🔒UConn in Storrs, Jackson Lab in Farmington were mistakes? Maybe

The state’s multibillion-dollar investment in UConn’s Storrs campus in recent decades has been a mistake. Most, or at least significant portions of Connecticut’s flagship university should have been moved down state instead.

Locating Jackson Laboratory’s genomics research center in Farmington was wrong-minded and didn’t fully leverage taxpayers’ dollars.

The state’s four public universities should be consolidated into one or two schools on one or two campuses near major employment centers.

Do I have your attention yet?

Those actually aren’t my hot takes. They were insights recently shared by Matthew Nemerson during an economic-development panel discussion held at the Hartford Public Library and hosted (ironically) by UConn.

Nemerson, the former CEO of the Connecticut Technology Council and economic-development director in New Haven, has never been shy about voicing his opinions. In fact, that’s gotten him in trouble a few times during his career (i.e. his city of New Haven-tenure didn’t end all that well).

But he wasn’t simply trying to generate headlines. His point was that the state hasn’t always thought strategically about how and where it invests money to fully capitalize on economic-development assets and opportunities.

Nemerson’s a strong believer that the center of U.S. economic activity will reside in 12 to 18 metroplexes and that Connecticut, with its mix of small cities and many suburbs, isn’t in a position to compete. It’s hard to argue that point.

We need to choose one or two cities in the state, Nemerson says, and amalgamate a critical mass of universities, companies and residential units that will attract top global talent and allow us to be more competitive with our chief rivals — Boston and New York City.

Competing with those economic behemoths isn’t out of reach because they have become too crowded and expensive. Connecticut can do things cheaper and with more agility and less congestion than they can.

But we have to think more strategically and make tough political decisions to get there. Nemerson’s insights are timely — the Lamont administration is currently working on the state’s new economic-development plan. They may want to give this column a read.

“We were designed to fight the wrong war,” Nemerson said of Connecticut being a suburban state that was popular with New Yorkers and others fleeing higher-tax jurisdictions during the 1970s and 80s. “The war has changed. We need to figure out how we are going to compete with two huge armies.”

A Yalie himself, Nemerson, who now works for Shelton tech firm Budderfly, said Connecticut should place its bet on the I-95, Amtrak corridor and make New Haven the center of the state’s universe.

He wants a grand alliance between Yale and the University of Connecticut, with UConn moving some of its key schools (including engineering) to New Haven to be near Yale, similar to how Cambridge has Harvard and MIT and Rutgers has aligned with Princeton to make New Brunswick, New Jersey, a competitive research center (he noted that Bristol-Myers Squibb left Connecticut to expand its Garden State presence).

“We are kidding ourselves when we think we can have two research universities that are an hour-and-a-half apart,” Nemerson said. “We have to think about what we can really do that would be a game-changer the way a place like Austin, Texas, went from a sleepy little town with a big-state university to the head of the IT industry.

“We must figure out how you can play off of the fact that we have Yale, which is a world-class brand and center of ideas and innovations. It’s in a really small place and not really being exploited globally.”

Jackson Laboratory, too, should have been located in New Haven, or maybe Stamford, keeping it on I-95 and the Amtrak line, which Nemerson described as a main artery for the state, connecting it to New York City.

Nemerson is not wrong in his overall thinking. Big cities are the main economic centers these days and Connecticut’s lack of one hurts our competitiveness.

I also agree that Connecticut should focus its investments on one or two urban centers. New Haven should be one, and Hartford the other. The Capital City’s concentration of major corporations and universities along with a burgeoning effort to establish a technology base make Hartford ripe for growth, but we can’t focus on just downtown. We need more market-rate apartments and companies in Hartford neighborhoods.

We also can’t worry about gentrification. Hartford already has by far the highest percentage of affordable housing in the state. We need more wealthy and highly educated people moving into different parts of the city, as well as a closer collaboration with neighboring towns.

One of the wisest strategic decisions in recent years was moving UConn’s regional campus from West Hartford to downtown, though the Hartford site should be leveraged further and needs more programs.

The question remains: Do we have the political will to change Connecticut’s trajectory. Choosing one city over others means someone’s ox gets gored; gaining political consensus within a 187-member legislature is no easy task.

“We are going to have to do things that are uncomfortable,” Nemerson said. “We must think outside the box and challenge some of the orthodoxies — that is the challenge of government.”

Let’s see if the Lamont administration is ready to challenge some of the state’s old ways of thinking. Our economic future may depend on it.