Towns Desperately Seeking Soadco | Locals leap on companies seeking space
PHOTO/COURTESY
John Riordan, executive director, Marlborough 2010.
PHOTO/COURTESY
John Riordan, executive director, Marlborough 2010.
In mid-June, when John Riordan, the executive director of Marlborough 2010, found out that medical device company Soadco was planning to set up a factory somewhere in Massachusetts, he immediately sent an e-mail to the Massachusetts Office of Business Development suggesting that Marlborough would make a good choice for the company's new location.
âI'm sure 18 other economic development directors did the same thing that day,â Riordan said.
Soadco - which is a dental implant maker based in the tiny landlocked European nation of Andorra - said it will create 140 jobs in the state over the next three years. Such announcements from comapnies tend to set off storms of activity among eager economic development officials.
But, ultimately, local officials say, the best marketing pitch is often no match for the draw of the much-touted industry clusters in Greater Boston.
Building A Network
Riordan is actually in an unusual position among local economic development officials. Unlike the usual development office, Marlborough 2010 is a public-private partnership. Because it gets less than 10 percent of its funding from the city, with local businesses pitching in most of the rest, Riordan said the group has a great deal of flexibility. The executive director said he is able to spend time hobnobbing with leaders of the various state departments that help businesses come to the state. âI want them to be thinking of a short list of places and I want them to have Marlborough on that list,â he said.
Timothy J. McGourthy, Worcester's director of economic development, said the city takes a similar approach. Both municipal employees and private business-promotion organizations like Choose Worcester and Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives help push the city as a good spot for companies to locate.
All over Central Massachusetts, local officials are doing what they can to attract life science companies. Framingham's economic development director, Alison Steinfeld, said the town works closely with representatives from Technology Park, where Genzyme Corp., Bose Corp. and other businesses have offices. The town recently approved zoning amendments to make the park friendlier to life science companies, she noted.
Local Input
Darrell LeMar, spokesman for the state Executive office of Housing and Economic Development (of which the Massachusetts Office of Business Development is a division) said the state works hard to involve local communities in its siting process.
LeMar said MOBD regional directors work with local officials and help advocate for their regions. Still, he said, to many companies the Boston-area clusters are the key to the state's attractiveness, no matter how cleverly local communities market themselves.
Michael Ellis, president and CEO of the Greater Gardner Chamber of Commerce, is well aware of what goes into finding a location for a company.
He was part of the taskforce that helped convince Bristol-Myers Squibb to build its $1.1 billion biomanufacturing facility in Devens.
These days, Ellis said, he still works closely with MOBD to make sure companies looking at the state know about his part of North Central Massachusetts. But he said many companies simply can't be lured to a specific spot just because he'd like to see them there.
âIt's kind of an ongoing process,â he said. âIt's not a rifle but kind of more of a shotgun.â
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