Remarks by Bruce D. Alexander — Community Leadership Honoree

Published: October 22, 2009

New Haven, Conn. — I am greatly honored and appreciative of this acknowledgement, but it is of course a recognition of shared accomplishment. The work I do on behalf of the University would not be possible without the resources and support provided by Rick Levin and the trustees, and our successes are the result of the labors of Rick and many other of my colleagues at Yale.

Our city has made great progress in recent years and an essential ingredient that has allowed that to happen is a collaboration amongst the institutional, governmental, and business leadership of our community, many of whom are in the room today. I recall giving a talk here many years ago at the request of the then Mayor Ben Dilieto. I said that I had worked on projects in cities all over America as a real estate developer, and that in my experience what separated successful communities from less successful ones was less a matter of who had the most opportunities or greatest problems, but rather who had the most committed and adept civic leadership. By adept I mean competent and creative leadership, and most importantly collaborative leadership, that is a group of political, business, and institutional leaders who work together for common purpose to improve the community. I include the media as important in this coalition, prodding and questioning when appropriate, not for the sake of creating and elevating controversy to achieve profits, but rather in a constructive fashion when required to achieve consensus. Such a consensus is often needed so the community can move forward together when change is necessary, but when it is being resisted by those who are uncomfortable with new circumstances or who have a vested interest in the status quo.

As the largest employer and one of the few remaining large employers left in New Haven, my University has made great efforts in the past decade and a half to reconcile any differences we have had with the community and to join with many of you in the room, who represent important New Haven businesses and institutions, to participate in the kind of civic leadership of which I have been speaking. The University is committed to continuing these positive relationships and we are doing everything we can to institutionalize them beyond the particular individuals now in office.

New Haven’s forward momentum is the envy of many other urban areas. If you know anyone who is not yet convinced that our city is in the midst of a true renaissance and that there have been very significant improvements in public safety, Anne Worcester, who runs Market New Haven, would like to see you in back of the room after lunch to get their names. Market New Haven, incidentally, is a perfect example of the kind of successful collaboration that has moved our city forward. It was begun when Mayor John DeStefano, the late Charlie Terrell, who ran the New Haven Savings Bank, and I got together, representing the business, institutional and government sectors who all fund this venture, and we found a very able person in Anne to run it. Good ideas are important, but competent people to actually get them implemented are essential, and we surely found the right person in Anne.

Having brought our community this far, it is fair to say “what is next,” as we have hardly reached the Promised Land. There is still plenty to do, and of course what we do next is up to the collective will of all of us - and by “all of us” I mean to underscore the desirability for inclusiveness that turns to good advantage the wonderful diversity that is found amongst the citizens of our city.

My own candidates for “what is next” include public school reform, so that this generation of our urban youth have, in this land of opportunity, choices about the future that are now often denied them, a circumstance that is surely among the greatest failings of my generation all across urban America. Such reform cannot happen without John DeStefano and Reggie Mayo being willing to tackle this toughest of issues. They have signaled their willingness to do so in their recent actions but will need much support from all of us, and Yale will do everything possible to help this important effort. I know I speak for many people here in emphasizing the importance of school reform to the future of our community, and I might add the importance of funding public education – now being short changed all over the country by the recession - to the future of America.

My other candidate for what might come next is a renewed effort at economic development, which to be successful of course also relies on an educated workforce in today’s knowledge economy and therefore ties back to school reform. Here my business bias will come out – but what better place for that to happen than at a Chamber of Commerce function? There is great power in the private sector: that is where jobs and a stronger tax base are created, and we must grow the business sector if we are to have a prosperous community. So in closing I would issue this challenge. First to government officials:

• to support the infrastructure, especially the transportation we need, for example, faster train service to Manhattan, and Tweed airport where we are finally on the verge of having runways that are able to be fully utilized…
• to provide an educated workforce at least to the high school level where colleges and universities can then move students to higher levels of achievement…
• to streamline permitting processes so that economic growth can occur…
• and finally to provide some financial assistance, perhaps by floating revenue bonds, for such projects as brownfield site clean up or for the construction of parking garages to make urban development cost effective for developers, who now find it cheaper to develop in suburban greenfield sites, but at great cost to society because of the resulting sprawl.

When government has performed those functions, it is then the role of the business and institutional community to take up responsibility for growing the economy. It is true our heavy manufacturing base has left the region, that the financial services industry has consolidated and often has headquarters in other states, and that the department stores are in the suburbs, but change is inherent in our capitalistic economy, and we in the private sector are best equipped to understand what is takes to create the conditions in which a new, knowledge economy can grow and flourish in our city. A large world-renowned research university and other fine educational institutions, both of which we have here, are enormous advantages and can play a vital role in this effort. Yale stands ready to do our part, and we are working at this issue in a number of ways. Some examples are

• our funding of the newly formed Economic Development Corporation of New Haven whose board is headed by David Silverstone and president is Michele Whelley…
• the creation of a local biotech industry from the University faculty’s life sciences research, for example, Rib-X at the George St. tech center, a company based on the research of our Professor Tom Steitz, a 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and one that has in clinical trials an important new class of antibiotics…
• our populating Science Park – you will be surprised at the activity there if you haven’t been recently…
• and finally starting the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute which encourages our students to found and locate companies here – Higher One now employing 200 people in Science Park, being our best result to date from this effort.

I invite all of you in the business community to think about how you might join us in supporting the agenda of economic growth so important to the prosperity of the region and to the future of many of your own existing businesses. While this is an area that has few experts, how one creates and supports economic growth is itself an entrepreneurial and opportunistic exercise, and the private sector has just that kind of experience. We can also serve our state of Connecticut through this effort, a state that has seen no net job growth between 1990 and 2009. Because Connecticut’s cities have no ability to annex surrounding suburbs and therefore rely heavily on revenue transfers from the state, it is a matter of no small importance to New Haven that our state’s finances are so strained.

So just as we have moved our city forward in recent years in a quite remarkable manner, we need to find additional ways that our business leadership—CEOs and other senior managers—can come together to create a more robust process to move the economy of the region forward. We have creative and effective individuals in our community, and we have proven over the past decade that we can work together for the good of our city. Building on that record of accomplishment, let us find ways that we can do even more to create a prosperous economy and bright future for New Haven.

I again thank Tony Rescigno and the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce for this wonderful recognition of the University’s work in the community.

PRESS CONTACT: Office of Public Affairs  203-432-1345