When Gary Francoeur chose to move the headquarters of his fledgling six-year-old company Arcor Laser Services to Suffield, the town’s proximity to Bradley International Airport was the chief selling point.
That location puts Arcor, a precision laser processing manufacturer of medical device and aerospace components, next to major shipping centers like FedEx and UPS, which it uses often to send products across the country.
The town also has plenty of open space, which will allow Arcor to construct a 12,000 square foot facility from the ground up, a building that will eventually house 27 employees and a growing Connecticut company.
“We feel like being next to the airport gives us an edge because we will have extra time to ship things out the door and potentially pick up last-minute projects,” said Francoeur, who is the company’s president. “We will also have space to grow further, which we expect we’ll need.”
Francoeur is tapping into a region many officials believe is one of the strongest areas for economic development in Connecticut — anchored by one of only two major airports in New England.
State lawmakers are so optimistic about its potential that they placed bets on it last session, passing a bill that provides tax breaks to companies that move or expand in the four towns surrounding the airport, including Suffield, Windsor Locks, East Granby, and Windsor.
Undoubtedly, the Bradley region already serves as an economic engine for Connecticut, contributing billions of dollars in economic activity and playing home to some large companies including Hamilton Sundstrand, Alstom Power, and NuFern Fiber.
But with nearly 2,000 acres of undeveloped land remaining in the bucolic region, the untapped potential remains immense.
“Studies have shown that there are hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe even billions of dollars in economic activity that aren’t taking place near the airport that should be,” said state Sen. Gary LeBeau, the Democrat who co-chairs the commerce committee. He was a main proponent of the Bradley Development Zone.
The town of Suffield is a strong example of both progress and potential in the region.
In recent years it has been able to attract new businesses like Designs for Health, a nutritional supplements company, which agreed in 2009 to build a 23,000-square-foot headquarters on Route 75. Arcor Laser Services is the most recent success story.
But Suffield still remains underdeveloped, with 495 acres of buildable land within the newly minted Bradley Development Zone, said Patrick McMahon, the towns’ economic and community development director.
Much of Suffield’s available space is for industrial use, and the town is heavily recruiting high tech, light manufacturers and warehouse and distribution companies. It’s also looking for its first hotel and potential retail and office space commitments.
The biggest challenge for Suffield is its wetlands, McMahon said, because wetlands can be difficult to work around. Developers of Connecticut Studios in South Windsor, for example, considered space in Suffield adjacent to Bradley Airport, but they chose not to build there because of concerns over the wetlands.
Suffield is also a town that takes pride in maintaining a rural setting.
But that hasn’t stopped town officials from being aggressive in their development efforts. Late last month, for example, McMahon hosted a familiarization tour with realtors, utility reps, builders, developers, architects and engineers to showcase available land and space in the town.
The tour included stops at about 30 different properties — mostly industrial — ranging in size from two to 68 acres and in price from a few hundred thousand dollars to nearly $8 million.
Some properties are anchored by buildings with available space, while others remain completely empty fields.
Among them is the Ffyler Place, a 27.5 acre property fronting Route 168 that was formerly home to a sprawling lumber yard. The land is for sale for $7.3 million and a mixed-use developer is being sought for potential office, hotel, retail and residential projects.
The brokerage firm Colliers Dow & Condon is looking to sell or lease multiple industrial properties on Kenny Roberts Memorial Drive in Suffield, totaling just over 50,000 square feet.
Keith Kumnick, a principal at Colliers in Hartford, said leasing the spaces has been slow over the past year, mirroring the overall market, but he is starting to see some increased activity.
Among the properties he’s looking to sell or lease is a 19,540-square-foot industrial building, situated on 2.26 acres in the Mach One Industrial Park. The sales price is listed at $1.25 million and the lease rate is $5.50 per square foot.
Kumnick said the towns surrounding Bradley Airport have a good mix of buildable land and existing infrastructure that would be attractive to various types of companies including manufacturers, warehouse distributors, research and development and sales services.
The area’s proximity to the airport is always a selling point along with its immediate access to Interstates 91 and 84, and proximity to downtown Hartford and Springfield.
“For some people, being next to an airport doesn’t impact their decision, but for others it cements their decision,” Kumnick said.
McMahon said establishing the Bradley Development Zone, a plan which is awaiting the imminent signature of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, will serve as a major marketing tool for the surrounding towns.
The zone, which would go into effect in a few years, would allow new or renovated buildings to be eligible for property tax exemptions equal to 80 percent of the assessed value of the improvements.
The exemption will also be available on the assessed value of machinery and equipment that is part of the development or renovation of a building.
Businesses will also be eligible for a 10-year corporate business tax credit beginning in 2013.
McMahon said the zone will likely create new jobs, attract new capital and increase tax revenue.
“A development zone can spur the economic dial in the positive direction coming out of the recession,” he said.
But LeBeau said the zone is only the first step in making the region more economically dynamic.
He also believes that the state-owned airport must be run more like a business, and should be taken out of the hands of the Department of Transportation and placed under a port authority that has greater flexibility in dealing with airlines, vendors, and businesses.
“People at DOT are good road maintainers, but they aren’t good business people,” LeBeau said. “We need to see much greater aggressiveness from the airport to help stimulate what we can out there. I think a lot more can be done.”
McMahon said it’s also important that Bradley resume international flights, something the airport lost when Northwest Airlines canceled its nonstop flight between Hartford and Amsterdam in 2008. Such a flight serves as a pathway for luring international companies to the state, McMahon said.
Bradley also needs to hire a full-time marketing director so the airport can sell the region more fervently, McMahon said. Former marketing and route development director Kiran Jain, who was credited with attracting the Amsterdam service, left late last year.
John Wallace, a spokesman for the airport, said the search for a replacement continues and the airport is in constant talks to try to bring an international flight back to Bradley.
Regardless, Francoeur, from Arcor Laser Services, has high hopes for the area. Construction on the firm’s new facility is due to be completed in October, at which point the company will begin to vacate its Windsor plant. Arcor’s site also has the capacity to handle up to additional 25,000 square feet.
“Hopefully the region develops into a new technology center,” Francoeur said.
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