Conference brings resource providers and town representatives together

By Stephen Melville

We were, Jocelyn Ayer explained as she opened the Northwest Connecticut Development Summit 2016, going to be speed-dating.

Seated at tables that ran down both sides of the White Barn at South Farms in Morris, we were more than a hundred selectmen, local Economic Development Commission members, nonprofit representatives, and other interested parties, including the directors of both the Community Foundation of NW CT and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, from all across the 21 towns that fall under Ayer’s Northwest Hills Council of Governments. And we were there to hear about economic development resources available in our region.

The presenters, who moved every 10 minutes from one table to the next, represented state and federal agencies, advocacy groups, community development funds and resource centers, and business consultants. At our table, as the evening began, were Janet Carlson, from the One Eleven Group, which had a hand in the publicity for the Night in Norfolk that Bella Erder organized this past December and is currently working with the group organizing next August’s Weekend in Norfolk, and Mike Goman, of Goman+York, who has been notably active in Norfolk’s effort to re-establish a general store. Both organizations are currently offering their services to the Council of Government on a multi-year contract paid for by a State grant. They were followed by Jessica Fowler, a Sharon selectman who also chairs NWCONNect, a collaborative advocating for enhanced mobile coverage and fiber optic service throughout the Northwest Corner. Roberta Willis sat in on Fowler’s presentation before moving on to drop in on another conversation at another table, and we were briefly joined by Catherine Awwad, who outlined opportunities available to employers through the Regional Workforce Investment Board.

And so the evening went: one short, concise presentation after another, each giving rise to a round or two of questions or comments from the table, each bringing new information and opportunities, often underlining the same common problems and sometimes sharpening new ones: the Regional Workforce Board thinks Internet services (cloud computing and social media) have a significant role to play in the region’s future, but as NWCONNect pointed out, some of our communities are still working with nothing more than dial-up service. Some of the presenters were pushing initiatives to redress situations where the state or region is starting to fall significantly behind—Sustainable Healthy Communities pointed to the success of “food hubs” in the Berkshires and Hudson Valley. Some, like the Community Economic Development Fund, USDA Rural Development and the CT Department of Economic and Community Development, outlined funding opportunities, and others, like the CT Small Business Development Center and the NW Connecticut chapter of SCORE, who presented together, offered business start-up coaching. Still others—the CT Economic Resources Center and the CT Main Street Center—organize workshops on town planning and economic development.

Discussion, although necessarily brief, was often pointed and interesting. At our table, Kevin O’Connell, CEO of Geer Village, pointed on several occasions to the connection between employment issues, inadequate technology and the lack of appropriate transportation, while two selectmen from Salisbury underlined the costs of an aging demographic and insufficient affordable housing.

Benjamin Paletsky, welcoming the participants on behalf of South Farms, stressed just how much his own ambitious initiative—a working farm that is also a marketplace and events center—benefited from the kinds of resources on offer at the summit. And Ayer reminded us all that change and development only happen where there is clear focus, real commitment of time and money and a significant willingness to take risks. What the evening as a whole brought sharply home was both how many of Norfolk’s problems and worries are in fact regional concerns and how many resources there are to draw upon in addressing them.

Norfolk takes great and proper pride in its uniqueness, but this can sometimes seem to tip over into a less helpful insistence on its separateness and a corresponding inability to see its situation in regional terms. In that context, the evening provided a bracing tonic.