"We don't need more polluting projects; we need to build an economy more like our neighbors in the Berkshires...." Thus spake Hillsdale resident Paul Solovay in the winter of 2000, during a contentious meeting in the basement of St. James Church in Chatham. At the time, Solovay's suggestion was greeted with hoots and jeers from supporters of St. Lawrence Cement, the Swiss-owned multinational which was then promoting its massive, coal-fired Greenport Project.

"We don't want to be more like the Berkshires," retorted a blonde woman in her 20s, who turned out to work for the company. "We don't want more tourism...."

But now, eight long years later, resistance to looking eastward for economic inspiration seems to have dissipated—at least, if a new economic development study initiated by Columbia County Board of Supervisors' chair Art Baer is any evidence. The study, entitled "Assessing Opportunities for Development: Building Businesses for Tomorrow in Columbia County," takes the Berkshires as its touchstone for drawing comparisons, contrasts, and new ideas.

"We looked at all the neighboring counties, and drew up some very detailed maps and data," said Jock Spivy, a partner at the New York and London firm Baldwin Bell Green, which authored the study. "Berkshire County seemed to provide the most useful point of comparison." BBG's study—which Spivy hastens say was paid for with grant funding, not tax revenues—examined economic sectors in which Columbia has lagged behind the Berkshires, and concludes that the County has opportunities for growth in five key areas:

But how similar, really, are the Berkshires and Columbia County? For this writer, who grew up just east of the New York State border in his great-grandfather's house, the question is both welcome and intriguing. In many ways, Columbia County today is roughly where the Berkshires were in the late 1980s: digging out from the departure of a major employer, but well on its way to reinventing a more diverse and sustainable economy for itself.

Though some still like to grouse that "You can't eat scenery," the statistics cited in the BBG study seem to say otherwise. While the population of the Berkshires is almost exactly double that of Columbia County, its total income is nearly four times higher.

In the past twenty years, the center of economic gravity in the Berkshires has shifted dramatically away from Pittsfield, where G.E.'s plastics and military contracting divisions once employed thousands of workers, plus many supporting businesses. Once the home of the largest department store in New England, seven grand movie theaters, and many thriving family-owned businesses such as Besse-Clarke's clothing and sporting goods, Pittsfield is now a shell of its former self. (Besse-Clarke's is now a Goodwill, and some traces of G.E.'s PCB dumping linger in soils and riverbeds despite many clean-up efforts.)

Meanwhile, the far northern reaches of the Berkshires—which are almost a world unto themselves—have likewise reorganized themselves away from manufacturing and toward capturing more and more dollars from the arts. The long-awaited opening of Mass MOCA in the late ‘90s (spearheaded in part by Columbia County resident Sandy Frucher) put sleepy North Adams back on the map, and in combination with the expanded Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum, makes the 3 to 4 hour trips from New York City or Boston well worth the time for art lovers. As a result, the northern Berkshires now are better able to also capture more of the traffic headed further northward to Vermont for skiing and other attractions.

In growing this cultural economy, however, a major difference between the Berkshires and Columbia County is the sheer number of truly internationally recognized sites in Western Mass. Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony in Lenox, draws over 300,000 visitors per year, who also drop additional dollars into the area's lodging, restaurants, gas stations, and shops. The combination with the popular Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge is a huge one-two ticket punch. Much as Olana is beloved in Columbia County, it can't yet compare with these two signature Berkshires attractions in terms of volume.

Moreover, those two Berkshires sites are greatly enhanced and supported by the sheer density of secondary attractions—such as the hidden gem Chesterwood (the studio and gardens of Lincoln Memorial sculptor Daniel Chester French, which hosts a major outdoor sculpture show in Stockbridge every summer), estate tours at Naumkeag and The Mount (home of writer Edith Wharton) in Lenox, Herman Melville's house Arrowhead outside Pittsfield, world-renowned dance performances at Jacob's Pillow, and more.

For those less inclined toward the arts, the Berkshires also offer tons of recreational activities such as skiing at Butternut, Bosquet, and Jiminy Peak, hikes up Monument Mountain or along rail trails promoted by the area’s highly effective conservation groups, bird-watching at the Audubon Center off Route 7, visits to historical sites such as the final Shay's Rebellion battlefield in Sheffield.

Finally, the Berkshires can boast of an unusually large number of towns with attractive, well-occupied main streets which coax even more money out of visitors' pockets. Unlike so much of the U.S., the Berkshires have not been nearly as decimated by the mall and mini-mall phenomena which have made it so hard for locally owned businesses to survive. (The exception is the Allendale mall, which helped put the final nail in the coffin of Pittsfield's once-bustling North Street, post-G.E.) The sheer volume of Berkshires features means that once you've hit the highlights, there is still a ton of things to explore. 

