocre airport with some international flights.
If they just bought out the whole town of Saugus they could probably make a really awesome kind of headquarters. A whole town-sized campus. It'd be an improvement, and it would employ more people than there are currently living there.
Look at every airport rating and Logan airport ranks in the bottom term. Stop trying to thing its a top notch airport. It is a mediocre airport with some international flights.
I never said Logan was a top notch facility. It is however a pretty decent airport that will only get better once Massport finishes some key projects. First being the expansion of Terminal B and the second being the expansion of Terminal E. Logan's level of air service (which is well more than "just some international flights") is solid a lot better than what some other cities have. I'd take Logan over an airport like Charlotte (which scores better than Logan on JD Power's survey) which is heavily dominated by a single carrier and lacks the variety of service Boston enjoys.
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Obviously GE wasn't happy with that. 
