Pity the poor economic development folks in Connecticut. How do you sell a state that is raising or introducing taxes on almost every single human endeavor, at a time when other jurisdictions are slashing and even reducing taxes?
As is often the case, Cohen may have an answer. Instead of touting our “high-quality” workforce and our quality of life, play the “underdog” card. Tell the inquiring corporate relocation folks that a move to this miserable piece of real estate would actually motivate the troops, by the horror of it all. Keep reading. It really works.
The old rule-of-thumb joke among corporate relocation professionals suggests that if you draw a rather small circle on a map around the CEO’s home, that will determine where his corporate headquarters is going to be located.
There’s more to it than that, of course. For instance, it’s no accident that 78.5 percent of every piece of economic development propaganda from such places as Florida and Texas and New Hampshire and the like might just happen to mention that the state has no personal income tax. South Dakota? You won’t see much about the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, but it might be mentioned that there is no personal or corporate income tax.
Some companies are willing to be abused, in order to be close to New York City. Some companies want cheap labor; some companies want educated, snobby labor; some companies are trolling for economic development gifts in return for putting a particular jurisdiction on the return-address label.
Depending on the point you’re trying to make, the tipping point for location decisions will be attributed to many different things. Crain’s New York Business, a business newspaper that serves the Big Apple market, has described a “major reason” for the heavy concentration of rich folks in the city, as “simply that the rich want to live here.”
Few location decisions in modern times prompted more second-guessing and clucking than the plopping of ESPN in Bristol, Conn. Bristol, as the editor of Fast Company magazine put it recently, is “hours from New York and Boston and stranded between the less-than-dynamic hubs of Waterbury and Hartford.”
Geography aside, Bristol is one of those odd communities that is not exactly basket-case urban nightmare, not exactly rust-belt failure, not exactly upscale suburb, not exactly sophisticated city. Not much of a clue to suggest why ESPN made it home. Again, the ESPN decision has been attributed in part to proximity to where the corporate leadership happened to live.
In a discussion with Fast Company, George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN, offered up a fascinating explanation, which may or may not be true, but raises some interesting issues for Connecticut.
Disney may own ESPN, Bodenheimer explained, but there’s nothing that smacks of Hollywood in the Bristol environs. From what Fast Company called an “unprepossessing locale,” Bodenheimer claims that the surroundings create an underdog mentality that is actually good for the team culture.
There’s magic for Connecticut in that bit of wisdom. Play up the value of being located somewhere difficult. Imagine the economic development message: Anybody can muddle along in a low-tax, non-union, business-friendly environment. Get tough. Get real. Move to Connecticut and let us show you how being abused is good for the team culture. Man up.
With this new strategy, everything that is bad can be good. Connecticut, ranked 45th in the nation by Chief Executive magazine as a good place to do business? So what? Toughen up. Don’t move to top-ranked Texas; you’ll get soft and lazy. Come to Connecticut and prosper as you grapple with adversity.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
