Stuart Garfield Photo

In the early 1980s, Stephen Harausz was part of a team of economic development specialists that established 13 advanced technology centers throughout New York state. As a result, Cornell University became known for biotechnology and genetic research, while Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) gained a reputation for robotics.

A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Harausz, 53, has been busy transferring the skills he honed under two former New York governors to his post as development director for the city of Lynn.

Rolling out the red carpet

"It's essentially the same idea," said Harausz, explaining that Lynn's new image as a technology center can be traced to strategic investment of municipal resources - i.e. city-owned real estate - coupled with tax incentives and low-interest loans to upstart businesses.

"We try to roll out the red carpet for these people, help them find space. Once they realize what's out here, they're usually glad to stay."

Lynn is currently home to the former Internet service provider Shore.net, now owned by Primus Managed Hosting Solutions. The company is occupying thousands of square feet inside the Clock Tower building, a former lighting factory. Sharing space in the same building is a sprawling call center operated by Burlington-based Lightbridge. Several smaller Internet companies are located in the Goldblock building, in the heart of the city's cyber district.

According to Harausz, Lynn benefits from the existence of telephone trunk lines beneath its streets, nearby switching stations, a relatively large workforce, proximity to Boston, commuter train service to the downtown cyber district, the presence of a community college, cheap office spaced wired for Internet use, and the recent arrival of a transatlantic, fiber-optic telecommunications cable that made landfall on Lynn Beach.

Background check

Harausz' background gave him the right stuff to take on the Lynn job. A 1969 graduate of Syracuse University, he later returned for a master's degree in public administration from the Maxwell School in 1973. Between degrees he taught at a high school in Cooperstown and worked in Syracuse University's budget office.

With master's degree in hand, he moved to the State University of New York's central administration in Albany. In 1978, he established an economic and policy team under Gov. Hugh Carey. Among the projects tackled: revive the crumbling and environmentally contaminated Bethlehem Steel mills in Lockawana.

"In 1982, when we set up a center for advanced technology at RPI, George Lowe was head of NASA and became president of the college. That's when we got into technology transfer - taking technology out of the university and bringing it into industry," Harausz said. "We actually reinvented the Atomic and Space Authority and rewrote it, giving it all these powers. We called it the New York State Science and Technology Foundation, and that became the center of the economic agenda for two New York governors."

When Cuomo became governor in 1982, Harausz was appointed first deputy commissioner for the Department of Agriculture. Cuomo saw the region's food industry as key to upstate's economic revival. Harausz spent nine months at the job before he was transferred to the Department of Economic Development as acting commissioner. He later served as the department's executive deputy for four years.

The experience with agriculture and technology left a deep impression on Harausz.

"I was particularly interested in the biomedical research going on at Cornell," he said. "The agricultural school at Cornell was already well known, which is one of the reasons we wanted to set up the advanced technology center near Ithaca," he said. "They developed the Empire Apple, and the gene gun, which basically takes genes from one plant and injects them into another. They developed new apple trees that are actually bushes, which means you don't need ladders or as much labor, and you get less fruit droppage."

Matching funds proved key to the advanced technology centers. "We put $1 million into each center, then scaled our investment down over a period of years as the private sector made up the difference. It worked. Map Info, which is now a growing company, came out of the RPI center," he said.

Back to Lynn

During the past few months, Harausz has been working to link North Shore Community College's technology classes and the cyber district companies with the idea of building a business incubator that would replicate what occurred in upstate New York.

"There has to be a clear commitment on the part of Lynn's political community to get the city to go forward and accelerate the things we're doing. They've got to commit the resources to the downtown, the waterfront and the Lynnway," he said.

"They've got to start looking at Lynn like a customer. Image means a lot, and the perception of Lynn has begun to change. People are starting to see it as a technology center, but you can't ignore the real issues that the city faces. That requires political leadership."

Lowell Gray, who founded and expanded Shore.net to become the foundation of Lynn's cyber district, says, "Steve brings a huge amount of energy to the economic development process in Lynn. The city is lucky to have him."

Kevin Donahue, executive director of the Greater Lynn Chamber of Commerce, echoed Gray's assessment. "In many respects, Steve is exactly what the city needed - very professional, very knowledgeable and very optimistic. The guy has a can-do attitude and that is how a lot of this stuff got done," he said.

Jeff Gibbons, chief financial officer for Oasis Development Enterprises, the company behind the Goldblock project, said Harausz changed the way business is done in Lynn. "He improved the development office and added vision," Gibbons said. "Just look ahead and see what has happened to the city. He certainly made the right contributions. If anyone else was in that sea, this would not be happening."

David Liscio writes from Nahant and is a frequent contributor to Mass High Tech. He can be reached at dliscio@aol.com.