Editorial: Marching Ahead
While Aesop's classic fable of the tortoise and the hare may be clichéd at this point, it's stuck around all these years for a reason: It's true.
Slow and steady often does win the race, even if the more deliberate racer makes less of a splash.
Worcester has had its fair share of tortoise moments. But lately, its slow progress has begun to add up, bringing it that much closer to the finish line.
Development Trifecta
In the last two weeks alone the city marked three major economic development milestones. Most notable was the official groundbreaking of the CSX rail yard expansion, which is expected to create more than 450 local jobs.
The $120 million expansion project will more than double the size of the intermodal terminal between Shrewsbury and Franklin streets, bringing it to 51 acres. And through an agreement with the state, the project will allow for more commuter trains from Worcester to Boston to start travelling the tracks by 2012.
So not only will the local distribution and rail industries receive a boost from this project, so too will the overall economy and community, thanks to increased passenger rail cars leaving Union Station headed for Boston — and vice versa.
Next up was the positive news coming from Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Gateway Park project. The next phase of the already established Gateway Park development will include a new four-story building now under construction and due to be completed in late 2012.
That building is expected to house a Biomanufacturing Education and Training Center, where WPI faculty and staff will receive hands-on training on the production of medicines and research compounds using engineered living cells.
The facility has received the support of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center in the form of a $6.6 million grant and now can also lay claim to some powerful friends in the private sector.
Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Shire Human Genetic Therapies — which all have major operations in the region — have signed on as inaugural partners for the center. The private-sector partners will lend their expertise and their employees for a win-win: The school’s students get valuable real-world training and the companies have a hand in helping to prepare their future workforce.
And only two days after WPI’s announcement came another landmark for economic development in Worcester.
The University of Massachusetts Medical School celebrated the “topping off” of its new $405 million, nine-story Albert Sherman Center. When that facility is completed next year it’s expected to support 1,600 jobs and $264 million in annual economic activity.
So that was three good-news economic development stories for Worcester within 10 days.
That’s an impressive feat in this economy. But with these projects moving forward, coupled with the progress downtown at the CitySquare development as well as plans for a theatre district around the already successful Hanover Theatre, Worcester is clearly making major progress toward a future as an even more vibrant city.
While progress in the economic development arena hasn’t always come easily or quickly for Worcester, it’s clear that the work of key leaders in both the public and private sectors is paying off.
Any city of comparable size would be jealous to host just one of the projects mentioned, never mind all three of them.
And what’s especially significant is that all these projects are already off the ground. They aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams anymore — they’re actually happening. That bodes well for New England’s second largest city as well as for Central Massachusetts as a whole.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments