How "tech-friendly" is your town?
New rankings to be released later this month
The Massachusetts High Technology Council (MHTC) made headlines in March for its effort to rank just how "tech friendly" each of the Bay State’s 351 communities were. Called MassTrack, the program relied on publicly available data to summarize and compare community-specific information such as tax rates, education levels and amounts of developable space.
It was, and is, an unusual tool in that it attempts to examine at the local level differences in how town and cities here. It is akin to efforts by national advocacy group such as the Sierra Club, which gives environmental scorecards to federal legislators on how well they vote on environmental issues. Other national advocacy groups, from the National Rifle Association to Planned Parenthood, have similar, federal-government aimed efforts.But a localized scorecard is uncommon, says Cort Boulanger, vice president of the MHTC. And that’s probably why so many people started paying attention.
Over the next two months, that attention should ratchet back up. In the coming weeks, the MHTC plans to release an updated MassTrack ranking system that reflects more current data, including new MCAS scores and housing statistics, that could remake the rankings.
And in September, MassTrack will add a legislative scorecard feature that will list how individual state representatives and senators voted on a list of 10 bills deemed by the MHTC to be crucial to the Bay State’s high-technology sector. Among them: The failed "family leave" bill (SB 2535), which the MHTC opposed and the successful "streamlined permitting" bill (HB4741), which it supported.
"We see this as a way for people to gauge how things are improving – or slipping – in individual communities," Boulanger says. "The overall goal is to make all 351 cities and towns more competitive and we have gotten a positive reaction. We haven’t heard from every town, but we have some that have called and we know have discussed their rankings at town meetings."
Among those talking with the MHTC about ways to raise their rank? East Brookfield, ranked 286 in the most recent survey.
Area runs the "tech-friendly" gamut
Central Mass. and Metrowest included the most and least tech-friendly communities in the state, according to its most recent rankings (see chart).
Hopkinton, headquarters to EMC Corp., one of the state’s largest tech companies, ranked number one. But it wasn’t the mere presence of a high-tech giant that skyrocketed the town the top, says Boulanger. "It’s a competitive town, he says, "There are life science firms, other tech companies, and it’s strong in all of the important areas – the school system, the infrastructure."
That infrastructure includes a lot of inexpensive commercial space, one of the main reasons that Hy9 Corp., which makes hydrogen-purifiers, moved its headquarters to Hopkinton earlier this year, says CEO Jeffrey T. Altman.
"We initially never considered Hopkinton as an area to move, given the majority of us live in the Cambridge and Brookline area," Altman says. "But given the given the space itself, with a very large amount of already-installed equipment, at a rental rate of one half of Woburn and approximately one fifth of Cambridge, it was simply too good to pass over."
Altman says he sees Hopkinton as embracing the transition from a suburban community to high-tech mecca by further developing its infrastructure like hotels, restaurants and copying facilities and having its government be more responsive to the needs of these companies.
Of course, you don’t need to be number one to be very tech-friendly. Consider the case of Northboro.
The town ranked number four overall, based largely on its high MCAS scores, percentage of adults with college degrees and number of housing starts per thousand households.
Does that translate into tech-friendliness? Maybe, says Aspen Aerogels CEO Don Young. But when it came to helping out his business, the town was just plain friendly.
Aspen Aerogels specializes in a nanotechnology-based insulation used in products ranging from clothing to fuel cells to insulation for deep-sea oil pipelines. They are designed and manufactured at the Forbes Road headquarters.
But the product is so new that there were few established protocols on how to handle parts of the manufacturing process that involved flammable materials. So Aspen Aerogels worked with the town’s fire department to establish a safety regimen for the manufacturing process.
Young says that type of assistance epitomized how strongly the town wanted to attract and retain a business like his. It was in that same spirit of cooperation that Aspen Aerogels sponsors two college scholarships for science students at Algonquin Regional High School.
Of course, not all of Central Mass. fared well in the rankings, with the town of Auburn coming in dead last at number 351.
Maybe that’s why so few tech companies call it home. Eleanor Houbre, director of affiliate services at the Auburn Chamber of Commerce, says she did not count any high-technology companies among her membership. She was unfamiliar with MassTrack ranking Auburn as the state’s least tech-friendly.
The reason for the ranking? In large part, it was due to the relatively low percentage of adults with college degrees and a large tax differential for commercial property.
When the new numbers are released and rankings reset, probably next week says MHTC’s Boulanger, there should be some shifting, although no-one knows yet for sure whether Hopkinton will top the list and Auburn bring up the rear. But hopefully it will spark some more discussion over how the state’s communities can be more competitive, he says.
Kenneth J. St. Onge can be reached at kstonge@wbjournal.com
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