Blais is Worcester’s behind-the-scenes difference maker

Lifetime Real Estate Leadership Award

Craig Blais

President

Worcester Business Development Corp.

First year at WBDC: 1999; started working in Worcester in 1993

Year became CEO: 2012

Notable projects for the years: Medical City, DCU Center, Union Station, Gateway Park, CenTech Park, Hanover Theatre, Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center, 20 Franklin St., 332 Main St., 18 Chestnut St., The Reactory & GreenTech Park

The many community partners Craig Blais would like to thank for making his work possible over the years include: Congressman Jim McGovern, City of Worcester, Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, all the governors from Bill Ward to Maura Healey, and MassDevelopment

In the early 90s, Craig Blais was standing in Downtown Worcester, near what was then the Centrum. He was meeting with a group of Maine architects to discuss the viability of building a convention center in what was, at the time, a dirt parking lot adjacent to another dirt parking lot.

Nearby sat the dilapidated remnants of Union Station.

Pigeons flew out of a window-less building when the occasional truck drove down Main Street. At the end of the encounter, the Maine architects he left, unconvinced that a downtown in such shambles would ever be the right space for such a large development.

Flash forward several decades and that same area is now home to the DCU Center, The Mercantile, and the The Hanover Theatre & Conservatory for the Performing Arts, all of which Blais at some point championed. If one zooms out a little further, they’ll find Craig’s fingerprints on nearby Gateway Park, The Reactory, Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center, and the newly minted GreenTech Park project.

With the exception of the DCU Center, all of these projects were in some way undergirded by the Worcester Business Development Corp., which Blais has led since 2012, although his role in developing the region began many years before that.

Blais originally thought he was going to be a town manager. As a teenager, he recorded Auburn selectmen meetings, a gig that sparked interest in local government and eventually led to being named the Town’s first municipal intern.

As an intern, he shadowed each department. There was the health department, the fire inspector’s office, and, of course, the building inspection department. He had no way of knowing that experience would lay the groundwork for what would ultimately become his career – and his legacy.

There were stops along the way, including joining the Auburn selectmen at the age of 20, the youngest person at the time elected to the office. Joking that he retired at 29, he served three consecutive terms. But it was until after working in the Massachusetts State House and serving as Arlington’s assistant town manager that Blais realized it wasn’t the nitty gritty of municipal management that excited him.

It was the development projects.

“I wanted to see what I got done, physically,” Blais said.

He recalled projects he worked on while at the State House, where he served as chief of staff in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. They included, among others, establishing the connector between Route 146 and the MassPike, as well as returning commuter rail service to Worcester in 1993. (For several decades, service terminated in Framingham.) These projects were tangible and impactful, and ultimately they boosted the economy.

In the years since, it’s difficult to name a major Central Mass. development project that doesn’t have Blais’ name attached, although he prefers to stay out of the spotlight.

Currently, he and the WBDC are at work on the 51-acre GreenTech park, located at a former Saint-Gobain campus, which he said had the dual effect of preserving the manufacturer’s presence in Worcester by taking costly, underused property off their hands, while making room for new manufacturers to set up shop.

While much of the WBDC’s work has focused on expanding the region’s tax base and supporting revitalization, Blais said it was time to turn its attention to another key part of the organization’s mission: creating jobs.

“The agenda is really based on our mission,” he said.

The project, which broke ground on infrastructure improvements in August, is slated to become home to up to five pad-ready sites. New York-based Restaurant Depot is slated to become GreenTech Park’s first tenant.

Blais continues to harbor plans and dreams for the region’s business development, and he believes in Worcester’s future.

“It makes me so satisfied seeing dreams come to fruition,” he said.