In her new apartment in downtown Hartford, Joan McDonald lives just a few blocks from her office at the state Department of Economic and Community Development on Hudson Street, where she is the new commissioner.
But for the most part, walking to work isn’t an option. That’s because, as McDonald points out, there is little reliable public transit in the state other than MetroNorth Railroad — a system she helped administer for three years. So like other workers and business leaders in the state, she needs a car to get to most of her appointments. It’s a sad state of affairs for a former Greenwich Village resident and career promoter of transit-oriented economic development.
“In the rest of the state, and in the midday, [we] are totally dependent on the automobile. And it costs time, it costs money, to people and to businesses, and it’s something we have to grapple with,” McDonald said.
Just hours after Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced McDonald’s appointment on May 9, Democrats were quick to point out that her professional experience is almost solely in transportation, suggesting that she would be a better fit for commissioner of the Department of Transportation than for the economic development post.
McDonald left her post as senior vice president of transportation for the New York City Economic Development Corp., where she worked for close to three years, securing new leases for its two main airports and overseeing the creation of the $83 million Staten Island Railroad. Previously she served as an advisor on a number of transit construction projects for Jacobs Engineering Group, a private technical service provider. She has also worked for New York City’s DOT and MetroNorth.
Coordination
But McDonald doesn’t see how one can separate the two – economic development and transportation –- and hence isn’t hedging on her transit-oriented experience. She doesn’t think there’s any non-auto mode of transport that can’t be beefed up in the state.
“The past 15 years in the city, I’ve become a very strong advocate for transit, whether it be subway, commuter rail, buses, light rail, bicycling and pedestrian,” she said.
The result of fewer cars on the roads and shorter commutes is a more enviable site for companies looking to relocate or expand operations here (jobs) as well as warm up property values around transport hubs (housing).
Her other views are nascent, as she has been on the job less than three weeks. State business advocate Rob Simmons, the former Congressman with an office in DECD, said that in a world of show horses and workhorses, “she’s a workhorse.”
R. Nelson “Oz” Griebel, president of the MetroHartford Alliance, has only met McDonald once so far, but was optimistic.
“She certainly brings a lot of valuable experience to the table,” he said. He indicated that he hoped she, along with Simmons and Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele (a business owner), could bring some continuity to economic development efforts. There have been openings at the top of DECD, Connecticut Innovations and Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism for months.
“There’s an opportunity here to do things on a more coordinated basis,” Griebel said.
A Green Plan
One can expect to see close work between McDonald, a native of upstate New York, and not only the DOT, but Gina McCarthy’s Department of Environmental Protection. The three are charged with implementing Rell’s “Responsible Growth” agenda, for which the governor proposed $7 million in operating funds and $587 million in capital funding to increase local planning capacity, preserve farmland, remediate brownfields and fund clean water projects.
In a lot of that work, particularly when it comes to clean energy, McDonald sees opportunities for businesses to thrive, possibly with the help of new incentives.
“Everything is evolving in response to maintaining the future of the environment, and that all spurs new types of technology and new types of businesses,” she said.
Brownfields, she noted, is another area in which economic development, environmentalism and, yes, transportation efforts ought to be linked.
“There really is an opportunity with the brownfields, with the sites this state has, where we bring together the business leaders, the environmental leaders, the transportation leaders and look at ways to develop those sites, and do it in a responsible way,” she said.
The Cost Of Success
McDonald is aware that many of her ideas are likely to be expensive. Rell has been pushing for a 9.6-mile busway with 11 stops in New Britain, Newington, West Hartford and Hartford, which would run on railroad beds and potentially reduce traffic along Interstate-84 west of Hartford.
The price tag? $458 million. And that would pale to any sort of rail project.
“Making transportation investments is a significant capital investment, but they are investments that are well-made,” McDonald said.
She added: “Sometimes I just think it’s so intuitive that that’s the way it should be, but it really takes leadership to get everyone on the same page and focusing on the same goals.”
Bradley International Airport, which will launch its first flight to Amsterdam next month, is another area where she sees unfulfilled potential, particularly from a commercial standpoint.
“Bradley is ripe for expansion, both for personal and business flights, and also for the air cargo industry,” she said. She notes the popularity of services like Fresh Direct, a company that zips fresh foods from farms and fields to thousands of personal and commercial customers in New York City. Its hub is in Queens, and as companies like it grow, so too might Bradley’s freight traffic.
