BRIDGEPORT | November 1, 2000 --Economic growth is slowing, but the region's rising financial tide is still strong enough to lift Bridgeport's nascent recovery, a Fairfield County business leaders said Tuesday.
The city's development of the HarborYard stadium and the soon-to-open hockey arena are among the public initiatives that are helping pull the city up by the bootstraps, said Christopher Bruhl, president and chief executive officer of Sacia, The Business Council of Southwestern Connecticut.
"There's a sense that Bridgeport will finally begin to participate in the Fairfield County economy," Bruhl said Tuesday at Norwalk Community College.
Bruhl spoke to a group of about 100 area business representatives on the issues and trends facing Fairfield County's economy.
But Bruhl quickly flagged transportation woes, namely highway congestion, as the single- biggest threat to businesses statewide.
"The time to act is now," Bruhl said. "Will we become a cul de sac? Yes, if no one can get in and no one can get out."
Here, here!' Prospect small business owner Jason Campbell said.
Campbell, who deejays and offers a service that releases doves at weddings, said he does not advertise his service in lower Fairfield County for fear that a traffic jam one day could make him late for an important event.
"I would hate to ruin someone's wedding," Campbell said.
Bruhl is part of a nine-member team commissioned by the state to study its traffics problem and suggest remedies.
He said the group will most likely propose spending increases of $3.5 billion to $5 billion over 10 years for iniatives ranging from to increasing use of public transportation to moving freight transport from trucks to railroads and barges. Bruhl said he expects to get a good portion of his request.
As for other obstacles to continued growth, the continued labor shortage took second place.
Connecticut has an unemployment rate of 2.4 percent. By textbook, full employment is reached at a 5 percent unemployment rate, Bruhl said.
But the worker shortage has increased union activity, enabling blue-collar workers to fight for better wages and working environments, Bruhl said.
"If you live here, you are worthy and valuable," he said. "When you're in demand you should make more money."
And the vaccuum of workers in the county is drawing people. As it turns out, more people commute into Fairfield County than out each day, Bruhl said.
Most of the influx comes from New Haven County cities, driving many companies to locate themselves in Shelton and Trumbull to be closer to their workers.
"Companies are following people now," Bruhl said.
Bruhl touched upon the County's inflated housing prices, and predicted that the retirement of the Baby Boomers coupled with a slowdown in the economy could send the market down if the Boomers copy their parents in selling their homes as they retire.
Meanwhile, Fairfield University professor of economics, Dr. Edward Deak Tuesday delivered his forecast to the New England Economic Project in Boston.
Deak forecast continued growth in the region, though at a slower pace than the last few years.
"The prosperity scenario discounts any chance of recession, yielding an unparalleled 12 unbroken years of state expansion," Deak said in his forecast.
His forecast was mirrored by economists from neighboring states, who are predicting a soft-landing for the New England economy.
New Hampshire's growth rates will outpace the other states while Maine's will lag behind.
"It's a matter of coming back down to earth, but not being run into the ground," said Robert A. Nakosteen, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor who prepared the Massachusetts outlook.
Gross regional product, the sum of all goods and services produced in New England, should slow from 4.3 percent growth over the past five years to 3.6 percent over the next five years. Real per capita income will grow an average of 2.4 percent per year, down from 3.6 over the past five years.
Nevertheless, the economists, knowing their forecasts are often no more prescient in the long term than those predicting the weather, were careful to qualify their figures by mentioning potential dark clouds on the horizon -- namely high oil prices, Wall Street volatility and tight labor markets.
