Forbes names Springfield a dying city ... but is it really?

Business official disputes article that lumps city with Detroit

By G. Michael Dobbs Managing Editor SPRINGFIELD Is the City of Homes dying? According to a story on the Forbes magazine Web site, Springfield is one of "America's Fastest Dying Cities." Jeff Ciuffreda, vice president of government affairs of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, disagreed and said, "Look at their data." His point? The census figures used in the story don't reveal the truth about Springfield. Springfield shared the list with Detroit and Flint, Mich.; Canton, Youngstown, Dayton, and Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; Charleston, W.Va.; and Scranton, Pa. The Forbes story broke on its Web site and then was picked up by the Associated Press. The story by Joshua Zumbrun made the designation by looking at unemployment rates, population growth or decrease and gross domestic product (GDP) rate. According to the article, Springfield has had a population increase, an unemployment rate of 5.9 percent and a GDP rate of one percent. Zumbrun wrote, "The western Massachusetts home to Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance and Smith & Wesson has suffered for a long time as the Northeast becomes less and less a destination for manufacturing. To stave off the decline, Springfield has partnered with Hartford, Conn. 25 miles to the south and rebranded itself New England's 'Knowledge Corridor,' because of the presence of so many universities UConn, Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and Wesleyan to name a few." Other cities on the list have unemployment rates as high as nearly 10 percent and had decreases in population in the thousands. Ciuffreda said the story focuses on communities that have been centers of traditional manufacturing and often dependent on one form of manufacturing. He said that in the past five or six years, business and government leaders have been "reacting aggressively" in diversifying the job base locally. "We saw those [traditional jobs] coming to an end," he said. "If there is one thing we learned, you have to diversify." He also criticized the story for not discussing job retention along with job growth. He noted that the new owners of American Saw in East Longmeadow, which employs Springfield residents, actually increased the number of positions after the ownership change. Smith & Wesson has been "undergoing a revival in the past three years by recapturing part of its police business," he said. He said the addition of Harvey Industries in the industrial park shared by Springfield and Chicopee will add more jobs and that Simmons Mattresses in Agawam might also be increasing its workforce. The story "missed what has been done over the past four or five years," he said. Springfield might have been a dying city in the first three or four years of the new century, but not now, he added.