BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. Executive Director Patricia Moulton already knew she was leaving when she stood before the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce on April 7 and presented a 30-minute explanation to of what BDCC and Southeast Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS) are doing in (as the talk was entitled) “Advancing the Economic Landscape of Southeast Vermont.”
But even though she was just days away from a formal announcement that she accepted the post of Secretary of Commerce in the Shumlin administration, Moulton's talk, delivered at a Chamber breakfast at the Brattleboro Retreat, covered a lot of ground but had one main theme - there is movement on a variety of fronts, and tangible results are not far behind.
“We've got a lot going on, and it's not all doom and gloom,” she said.
She said that BDCC's two main properties - the Cotton Mill and BDCC Business Park (the former home of The Book Press) - are near capacity, with a 93 tenants and about 343 employees between them.
BDCC's Exit One Industrial Park is expanding, with a recent land purchase to facilitate the extension of utilities all the way to the top of the hill in the park. It also now owns the L3 building, the former site of Kollmorgen Electro-Optical.
Besides managing its properties, Moulton said BDCC is working with SeVEDS and four Southern Vermont chambers - Brattleboro, Mount Snow Valley, Bennington, and Manchester and the Mountains - to create a new collaborative marketing effort called Strengthening Southern Vermont.
The project, which also involves the Windham and Bennington Regional Commissions and the state Department of Tourism and Marketing, is funded with a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Agency. Its goal is to increase awareness of the region and create more visitors who might want to stick around and start up businesses.
“This campaign is designed to bring in tourism and talent to Southern Vermont,” Moulton said, adding that customers for their businesses and skilled employees are the two main things that business owners in the region want more of.
“All these people killing themselves to come up here to ski on the weekends need to know that there are jobs for them right here,” she said.
SeVEDS, meanwhile can point to a concrete accomplishment - the creation of a comprehensive economic development strategy (CEDS) for Southern Vermont.
Moulton called the CEDS “our business plan” and said it “won't sit on the shelf.” She said it immediately paid off for the region, as it gave Entergy the confidence to give to Windham County $10 million over the next five years to invest in economic development in the wake of the pending closure of its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.
The first installment of that money, $2 million, is now in the hands of the state Agency of Commerce. She said BDCC and SeVEDS reviewed 52 proposals for projects and winnowed that to 12 recipients who will get funding. More projects will be funded, and Moulton Powden encouraged business owners and nonprofits to submit their proposals.
She said that “$10 million might not sound like a lot of money,” but BDCC and SeVEDS hopes to use that money to leverage tens of millions of dollars of additional funding for projects.
Another major SeVEDS accomplishment touted by Moulton - the Windham Higher Education Collaborative (WHEC).
Last month, Community College of Vermont, Marlboro College, Union Institute & University, World Learning/SIT, Vermont Technical College, and Landmark College formed WHEC, which will allow undergraduate students attending any of these schools to take courses at other WHEC schools. It also will start a full-time paid internship program to give students work experience at local companies.
“This is a huge thing for Southern Vermont,” she said.
Things on the to-do list for BDCC and SeVEDS include a “hiring inventory” to gather data about specific workforce needs from area employers, redevelopment of vacant or underused business properties, and beefing up the “green building” sector of the local economy, which Moulton Powden said was one of the strongest segments of the county's economy.