This article appeared in the Athol Daily News Business Review.

Ask 20 people to select one thing they consider key to helping the local economy and you might get 20 different answers. And how many of those might say, "We should conserve our open spaces and natural resources"?  Believe it or not this is the kind of response that is gaining ground around here. But conveying tangible reasons why conservation can be an effective economic tool is often more difficult than using conventional answers like reducing taxes, drawing more businesses to the region, and adding new home revenue to the tax base.

Most of us probably agree that the quickening pace of residential development is leading to our eastern and western doorstep. With many of our town planning and zoning boards scrambling to catch up with proposed developments and the rapid rise in housing prices, it seems that increased pace is already here.

So why consider conservation? Aren’t jobs and a booming residential tax base the key to a solid economy?

I won’t claim to be an economist but I think the part of the answer is our perspective: Yes, residential or commercial development anywhere in the region would likely boost short-term growth. But the health of our economy (and our community) in 30 years is dependent upon our decisions about the type of development we would like in the region and where we site that development.

To be blunt I consider the former a band-aid that represents healing and future health but in reality covers up the slow bleeding of our financial resources to outside of the community.

What I fear most in our community is the potential for a “beggars can’t be choosers” mentality about development-- that we are so in need of investment, infrastructure and services that we’ll take anything that comes our way.

If we disregard the potential of our existing assets in order to grab any investment potential we can get our hands on then we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

Long-term economic development requires a hard look at our existing local economic assets, our vision for what community characteristics we would like to maintain, enhance or create, and potential areas of economic growth based on both our existing assets and the reality of changing markets for products and services.

What characteristics make-up our community?

Whether you moved here 30 years ago or in the past year, a sense of community, scenic beauty, and recreation opportunities are likely one of the reasons you came--Of course until recently it has been a fairly inexpensive place to live as well.

Many of our towns have completed or are currently drafting master plans and open space plans to set goals for the future of our landscape and our economies. The process of creating these documents enables us to frame our town government policy and general attitude toward development, conservation and investment in town services. It is imperative that these planning documents are used regularly as a guide and that they are infused with a sense of the community characteristics that brought us here in the first place or that our communities define for the future. Many of these plans include language about preserving “rural” or “community” character. If our communities feel this way our zoning bylaws and permitting procedures must follow suit.

Which community assets are underutilized?

Any business would be foolish not to periodically inventory its assets and to evaluate which assets are underutilized. Are there workers that are fully capable of taking on more responsibility? Is there equipment that could be upgraded resulting in greater production? 

Our communities should operate in a similar manner. We need to recognize the assets we have in our downtowns, our undeveloped land and our workforce.

You know those stories we hear (or remember) of the glory days of our downtowns? Well, we still have many historic buildings and people who care about them. Efforts to renovate and make better use of them are on the right track. Think New Salem’s 1794 Meetinghouse, Athol’s Memorial Hall, and Orange’s Putnam Hall. And there are many more where those came from just waiting for an opportunity to host businesses, housing, and industry. 

Yes, redevelopment and “brownfields” projects are a major undertaking, but like it or not, these buildings will either become a hard earned gem for our communities or a major headache for our grandchildren. 

Now, back to our land base. About 60% of our forest and agricultural land is privately owned. This undeveloped space provides raw material for sawmills, dimensional lumber for construction and local wood artisans, and cordwood to heat our homes and schools, as well as employment for foresters, loggers, timber haulers, and farmers.

Each year, less than 40% of the wood that is added to our trees (available as potential lumber) is harvested from our forests. Just to clarify that, if 100% of that annual growth were cut each year there would be no reduction in the volume of timber in our forests. So there is a large quantity of raw material out there that sustainable management practices could provide for the long-term even if we set aside (as we should) some forest for non-timber purposes. 

Meanwhile the majority of wood products used in Massachusetts come from outside the state and, in many cases, timber harvested in the North Quabbin is trucked outside the area, before any value is added through processing into lumber or later into furniture. Talk about missed opportunities!

Quantifying the value of clean water and air, wildlife habitat, recreation, locally grown food, and simple quality of life is not so easy, but consider a few examples to help express their value: 

Does the beautiful forest surrounding your home (even it is not your land) raise or lower your property value?

Do businesses such as restaurants, lodging establishments, gas stations, and gear shops see significant increases in revenue from the fall foliage and from events like the River Rat Race, Garlic and Arts Festival or Geocaching Tournament? Of course they do. 

Without our forest and farms, whoever might own them, we likely would not be drawing as many people to the region. On the other hand, if we conserve these resources, there is still quite a bit of room to expand this portion of the economy. Plenty of our trails and tourism venues could easily handle more use and this type of tourism is definitely growing. Both the Garlic & Arts Festival and Thanksgiving Harvest Festival doubled their attendance this year.

And what about the value of clean water? Whatever your feelings about the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir, its creation has saved the state significant costs by allowing protected watershed land to replace requirements for expensive filtration infrastructure, while providing clean water to millions of people, timber income, significant wildlife habitat, and much more. 

And there are many other attributes of our open space that are difficult to attribute actual values to:  Quality hunting, fishing and hiking. 150 visitors coming for a weekend to study dragonflies. A place where out of town relatives enjoy visiting. 

