Housing and Economic Development Secretary Gregory Bialecki said his office is facilitating relationships between western Massachusetts companies and large companies, like Raytheon, which specializes in military defense products. “We’re actually going to start by talking with some of our big companies that are here about, first of all, locating some of their business units out in Western Mass or other low costs parts of the state,” said Bialecki.
Smith & Wesson has more than 1,200 employees. Monday, Smith & Wesson announced that it has already created 217 jobs and expects to hit 227 jobs by the end of February. The 160-year-old Springfield gunmaker has also invested more than $19 million in capital improvements at its sprawling Roosevelt Avenue plant through the end of December 2011.
I have heard Governor Deval Patrick present two keynote addresses in the last month. The first was at an international business conference at Brandeis University and the second was at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts (“AIM”) Annual Meeting, both coincidentally in Waltham. On each occasion, the Governor wove in advice to the primarily Boston-area firms in the audience to look at western Massachusetts in lieu of North Carolina or Texas when seeking a lower cost alternative to the Boston market.
