No Easy Solutions to Rebuilding the North Country Economy

Call it wishful thinking. Call it magical thinking. Call it a belief in a silver bullet. It is a common belief here in Northern New York that someone or something big is going to come along and save us, or at least repair our economic life. It comes up in public forums and discussions and is in the back of many of our minds: if we can just get the right someone or the right project, things will be different. There will be more jobs, there will be more prosperity, and our lives will be materially better. We will be just like other parts of the country. Perhaps it has always been this way, or, it has been this way for so long, that it is hard to know when and how it started.

Going back over 50 years, the St. Lawrence Seaway, which according to historical accounts was a tough sell until Canada was prepared to go it alone, soon became the object of North Country residents’ hopes and dreams. These were best summed up in a series of articles that appeared in the Watertown Times and written by a young reporter named Alan Emory. The picture painted by the articles was of jobs, and theaters and restaurants spread from Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain. Northern New York, readers were lead to believe, would be completely transformed. Decades later, we know different. Other than some jobs related to NYPA and the Seaway Development Corporation the vast majority of residents go about their daily lives largely unaffected by this project, or even give it much thought.

There have certainly been other projects over the years. The Super Collider comes to mind. More recently, there was the Bion proposal, which seemed more of a concept than an actual project, and the proposed race track. A recent pamphlet for the I-98 road proposal has a familiar ring. Job creation, ending five decades of rural poverty, and ending “transportation” isolation are all mentioned. This is a lot to expect from one little road!

It never hurts to dream, but in each case the project has involved thousand hours of time from local officials and the public and a huge amount of energy; time and energy that might have been better spent on other activities that will make our shared lives better in the long run.

The “hit the home run" approach is also common among the economic development community in Northern New York. The tendency is to try to land the project that will bring hundreds of well paying jobs, but never seems to pan out. When you think about it, it is not surprising. Nationwide there are so many communities, and so few sizeable projects.

Is economic development pointless? No, but having unrealistic expectations is. Perhaps we need a different strategy. No one else is going to do the hard work for us.