While difficult to quantify we would surely recognize if these benefits did not exist. 

A third asset to consider is our workforce. We have excellent workforce potential if we continue to invest in training. But if we can’t create affordable housing and living wage jobs, we will either lose our workforce or it will be forced to move out of the region and to commute here for work. We must do everything in our power to encourage new businesses in the North Quabbin that provide livable wage jobs and development of a range of affordable housing options.

I have lived in other communities where out of control development and skyrocketing home prices forced workers (including myself) out of town, creating traffic jams during our commute to the towns we once lived in. If only those towns planned ahead so their “community” actually included the people who work there. 

Remember those vacant downtown buildings I mentioned earlier? By incorporating land conservation and building redevelopment into town planning documents and policies we compel ourselves to look more closely at using previously developed land and existing buildings for commercial, residential, and industrial development, instead of easily offering up our land assets. 

What are areas of potential economic growth in the region?

In the past few months at various meetings I have heard that “manufacturing is dead” and that “downtowns are dead” (no longer viable parts of our economy) and that we must accept a different type of economy. Of course economies evolve. Competition from companies with fractions of our labor costs; with major investment in more efficient equipment, or exponentially greater purchasing power have had a devastating effect on many businesses. 

But look toward many communities in New England and around the country and you will see a surprising number of small towns that are flourishing due to a diverse set of creative small businesses that provide what a huge overseas company cannot: a sense of place and products with stories. 

Ecotourism, cultural tourism, and agritourism are all buzz words for a fast growing economy involving people who visit a place for a combination of beauty, education, and the ability to make a connection with people making the products that visitors want to buy. Tourism is not just the service industry. Visitors can gain awareness of the landscape, the community, the history, and most importantly in this article, for the products made there.  This region has been known at different times for skydiving, tool making, and great fishing. A number of local businesses and organizations are in the process of developing such an identity for the North Quabbin region around our forest and farm products. Through this process we generate a need for creative jobs in design, printing, and website development, we establish an outlet for products from regional artisans and for local farmers, and we create other opportunities in the service industry for camping, dining, retail, and more.

Of course it does not make sense to center our entire economy on our forests, but it does make sense to create a central image that we would like maintain in the area. Something that continues our way of life but also attracts outside dollars arriving via visitors and new businesses attracted to the region and our vision. 

A number of other potential areas for growth are outlined in Congressman Olver’s 2004 strategies for economic development in the Northern Tier of Massachusetts. Small manufacturing, ecotourism, creative economies and renewable energy are some of the recommendations that might match up well in our region. You will find a number of small manufacturing firms already thriving at the Randall Pond Industrial Park, ecotourism and creative economies are already the focus of economic development work in the region and the potential for renewable energy is significant whether focused on biodiesel fuel, small hydroelectric (the Millers River already has two), solar (think redevelopment of downtown rooftops) or biomass. 

We cannot and should not micro-manage every aspect of residential, commercial, and industrial development in the region. We need housing and we need to draw more businesses here. What we can and should do is create an atmosphere that is especially supportive to small local businesses and those with fair wages and benefits. Our zoning should focus commercial and industrial development toward existing buildings and well conceived industrial parks.

Most of all we should avoid a tendency to expedite the many special permits that are received. If you are the landowner or developer this is definitely a pain in the backside. And residents giving so much time to town boards have a lot on their plates. But this process is a key means to make sure we are in keeping with the goals established in our master plans and open space documents.

Resources that are lost to development are lost for a long-time to come. Unlike the farm abandonment of the 2nd part of the 19th century that returned a large percentage of our New England’s land to forest, it is unlikely that there will be a mass migration from New England to the mid-west anytime soon. Our forests are growing in stature but not in quantity. We lose approximately 40 acres of open space to development in Massachusetts every day.

Conservation is a long-term proposition that provides a return for us and future generations in the form of timber harvest tax revenue, recreation potential, scenic beauty, water quality, wildlife habitat, and raw material.

If we place a priority on conserving our undeveloped land and appreciating the potential of our downtowns we will create attractive locations for businesses as well as housing for a growing workforce and our aging population with easy access to amenities and services.

Of course we will develop more open space but we should not go looking for just anybody to come spend money in our region. We need to avoid a community makeover as “Anytown USA”, which seems to be a trend sweeping the nation.  If we offer tax incentives and infrastructure just so a few multibillion-dollar companies will grace us with their presence we should guarantee that we at least create jobs that can actually support a family.

And, we should do everything in our power to make sure that locally owned businesses not only survive but also thrive. Remember that a company based outside the region sends the majority of its money outside the region, while local business owners typically re-circulate money within the community.

Our forests and farms are clearly community and economic assets no matter who owns them. But in order to use these community assets they must continue to exist. Supporting locally produced food and wood products also reinforces their value and supports conservation by reducing the incentive to sell land for development. 

Conservation efforts of organizations like the New England Forestry Foundation and the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust provide private landowners the opportunity to continue owning their land while permanently ensuring that our communities continue to benefit from these resources.

Let’s embrace conservation as an important tool for long-term economic development.

Hey, I’m going to be looking for a home one of these days too. But I’ll be glad to hear that my search might be a bit tougher or longer because our community decided that forests, farms, and vibrant downtowns are necessary for our economic future and community well being.