'A big win' for Harford comes with a word of caution [Editorial]

There was welcome news on the local economic front last week when it was announced XPO Logistics would be leasing a recently completed, 571,000-square-foot building in Perryman.The company will be serving e-commerce clients, according to Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, who expects a minimum of 400 jobs to start at the national company's new Harford hub, with the prospect of additional positions going forward.Glassman called landing XPO Logistics &quot;a big win us,&quot; and we couldn't agree more. Like most places in the United States, Harford's economic growth has lagged since the housing crash and 2008-09 recession that followed.For the final decades of the last century and the first six years of this one, home building became the foundation of the local economy. It hasn't come close to recovering since the crash and might never be what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. The BRAC boom that was expected to drive Harford's economic growth during the past decade did not produce the boost that was predicted. As history has shown, over-reliance on the federal government and its related contractor activities is ill-advised.The county executive believes Harford can leverage the XPO Logistics deal to attract other e-commerce activities to Harford's borders, bringing even more jobs in an expanding segment of the U.S. economy. That's certainly a reasonable assumption upon which to base the county's economic development strategy in the near term.But, such a strategy also should be approached cautiously, because like the warehouse construction, housing and BRAC booms that preceded it, e-commerce is likely to be fleeting. More likely than not, today's arrival could one day pull up stakes and go somewhere else. Booms seldom avoid becoming busts.Glassman and his advisors and the local business community have every right to revel in the moment about the XPO deal. Provided, that is, they also keep their focus on the bigger picture, namely that nothing is forever, particularly where the economy is concerned.

'A big win' for Harford comes with a word of caution [Editorial]

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