(NECN: Alison King) – Susan Windham-Bannister, President of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center summed up the state’s position this way:
“Massachusetts has become the magnet for life science companies around the world.”
Now Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and the mayors of Cambridge, Quincy, Somerville and Braintree have come together to promote a life sciences corridor along the MBTA Red Line, which they say will be an even greater attraction to what is the state’s fastest job producing sector in the state’s economy.
“The life science industry in greater Boston has an international footprint that makes municipal rivalries insignificant,” Walsh said.
What does Walsh mean by municipal rivalries? Not long ago, Vertex Pharmaceuticals was located in Cambridge – until Boston’s former mayor, Tom Menino, managed to lure the company to the South Boston waterfront. It’s the kind of move we’re probably not going to see much of anymore.
“We’re still going to be promoting Boston, obviously, and I think a lot of companies will want to invest in Boston. But this is really about growing the industry, not looking next door to the people of Cambridge or Quincy to look for business,” Walsh said.
Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone says the initiative helps to show that greater Boston is rejecting the provincial, parochial thinking that he says has dominated the region and held it back, and he says, while not as big a player as Cambridge or Boston when it comes to life science, cities such as Somerville can and do compete.
“We have companies like Greentown Labs that moved to Somerville – they were priced out of the neighborhoods in the Seaport, moved to Somerville. 24 clean Tech start up companies and in August we’re going to have 44,” Curtatone said.
Braintree Mayor Joe Sullivan summed up for many why he’s confident the Life Sciences corridor will be a success: “Let me just use a term that most Bostonians would understand: We have wicked smaht people.”
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Tags: Tom Menino, life sciences, Alison King, Joe Curtatone, Marty Walsh, joe sullivan, life sciences industry