Give an economic developer perfect information and a toolbox stuffed with incentives, and he or she can move the world ”“ or perhaps stop a piece of it from moving.
For a reminder of that maxim, Laure Aubuchon needs only to look a few blocks down the street in Stamford to Royal Bank of Scotland.
New Mayor Mike Pavia hired Laure (pronounced “lore”) Aubuchon to lead the city”™s economic development office, replacing Michael Freimuth who ran the office under former Mayor Dan Malloy as Stamford lured major new employers like RBS; as well as the commitment from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. to relocate from White Plains, N.Y.
Freimuth recently took a similar post in the smaller Westchester County, N.Y., city of New Rochelle.
As was the case when Gov. M. Jodi Rell hired Joan McDonald three years ago as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Pavia picked Aubuchon primarily for her experience in the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Unlike McDonald, who has spent the bulk of her career in the public sector focused primarily on transportation, Aubuchon has traversed an impressive arc in the private sector: growing up in Massachusetts in a name-brand family; attending Harvard Business School; becoming a longtime manager in a large and controversial corporation; taking the unhappy plunge with a dotcom; and expanding her world view with the consultancy Ernst & Young.
Connecticut”™s ability to draw corporations from New York is now in the hands of two women who know well the carrots used by the Big Apple and Empire State as businesses consider their relocation options.
For Aubuchon, the loss of RBS still smarts to this day, after the company took a huge incentive package from Connecticut to site operations in Stamford that previously were located in New York City and in Greenwich. As head of Bloomberg”™s international development team, it was Aubuchon who placed the call to Sir Fred Goodwin office”™s, at the time the CEO of RBS, to get an explanation.
“That was a kick in the pants when they moved out,” Aubuchon said. “I found out by picking up a newspaper.”
She says she can only laugh now that she is steps away from the building into which RBS moved last year. It serves as a reminder for her to appreciate the contrast of incentives between Connecticut and New York, such as the positive impact of Connecticut”™s 30 percent tax credit for film, TV and digital media productions; as well as well as disincentives, such as the unincorporated business tax in New York she suspects is helping drive hedge funds and other partnerships and limited liability corporations across the border to Stamford and Greenwich.
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Long before Aubuchon ever learned about the crowbars, hammers and wrenches of the economic variety, she was schooled in old-fashioned tools on the shelves of Aubuchon Hardware, the family company with 125 locations that marked a century in business last year.
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She attended Smith College, and went on to obtain an MBA from Harvard (at HBS, her business school colleagues included John Doerr of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who seeded the launch of Google Inc.).
Aubuchon would join W.R. Grace & Co., where she would spend nearly two decades of her career ”“ coinciding with a very long chapter in the chemical company”™s history, after a 60 Minutes report on the company”™s role in the contamination of groundwater in Massachusetts, which led to the book “A Civil Action” and subsequent movie starring John Travolta as an attorney investigating the case.
Perhaps for that reason, on the topic of redevelopment of mildly contaminated brownfields, a major goal of Rell”™s, property developers may find no ear more sympathetic than Aubuchon”™s ”“ to this day she is visibly affected when the topic arises of W.R. Grace and the subsequent cancer cluster that emerged near its industrial properties in Massachusetts.
Stamford is currently enjoying a massive redevelopment of its brownfield-stained South End, as Building & Land Technology works on the first, commercial phase of its Harbor Point development, with residential development to follow later.
As the pieces of Harbor Point and the South End fall into place, Stamford will have a major new neighborhood to hold up for New York businesses and residents alike.
“People would ask me all the time, ”˜what”™s your closest competition?”™” Aubuchon said, recalling the query she would get in New York from people who would assume a response of international financial centers like London and Singapore. “What I would tall them is that the closest is good enough (competition) ”“ by that I meant Stamford, Jersey City, to a lesser extent White Plains.”
Not that she is not mindful of the possibilities of recruiting companies from overseas, given the decisions of RBS, UBS AG and other major conglomerates to pick Stamford for major operations.
“I think we really got close to putting a face on the business side of New York City, certainly internationally,” Aubuchon said. “I think people were under the impression that New York sells itself, and that is not necessarily the case.”
In office less than two months, Aubuchon hinted she has already had discussions with large financial companies assessing Stamford for major operations, but declined to give any further details on whether they are from New York, London or Timbuktu, saying it was confidential information.
“I don”™t want people to think we are on some sort of weak tether (to New York City) ”“ Stamford has a critical mass all its own,” Aubuchon said. “Clearly the financial industry is going to revive and we are going to build on that here.”
