Eversley Shares Perspective On East End Shipyard, City Development Successes

Don Eversley, director of the Bridgeport Economic Development Corporation, shares some clarifications about the East End shipyard that was the subject of an OIB post as well as his time as chief development official in the city before moving over to BEDCO in the summer of 2012. His commentary follows:

The projected future employment at the Bridgeport Shipyard is not based on the Coast Guard contracts alone. As Mr. Goodison mentions in the article, there is a large volume of private sector commercial vessel work, in addition to the USCG contracts, that this yard will bring in when fully on-line.

I was active in marine trade and working-waterfront issues activities during my tenure in Rhode Island and familiar with many of the MA/RI/CT/NY industry players before I arrived in Bridgeport, including several of the companies that would be interested in the former Derecktor shipyard several years later.

One of my goals upon beginning work was to expand the industrial marine sector and I did indeed spend several years recruiting numerous companies (like J. Goodison Company) to town, but not specifically to the shipyard because it wasn’t available.

During the first several years, Derecktor was in full-swing at its shipyard, so the business development efforts in the marine sector concerned other harbor-front properties, including the CILCO/TURBANA site, a vacant Port Authority parcel next to the sewage treatment plant, and some industrial slivers off the Black Rock Harbor. Some good ideas and possibilities were considered but no projects took hold.

Time passed, Derecktor tanked and was evicted by the Port Authority in January 2012. It was well known in the industry that Derecktor was in trouble and toward the end quite a few companies began to “hang around” to see where there might be opportunities. In the spring the Port Authority decided to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new tenant. We beat the bushes to drum up even more interest and ran several tours of the shipyard for the industry. Goodison was among a group of about 24 firms (from Massachusetts to Texas) that expressed interest. As detailed in the RFP, the proposals submitted were graded on a variety of points including plan, track record, financials, job creation and commitment to the local economy.

Concerning economic development generally, the last OPED report to City Council is a good snapshot of my major accomplishments (available as a pdf on the City website Economic Development page). Many quality projects and positive gains for the City were achieved despite the worst fiscal climate in memory. I would be happy to stack that record against anyone’s four years of work during the flush times.

Bridgeport, like every city, has many multi-year projects that can be credited to (or blamed on) multiple Directors and Mayors. That’s the nature of the game, what happened “on your watch.” While several of my most significant successes, such as the Steel Point re-design, 333 State Street and the Bijou Square new construction, were conceived under prior Directors, they were absolutely dead in the water by 2009, and we worked hard to find new dollars, creative solutions and get them back on track.

Economic development is a field where rhetoric and expectations routinely outpace market realities and tangible results. It proceeds in fits and starts, with ever-changing variables and players that are almost never within your control. Nothing happens overnight and even the greatest project imaginable would yield its share of critics and naysayers.

C’est la vie … … the work continues.