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New Haven Chamber at the Crossroads
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Business New Haven
8/7/2000
By: BNH
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So far, the anointment of Anthony P. Rescigno as president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce has drawn favorable reviews from business people.
The North Haven first selectman, who will assume his new post September 1, is seen as a bridge-builder who will seek to forge stronger ties between and among New Haven-area businesses large and small as well as municipal and state governments.
Rescigno has hands-on experience in business management, plus 11 years in the public sector. He understands well where the private and public worlds intersect, as well as the dynamics and problems of public-sector involvement in economic-development issues.
Also, unlike some of his fellow suburban chief executives, Rescigno has been seen as a "regionalist" - one who's open to creative ways for municipalities to work together to find creative solutions to common challenges.
Now Rescigno steps onto a bigger stage in filling the shoes of 13-year chamber head Matthew Nemerson, who was quoted in the Register with a frequency unmatched by anyone short of the mayor. (So dependent on Nemerson pronouncements in the Register that, four months after he left to join the private sector the daily was still seeking him out for quotes on general business and community issues: "According to former Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce President Matthew Nemerson…")
We hope Rescigno's honeymoon with the business community lasts forever. However, before long he will have to address the $64,000 question: Going forward, what kind of chamber will the GNHCC become?
Under Rescigno's predecessor, it was a certain kind of animal. Nemerson saw himself as a public-policy player, and was always quite clear that the voice of the chamber should speak for the community's major "institutions" - the largest companies but also non-commercial entities such as Yale University and the hospitals. Thirty years ago, we would have called it "the establishment."
But the fabric of the city's and region's business community has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Certainly the city's corporate base has eroded, partly due to bad public policy by city administrations, and in part a function of rampant conglomeration in the global economy. Echlin, Sargent, the newspaper, SNET, most of the banks - all gobbled up by distant conglomerates. Their CEOs are in Stockholm or San Antonio, and our community is poorer for it.
The New Haven chamber has traditionally been a "big business" chamber - at a time when New Haven probably has fewer "big" businesses than at any time since the Civil War. The vast majority of the region's businesses today have fewer than 100 employees, with much different cultures, motivations and priorities than the commercial giants of yore.
Some of the area's smaller regional chambers such as Quinnipiac and the Valley chamber have made substantial strides by enrolling smaller employers and becoming active advocates on small-business issues.
Big businesses expect chambers to help them lobby and push for favorable legislation, as well as economic forecasting and research. Small businesses look to their chambers for education, networking opportunities and recruitment assistance.
Those are very different kinds of missions. No chamber can do it all. But sooner or later Tony Rescigno is going to have to decide whether the New Haven chamber will be by and for its existing "institutional" power base personified by UI's Nat Woodson, Barbara Pearce, Yale's Bruce Alexander, New Haven Savings' Charlie Terrell and a handful of others - or re-orient itself toward the vigorous, messy, rapid-fire small-business landscape that's really out there.
It could be a brave new world after all.
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