A prominent Concord developer laid out his vision Wednesday for how the city will thrive over the next 50 years, saying its advantages – if properly marketed – will allow it to compete with any place in New Hampshire.
But Steve Duprey said that Concord needs to take more initiative in selling itself to business owners who are instead being attracted to more aggressive communities. In an increasingly competitive environment, Concord can’t just sit back, he said.
“Those days are over,” Duprey told a crowd at the Kimball Jenkins Estate. Cities and towns “are engaged in a friendly, but sharp-elbowed competition to attract good employment and economic growth. To be very frank, I think Concord’s been very slow to the game.”
Duprey, who through his ambitious developments has a significant stake in Concord’s future, pointed to Portsmouth as an example of what can be accomplished through a deliberate marketing effort. While the seaside city is now a buzzing tourist destination – with more restaurant seats than residents – it was seedy and unsafe 30 years ago, he said.
“They didn’t have tourism. They developed that because the city of Portsmouth made a direct appropriation to the chamber of commerce to fund part of a person whose only job … is to promote tourism,” he said, adding that Concord has a similar opportunity.
The city’s decision to hire an economic development director was a good step, Duprey said, but “it’s more than hiring one person.”
Speaking as part of the estate’s “Wednesday Wisdom” series, Duprey said the city should adapt to meets businesses’ needs, continue to develop infrastructure and plan more events.
“I actually talked to Fairpoint and for about $650,000, we could have had the highest speed internet in the state of New Hampshire, north of Boston, and I think that’s a calling card,” he said, noting that the minds behind Boston-area startups will look to cities such as Concord to locate and raise families.
Duprey said the quality of Concord’s schools have lost ground as compared with neighboring towns, making “bedroom communities” more attractive.
“I think we really need to put a focus on trying to create super-performing schools,” he said. “One of the single biggest factors for businesses in a community is whether the CEO can see his family going to the local schools.”
Duprey said the Main Street Project was an important step to protect the downtown, as more shopping moves online, but he emphasized that the city has to stay active in creating its future.
“It’s not going to be one approach,” he said. “It’s going to be a target of 15 to 20 things that you throw at the wall with different degrees of success.”
Duprey added: “You’re going to have some failures, and a lot of the time, taxpayers don’t like subsidizing projects that end up as failures, but I think we need to … understand that if we don’t become aggressive in trying to promote a wide variety of economic development, we risk sort of fumbling along and atrophying, and Concord’s too good a city to let that happen.”
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)