New Bedford is becoming a hub for marine science, as noted in The Standard-Times, through the collective efforts of many, especially Dr. Brian Rothschild at the School for Marine Science and Technology, and deserves great applause. It is the first shoe to drop leading toward meaningful revitalization of the city. The second shoe is under way.

The Port of New Bedford Business Alliance was incorporated this week as a nonprofit organization with a specific mission toward economic revitalization of the working waterfront business community. In contrast to ports seeking revitalization via infrastructure development, a necessary, albeit reactive, methodology, the Alliance endeavors to proactively promote business development directly associated with traditional marine trades and new advances in maritime industries. Its president, Frederic Osborn, is also owner of Marine Electrical Service Inc., a waterfront business.

New Bedford's Harbor Development Plan, as specifically outlined exactly five years ago in The Standard-Times, has, to date, mostly succeeded in dredging efforts. However, the plan's major economic development effort, the oceanarium, has seen zero development for a decade. However, it should be understood that the Harbor Development Commission financially has been constrained in many of its infrastructure development goals due to a severe lack in government funding.

New Bedford's ladder of economic success has been leaning against the wrong wall, the government, and must rely much more on corporate investment to achieve realistic change. The objectives of the alliance are to seek and obtain corporate investment, which the government can then support.

As the greatest fishing port in the nation by value of catch, New Bedford, according to Mr. Osborn, needs to prepare its fleet for the eventual upswing. Increased permanent dock space is required, a Capital Construction Fund that realistically applies to all vessels during times of cutbacks in resource access, and the same for crew safety and licensing procedures. Yet, overall, New Bedford needs to be at the vanguard of leveraging its once historical economic advantages into the 21st century.

The maritime based city needs to develop an incubator for applied marine technology, especially high-tech and biotech, and needs to showcase cutting edge marine industrial advances, together with vocational education programs to implement them. It needs to be at the constructive core of offshore conflicts by establishing a marine resource mediation center, to include direct participation of our local world-renowned institutions such as Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Marine Biological Laboratory, SMAST, the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, MIT and Harvard. Aside from educational and research institutional support, as manifested by the city's new consolidated thrust into marine science and research, the alliance primarily seeks business and corporate participation from the fishing, oil, gas and alternate energy, pharmaceutical and other relevant industries, in direct partnership. Neon signs, tattoo parlors, and aquariums for tourists are not part of the alliance's equation for New Bedford's success. The alliance seeks professionals from government, industry and education to move in, revitalizing the tax base to subsequently afford the development of best of breed public schools, and a new and different type of gentrification of dynamic workers in a dynamic working port environment.

The alliance believes that New Bedford should leverage the state's premier applied technological and legal mediation expertise atop its scientific research capabilities. Coupled with the local advantage of some of the world's best ocean oriented research institutions, and the best fishing fleet by value of catch in the country, the Alliance envisions New Bedford's re-establishing its one-time marine and maritime dominance to its rightful position of dignified economic prominence.

Gene Soccolich

Mr. Soccolich lives in Beverly and is the strategic advisor to the Port of New Bedford Business Alliance

This story appeared on Page A10 of The Standard-Times on March 22, 2004.