It takes a good long time to exhaust its cultural attractions. As a result, there are much more developed retail, lodging, and dining industries, whose only relatively slow time is the so-called "mud season" of late March and early April. Spivy notes that Berkshire County lodging "beds" outnumber those in Columbia by factors of 9 or to 10 to 1, though some B&B owners on the western side of this divide dispute and bristle at that figure. Columbia County can boast of a similar range of activities, but these tend to be smaller, more idiosyncratic (such as the remarkable but underappreciated museum at the New York State Fireman's Home) and less well-publicized at this stage.

The point of this litany is not to convince readers to move to the Berkshires; after all, I prefer to live in the Hudson Valley instead. Rather, it is to say that developing a year-round, sustainable audience of high-spending visitors—and the related panoply of successful local businesses—will take more than a few festivals, a few new businesses, and some new "branding," though all those things could contribute to an incremental evolution. It will take several decades of slow, steady, smart, and sensitive development to husband the unique resources of Columbia County so as to develop an equivalent—but not identical—density of attractions that draw people and investment not just once, but repeatedly. The Berkshires' current position took some 25 years to really mature, and its success took place against a backdrop of two centuries of (mostly) thoughtful planning and conservation of its natural and historic resources.

So what does Columbia County have to offer instead? Surely the Taconic ridge isn't doomed to live perpetually in the shadows of the Berkshire Hills?

First of all, Columbia County is much closer to and more accessible from New York City. The drive is 1.75 to 2.5 hours, rather than 3 to 3.5 hours. We have direct train service to Penn Station, as well as an unusually pleasant parkway leading straight to the Upper West Side. Secondly, our scenery is arguably more varied and dramatic (if at times less conventionally harmonious) than the Berkshires.

So how can Columbia differentiate itself from its more prosperous cousin? To adapt a slogan from Radio Shack: This is a place to not just buy stuff (or passively see stuff), but also to do stuff.

Rather than big attractions, Columbia's strength may lie more in a panoply of smaller, more human-scaled activities. We can offer an urban adventure in Hudson, which in the past fifteen years has gone from being shuttered and desolate at 6 p.m., to offering an increasing diversity of nightlife.

And we can offer rural experiences, from discovering hidden waterfalls and swimming holes to rummaging at yard sales to visiting some of the hundreds of still-existing farms. (Local foodie Ruth Reichl told the BBG study group that the culinary world is shifting from celebrity chefs to artisanal and heirloom food producers, a trend that Columbia County is well-positioned to capitalize upon.)

Spivy cites regional success stories such as the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, which draws some 50,000 to Saugerties each fall, in his group's decision to focus on projects such as the Hudson Park little league complex under development in Livingston, or plans to lure the Big Apple Circus to the County to draw day-trippers from the Albany metro area and wide region to Columbia.

The five main areas addressed in the study, he says, were selected in part in recognition of the assets and limitations of the area (for example, offering more senior living options in a county with an aging population, or drawing in international students to compensate for the lack of a major university here). He also noted that the County Supervisors were intensely aware, following the large number of development controversies in the past decade, of the need to emphasize projects that would build consensus and support, rather than drag the study down into another round of controversy.

Spivy says that support for more retail and commercial development, which has been the most conspicuous sign of revival in places such as Hudson, is tacit in the other five areas described: more stores and supporting services will invariably follow the rest, if successful. 

Still, some ideas which have been floating around in discussions and past studies seem to have dropped off the map, for example:

• The need for a large Adams- or Guido's-style gourmet or wholesale market, which could help support and showcase Columbia farm products;
• The pursuit of non-polluting "service industries" (such as call centers, claims processing, etc.), which were a focus of the Chamber of Commerce's 2001 Patterns for Progress study;
• High-tech businesses related to or spun off from the billion-dollar state investment in chip fabrication and other technology businesses to our north, though this is complicated by the relative lack of infrastructure here for such businesses;
• Support for skilled building trades, including historical restoration services, to make the most of the area's remarkable housing and commercial architecture;
• Renewable energy installation and production (geothermal, solar, et al.) as home heating and cooling becomes a bigger and bigger share of our cost of living.

There is certainly a lot to learn from the Berkshires. But trying to precisely replicate their model has its pitfalls and limitations. By positioning Columbia County as the less well-traveled, edgier, quirkier cousin to the Berkshires, we might see some success in attracting a more dynamic and diverse set of businesses and visitors. And Spivy observes that many of the more practical and realistic ideas for sound development they’ve heard have come from media, finance, and other business leaders who are already here in the county—shaking economic plans out of our own trees, as it were.

The good news is that the County would appear to be well aware of both our current economic distress and the anticipated bind it will likely face in the next decade between rising public costs and flat revenues.  And for those of us who grew up along the border of these two states, it's good to finally have some official sanction for the notion of looking eastward to the Berkshires, without being accused of having some kind of left-leaning or highfalutin "agenda."

Sam Pratt, a resident of Taghkanic, is a writer, designer, and community organizer who spearheaded the successful fight against the St. Lawrence Cement Greenport Project between 1998 and 2005.