Move Over Silicon Valley, Metro Center is Here

By Dan Gorenstein on Wednesday, October 26, 2005.

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Businesses and town officials from the Manchester area think when it comes to attracting new business to the region, they can make a stronger case standing together.

This group believes Londonderry, Gofftstown, Hooksett, Manchester and ten other towns will form the nucleus for the nation's next Silicon Valley or Research Triangle.

New Hampshire Public Radio's Dan Gorenstein went to the unveiling and filed this report.

Before officially revealing the new name and logo, Manchester businessman Sean Owen wanted to give the planning board members, politicians, and town administrators in attendance some background about the area's branding.

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1:22 our objective was to attract audiences to the city or the surrounding communities...ensuring economic growth...I'll let Chris start the presentation now for the metro center.

A computer glitch temporarily delayed the official unveiling.

3:19 music begins

But once it began, attendees watched as pictures of rural farm land, rivers, downtown Manchester and 18th century homes snapped across the screen.

The show culminated with the popping of two canons blasting confetti out into the crowd.

A curtain fell, and beneath it was the new logo a purple globe with two gold swaths crossing it.

The region's new name?

Metro Center.

The Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce President Robin Comstock says a name that's supposed to reflect the region's resources.

Manchester surrounded by different types of communities.

Manch-Vegas, she said, simply wouldn't do.

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13:06 why not Manch-Vegas? Well, first of all, it's not a Manchester initiative, it's a cooperative. Manch-Vegas is fun to throw around but it's a little condescending, and it does not accurately reflect who we are. We need to step up, and go with the highest impressions of labeling.

Comstock and others believe marketing this region as Metro Center, including Bedford, Candia, Raymond, New Boston and ten others, will be an attractive proposition to businesses looking to re-locate.

Derry Town Administrator Russ Marcoux says he's in talks right now with a West Coast group that is interested in moving.

If given the chance, he says, he'd get a CEO up in a helicopter or small airplane to show them the new Metro Center.

18:05 first of all I would show them...i'd get them in a helicopter or small plane and how the area is laid out and where everything is located...how close the ocean is, where the shopping is...the college locations...we have Palace Theater in Manchester, the Ballfield, the Capitol Arts Center in Concord.

The concept behind Metro Center explains Marcoux is that someone may work in Manchester, live in Bedford and play in Portsmouth.

He says it's time to think regionally, not locally.

11:32 part of what we did in our communities is most of our communities have the standard, T/L Bedford, T/L Wyndham, which means the town line green markers on the roads, we are pulling those out and our are going to say, as Hudson has already done...and all it says is 'Welcome to Derry, with the seal.'...so....we are getting away from town line, you are crossing one community to the next, rather than it's the town line.

For Metro Center to work, towns must cooperate with each other.

People affiliated with the effort identified sprawl, transportation, and housing as key hurdles for the success of Metro Center.

There may be political and local support for the project today.

But collaborating on those issues won't be easy with 14 different municipalities.

Developers and planners will be watching the Metro Center experiment to see if towns are capable of sorting out their political and philosophical differences.

If towns do manage to work together, Chamber of Commerce President Robin Comstock says she sees beautiful things ahead.

20:49...like a train that will look like an old turn of the century train, I see trolley cars connecting each of the communities and connecting people from some of the peripheral communities into Manchester, or vice-versa. I see bike paths, I see running paths, playgrounds that are better linked, schools that are better linked.

Comstock says the Metro Center will continue to meet and plan.

For NHPR News, I'm DG.