Southborough leaders look ahead 25 years
What will Southborough look like in 25 years? Town leaders and economic development experts opened that discussion, Thursday morning at the Southborough 2040 Business & Nonprofit Summit.
Hosted by the Southborough Economic Development Committee, the event was an opportunity for business and local government officials to collectively ponder the town's business climate and how it should be developed to stay competitive with neighboring towns, said committee chairman Dave McCay.
“What should the town and specifically the (Economic Development Committee) be doing to prepare for Southborough in 2040?,” McCay asked Thursday in the Putnam Family Arts Center on the St. Mark's School campus.
The event featured a panel discussion with presentations from economics professors from Northeastern and Framingham State (FSU) universities. Included was a presentation by Maureen Dunne, an FSU economics professor who authored a report on the Southborough economy through the FSU-based MetroWest Economic Research Center (MERC).
Dunne's research shows that Southborough, in the heart of MetroWest and with a population of nearly 10,000, has fared better than the state average in job growth over the last 35 years, increasing at an annual average of 2.4 percent between 1980 and 2012. Meanwhile, the annual state growth rate was 0.7 percent.
In 2012, Southborough employed 7,400 out of an employment base of 183,000 in Greater MetroWest, placing the town eighth in the region, the MERC study found. Meanwhile, Southborough was third third in average wages, and the number of business establishments, totaling 430 two years ago, tripled since 1980.
Despite those gains, McCay said in an interview Wednesday that the committee, founded about 18 months ago, wants to develop policies that secure its position as a leader. He noted that Southborough is catching up to neighboring communities, such as Marlborough and Westborough, which launched similar planning efforts several years ago.
“We know that there's a lot of competition for those jobs and we want to make sure we identify all the things that we can be doing to support those businesses and the nonprofits in our town,” McCay said. n
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