State offers cash, credits to spur jobs
Millions of dollars for an array of fast-growing companies along Route 128 would seem like a home run in an economy that’s still tough. What could go wrong with that?
Well, potentially a whole lot, as shown by
With that in mind, I rang up Susan Windham-Bannister, president and chief executive of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which just announced nearly $24 million in tax incentives for companies along the Interstate 95/Route 128 corridor and across the state. Everything is going swimmingly, she told me.
The incentives will bankroll the hiring of 1,000 employees this year at several companies, including Lexington’s Shire PLC, which took home more than $5.8 million in exchange for pledging to add 150 new workers, the Life Sciences Center said in its announcement. Compelling numbers at a time when the state jobless rate is still high.
But what’s the success rate here? After all, when you are giving out tax credits to dozens of companies a year in hopes of creating new jobs, there’s bound to be a laggard or nonperformer mixed in.
Well, that’s a different story, according to Windham-Bannister. The numbers on how many jobs were created last year — the center’s first stint in handing out credits — won’t be out until perhaps next month, she said. (A total of $24.5 million in credits was given to 26 companies last year in exchange for commitments to create 800 jobs.) And, no, there were no projections before the center began doling out the credits last year on a realistic success rate.
Her response wasn’t unreasonable. Yet I wonder whether this approach still cuts it in the post-Evergreen Solar era.
In a good sign, several companies that applied last year for tax credits have come back again, Windham-Bannister said. A company is eligible to reapply only if it has created at least 70 percent of the jobs in its initial pledge, according to the center.
News from two companies buoyed through their use of the credits offered some encouragement.
Canton-based Organogenesis Inc. is slated to take in $457,899 in tax credits in exchange for committing to create 17 jobs. But the company is on track to exceed that goal, with plans this year to hire 100 employees, 50 locally, from administrative staff to researchers, said Geoff MacKay, the company’s chief executive.
The credits are part of a larger package of incentives the Patrick administration put together a couple years ago in a successful effort to keep Organogenesis from moving its headquarters to another state, MacKay said.
“It really helps to put Massachusetts on a competitive footing versus other states,’’ MacKay said.
For its part, Burlington-based InfraReDx Inc. will add another 32 employees this year with help from $861,828 in state tax credits, said Dr. James Muller, the company’s founder, chief executive, and chief medical officer.
The company, which has a payroll of 80, makes a spectroscopy catheter to detect plaque in arteries that can lead to dangerous blood clots and heart attacks.
InfraReDx is scrambling to keep up with demand for its new product, with the tax credits helpful both for hiring and attracting investment capital.
“We are an excellent example of a company that is growing and creating new jobs,’’ Muller said.
Other local companies that won Life Sciences tax credits include: Boston Heart Lab in Framingham, with $440,000 for 36 jobs;
A city on the move Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy is crowing, that’s for sure.
As she launches a bid for a third term, McCarthy is touting her city as a hot spot once again for new development.
“Waltham is on the rise,’’ McCarthy recently told members of the Waltham West Suburban Chamber of Commerce, winning a few chuckles with possibly the briefest speech ever made by a Bay State politician. (It literally lasted all of 30 seconds, not quite a one-liner, but almost.)
It would be easy to dismiss McCarthy’s comments as more hot air from a mayor gearing up for a reelection battle.
Yet McCarthy may have a point.
French software company Dassault Systèmes is getting ready to move into new buildings along Route 128 in Waltham in the Hobbs Brook Office Park.
Dassault has inked a lease for 320,000 square feet, with plans to move hundreds of employees to Waltham. Both buildings, at 175 and 185 Wyman St., were built and opened during the recession, when most office construction ground to a halt.
In a big vote of confidence in the Route 128 market and in Waltham,
Companies scooped up nearly 1 million square feet of empty office space in the Route 128-Mass. Turnpike market last year, commercial real estate company
Still, a key to whether McCarthy’s boast is fully on the mark will be what happens to the former Polaroid campus.
Sam Park & Co. has come up with a more modest — and potentially able to gain financing — development plan for the 119-acre site alongside the highway.
Park is looking at a mix of office and retail space for the sprawling property, but the plan is less than a third of the size of its 1.7-million-square-foot predecessor, which fell apart after the project’s lenders seized control in 2009.
Of course, until Park begins work, he’s just another developer with big plans but nothing to show for it yet.
McCarthy said she has been assured he has a financing plan.
More space, better access One of the state’s largest providers of hospice and bereavement care is gearing up to open a new office near 128’s intersection with Route 16 in Wellesley.
Hospice of the North Shore & Greater Boston recently expanded to the area, having acquired a local end-of-life-care provider, Partners Hospice.
As part of this expansion, the hospice operator plans to shut down its office on Winter Street in Waltham and move to new and larger quarters on Walnut Street in Wellesley, just off 128.
Diane Stringer, president of the newly expanded hospice operation, is banking on easier access to the highway from the new location.
The nonprofit organization’s Winter Street office has been increasingly difficult to operate out of, given the traffic tie-ups caused by the seemingly endless reconstruction and expansion work on the Winter Street Bridge over Route 128, she said.
The office serves as an administrative hub for the hospice’s chaplains, nurses, and other caregivers who make house calls on clients.
As part of the expansion, the Hospice of the North Shore & Greater Boston is also gearing up to hold a series of job fairs in Waltham next month. There is demand for another 30 nurses, social workers, and IT employees, among others, Stringer said.
Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com. 
