Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Industrial Land And Infrastructure topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
GBIC warns of shrinking industrial land and urges renewed infrastructure funding
Summary
Frank Coffey told the Vermont House Commerce & Economic Development Committee that Chittenden County and northwest Vermont face a shortfall of ready-to-build industrial lots and urged lawmakers to consider recapitalizing rural industrial development programs and supporting TIF-style infrastructure financing.
Frank Coffey, executive director of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, told the Vermont House Committee on Commerce & Economic Development on Feb. 6 that the region faces a shrinking supply of developed industrial land and that municipalities and regional development corporations lack the funding to acquire and infrastructure new industrial parks.
“We are down to probably 22, around 22, infrastructured industrial lots,” Coffey said of Chittenden County, warning that the shortage could push employers to locate outside the county. He said the last major regional industrial park GBIC helped develop in Chittenden County dated to about 1983.
Coffey traced the decline in part to changing federal and state infrastructure grant patterns after the mid-1980s and to rising land and permitting costs. He described the traditional public–private model in which municipalities identified sites, the regional development corporation acquired land and infrastructure grants paid for roads and utilities. That pipeline, he said, has weakened.
Coffey recommended that the Legislature consider recapitalizing rural industrial development funds and maintaining flexible tools to support infrastructure projects. He praised tax-increment financing (TIF) mechanisms and the governor’s Spark initiative, saying rural communities need smaller, sustainable ways to build infrastructure capacity. “A TIF is a TIF. A TIF is take a white piece of paper, draw a little blue line around, and that’s inside that circle is a TIF,” Coffey said.
He pointed to the GlobalFoundries campus near Essex as a local example of concentrated industrial infrastructure—“They use more electric power than the city of Burlington does at that site,” he said—and said redevelopment opportunities exist where utilities and wastewater capacity are already in place.
Committee members asked how regional cooperation and state programs might be structured; Coffey said regional planning commissions and regional development corporations remain essential partners and signaled GBIC would provide an economics profile of northwest Vermont to the Legislature.
No formal action or vote occurred during the Feb. 6 hearing. Committee members requested the GBIC study and additional data on available lots and infrastructure needs.
