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New Haven and the New Economy
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Business New Haven
1/24/2000
By: BNH
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The "un-whitening" of New Haven business may be a little-noticed trend. Two other honorees celebrated in these pages - CuraGen and DSL.net - are exemplars of a revolution that is impossible to overlook.
CuraGen - whose founder and CEO, Jonathan Rothberg, has been named BNH's Businessperson of the Year - is a genomics-based drug-discovery and -development company that hopes to unlock the secrets of complex disorders such as cancer. DSL.net hopes to bring high-speed connectivity to smaller businesses in smaller cities throughout the U.S.
Both companies are offsprings of the technology revolution - and both are headquartered in New Haven.
As city and state economic-development officials labor to attract new businesses to Connecticut cities, the question regarding these two high-profile companies (both of which, coincidentally, call th Long Wharf Maritime Center home) is: Why here, and why now?
The surface answers are simple enough. In CuraGen's case, founder Rothberg is a native New Havener whose family made its fortune with Laticrete International. DSL.net found itself here after fleeing the high-priced Fairfield County commercial real-estate market.
But there is a deeper reason. Both DSL.net and CuraGen rely on very highly educated and -trained workforces to make their magic. And both see their New Haven location - with its wealth of amenities, culture, recreation and relatively low living costs - as a key drawing card. And the fact that both companies are succeeding in a hyper-competitive marketplace attests to the fact that their employees must agree with that assessment.
That's a lesson the rest of us would do well to keep in mind. New Haven or Wallingford? You be the judge. BNH
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