Naturally, it was a farmer who asked the urban-policy question.
Terry Jones, president of Jones Family Farms in Shelton, asked David Lehman, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD), how he planned to grow the ecosystem in Connecticut’s cities to help nurture a critical mass of commercial innovation and technology-focused entrepreneurship to fuel the state’s economy for the 21st century.
The occasion was the annual Economic & Investment Outlook 2020 breakfast event presented by the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce and attended by some 150 business people Friday morning at Brownson Country Club in Shelton.
“We’ve underinvested in our cities in this state for too long,” responded Lehman, who has made investing in Connecticut’s cities one of the cornerstones of the economic development vision advanced by the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont, who plucked the 44-year-old Greenwich whiz from Wall Street a year ago to chart a new course for DECD.
“You have much less [business] investment in our cities, higher unemployment and poverty levels that are approaching 30 percent or higher” in places like Bridgeport, Waterbury and Hartford, Lehman said. “Our cities are not doing as well as our state. We need to grow them.”
In the 1970s through early ‘90s, Connecticut was the beneficiary of outmigration of from then-dangerous and scary cities such as New York and Boston, Lehman explained. But since the mid-’90s, those former urban jungles have become vastly safer and attractive places to live, work and go to school. To respond, he added, Connecticut should have made greater investment in its own, smaller cities as opposed to suburbs and more rural areas.
“We need to encourage investment” in the state’s cities, Lehman said. “The first key step is investment in high-quality residential, both affordable [government-subsidized] and market-rate. Ultimately foot traffic will drive [development of] more office space and amenities. You’re not going to have the amenities without the people.”
The event’s other featured speaker, People’s United Bank Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer John S. Traynor, discussed how concerns over the worldwide coronavirus outbreak have spread to Wall Street over the past ten days, leading to the worst weekly equity market plunge since the 2008 financial crisis.
“The perception that the virus could be relatively contained and its impact muted on economies beyond China has been severely shaken,” observed Traynor — even though as of Friday morning zero cases had been identified in Connecticut, “an island of immunity from the virus.” At least so far.
“What we’re seeing now is a real loss of confidence” on the part of investors domestically and beyond, Traynor said. Bond markets have seen a “flight to safety” with yields on U.S. Treasury securities falling to historic lows.
“Confidence is key with the investment market,” Traynor added, though he scarcely needed to.
