By Kim Siebert MacPhail
Bedford Town Manager Rick Reed—who also serves as the President of the Middlesex 3 Coalition—addressed the organization’s first annual meeting on June 14 to outline the group’s progress since it was formally incorporated as a non-profit group one year ago. Reed said that Middlesex 3 was supported from the outset by Governor Deval Patrick and other State officials and that it actually began several years earlier with the goal of fostering economic growth in the Route 3/ Middlesex Turnpike corridor that includes the towns of Bedford, Billerica, Burlington, Chelmsford and Lowell.
From the beginning, the focus was to “create and retain jobs, increase and diversify the tax base, and improve the quality of life of residents in participating communities,” Reed said.
“We recognized that the economic well-being of each of the five communities was inexorably linked to the economic development of the Route 3 corridor,” Reed said in his address. “We decided that it would be in the interest of each of our own communities to work together as one region.”
The past year has seen advancements for the Coalition in the area of organizational management: bylaws have been created and a Board of Directors was established. The Coalition also created working committees “with specific objectives” –such as the Marketing and Membership committees; it now boasts 25 member organizations and plans to double that number in the next six months.
Last October, the Coalition held a publicly-attended kick-off event and several informational meetings and roundtable discussions took place in the following months. Future board considerations, Reed said, include a possible expansion of the Board of Directors to increase representation from the business community and to balance participation between the public and private sectors.
Other future plans include the formation of several additional working committees, including Education and Workforce Development; Real Estate Development; and Utilities, Planning and Permitting.
About the Utilities, Planning and Permitting Committee, Reed said the focus of the work would be to “improve the responsiveness of public utilities and our local governments to ensure that required utilities are in place in an expedited manner.”
Reed added, “We have heard from our businesses at the roundtable discussions that this is a significant concern. We have begun to reach out to the utilities but we need to bring them to the table in a more formal way.”
Snyder Associates, an integrated marketing and public relations firm, is now leading a promotional campaign to attract additional business interests to the region. The effort will emphasize the high caliber of existing businesses as well as the excellent schools, strong labor market, infrastructure and high-quality real estate of the area.
The Coalition’s Transportation Committee, Reed said, will “advocate for better linkages in the region” with the short-term goal of considering the formation of “a Middlesex 3 transportation management association to facilitate employee commuting between Cambridge and the Middlesex 3 communities.” The long-term goal, Reed said, is to improve public transit, specifically to the businesses within the corridor.
Upcoming Middlesex 3 events include a Small Business forum this Wednesday, June 19 at 10am: https://www.lowell.org/workhere/Pages/M3SBW.aspx. Reed said that a Robotics event is planned for September, although details are not yet available. He added that an event about advanced manufacturing is currently in the planning stages.
To read The Bedford Citizen’s article about the Coalition’s kick off meeting last October, see: https://thebedfordcitizen.org/2012/10/08/middlesex-3-coalition-seeks-development-of-regional-identity/
For more information about the Middlesex 3 Coalition, visit: https://www.middlesex3.com
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