Agency Is Promoting Growth, Especially in Communities That Have Fallen Behind

Lauren A. Liss, President and Chief Executive Officer of MassDevelopment, told MassEcon members today that MassDevelopment, a quasi-public agency nearly 20 years old, has taken on new responsibilities in recent years and is better positioned than ever to assist economic development in the Commonwealth.

“What we really do is try to be there for the things that wouldn’t otherwise happen in economic development,” Liss said, talking about “MassDevelopment’s Role in Encouraging Business Growth in Massachusetts” at MassEcon’s Members Meeting at the Westborough Business Park.

Liss, who has been in her position eight months, said that MassDevelopment is taking on more responsibilities including managing the working piers in Fall River and New Bedford, in addition to the Gloucester pier it already controls.

“Our geography has continued to grow,” Liss told about 30 members of MassEcon at the breakfast meeting, though she said the staff level at MassDevelopment has been about the same over the last decade.

MassDevelopment assists communities and projects with development through finance programs – including bonds, tax-exempt finance, and loan guarantees – and spending on real estate. The agency managed the transition at the Ft. Devens U.S Army base when it was closed in the late 1990s. “It is now a thriving mixed-use community,” Liss said, with about 200 residents and a dozen more parcels still available for commercial development.

MassDevelopment’s Transformational Development Initiative (TDI) is at the end of its four-year first phase, during which the agency focused on districts in 10 communities. “We are seeing the kind of incremental growth we had hoped for,” Liss said. “But it’s a really hard kind of roll-up-your-sleeves effort.”

MassDevelopment recently announced that it would add four more districts to the TDI initiative, including locations in Chelsea, Lawrence, Fitchburg, and a second area, focusing on the arts, in Worcester.

Liss said one of the major successes of the TDI was an “iconic” program to promote murals on walls in Lynn. MassDevelopment contributed $50,000, and a local group raised even more, organizing a popular mural festival that was “a model … in ways to activate communities.”

A major challenge of development in older cities is unused buildings. “It could take $5 million to put back into service a building that is worth nothing,” she said, but the goal of rehabilitating “these great historic buildings” rather than demolishing them is to provide catalysts for regrowth.

An emerging technologies fund is designed to promote skilled manufacturing in Massachusetts, developing products created in the Greater Boston area’s thriving biopharma, high-technology, and innovation neighborhoods that can be manufactured in other parts of Massachusetts. “There’s a product that gets created out of that,” Liss said.

MassDevelopment oversaw the redevelopment of the office building at 100 Cambridge St. in Boston several years ago and is using funds from the successful sale of that property to spur further growth elsewhere from its general fund.

Liss has served as MassDevelopment’s President and CEO since September 2017. Liss has extensive experience in both public and private sectors, holding leadership positions at state agencies and in the legal field.

As MassDEP Commissioner beginning in 1999, Liss oversaw the development, implementation, and enforcement of air, water, waste, and site cleanup policy for the Commonwealth. At DEP, she managed a $110 million annual budget and a staff of 1,100. Prior to DEP, Liss worked for the Commonwealth at the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction from 1997 to 1999. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the Boston University School of Law, Liss resides in Gloucester.

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