Bridgeport must weather economic storm

9/14/08
Bridgeport can't be blamed for this one.

The momentum behind most of the major development projects in town has stalled. Steel Point is in limbo, downtown construction is at a crawl and there's little to report from the other large-scale projects around the city. But there's probably nothing that could have done differently.

The slowdown is hurting development across the country. But because Bridgeport is a poor city that is banking on big-ticket projects to bring it back to life, it stands to suffer more than its share. And with little to fall back on, the situation looks more dire here than it would in a relatively well-off place.

For instance, New York. The country's largest city has been building like crazy for more than a decade, and has enough built-in wealth to weather some difficulties. It would take a lot more than a mere slowdown to knock New York off its current heights; it's one of the benefits of being the financial and cultural capital of the universe. And there are millions of new people projected to move in over the next few decades.

But at a basic level, New York is facing the same problems as Bridgeport. Most of its high-profile mega-projects, financed publicly, privately or in combination, in the past year have been either scrapped or drastically scaled back. Costs are shooting up, and demand for housing and retail is cratering.

For instance, the Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan, which was supposed to be a

showpiece near the World Trade Center site, with a glass dome rising over the connection of 12 subway lines and 23,000 square feet of retail space. As the cost climbed by tens of millions of dollars, the dome was scrapped and the entire project has come to a halt. There's no telling what it will look like if and when it's finally finished.

Then there's the plan to build a new Penn Station on the West Side. That project kept growing in scale and dollars, eventually including a number of high rises alongside a rebuilt Madison Square Garden. It collapsed under its own weight, and now there's little hope of rescuing the underground train station in the near future.

The World Trade Center site is a story unto itself, and faces challenges that dwarf any other development. But it, too, has been hamstrung by the bad economy. There's little sense in putting up all that office space if there won't be people or businesses to put in it.

There's a definition of a recession the economy hasn't met -- unless the nation experiences negative economic growth for two straight quarters, we're apparently not in a recession. Why that's supposed to matter to anyone is another question.

People judge the economy by what they're dealing with, not by what the aggregate numbers tell them. People are struggling, and businesses are struggling right along with them.

Cities, likewise, don't judge the economy on what national numbers tell them. There's too much at stake. But neither can they sit back and wait for the problems to work themselves through.

That's why it's encouraging to see that, despite the problems, Steel Point and the other big developments are still breathing. If they can survive this lull, which is no sure thing, the city could be in good shape to capitalize on the inevitable recovery.

It had better hope so. If the recovery takes too long to arrive, there's no real backup plan.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. He can be reached at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.