What Wiffle ball can teach us about an abundant future

This year, Connecticut lawmakers once again failed to address the great challenge of our time: the interlocking housing and climate crises.

Major proposals for housing, zoning, transportation, and clean energy failed to pass in the 2024 state legislative session. Despite the urgency for our economy and environment, how did Connecticut whiff again so badly?

Part of the explanation rests with a seemingly widespread resignation to a scarcity mindset. We can’t do more, many local and state officials say. Local governments used to embrace growth, but now many resist it. The state used to strategically improve inherent fundamentals to attract a wider swath of businesses instead of targeting specific industries.

The story of the Wiffle ball offers a helpful example of how this used to work – and how it can work again if we rediscover an abundance mindset.

The invention of the Wiffle ball is now state lore: in 1953, David Mullany was a recently laid-off salesman living in Fairfield and saw his sons playing baseball with a plastic golf ball (to avoid breaking a window) in his backyard. Mullany began experimenting with cutting holes in the plastic ball to make it curve, and the rest is history. He opened a factory in nearby Shelton, where it remains today, and the business has produced millions of Wiffle balls. There’s even a professional league.

Connecticut, Fairfield, and Shelton helped create this business – just not directly. Mullany did not, to my knowledge, receive local subsidies or tax breaks. “Backyard Sports” was not a category the state zeroed in on for economic growth. But Mullany’s entrepreneurial spirit benefited from three policy areas that the state and local governments collaborated on: stable housing, accessible transportation, and reliable utilities.

Housing costs were low enough that Mullany, despite being unemployed, was still able to take a shot at starting a new business. That type of stability is uncommon for all but the wealthiest residents of Connecticut today. Over one-third of Connecticut residents (50% of renters) spend half their incomes on housing.

The biggest difference between the 1950s and today is housing construction. Mullany benefited from one of the greatest home construction eras in state history, both personally, and because it created lots of workers and customers. We must unlock this scale again – by ending the exclusionary anti-homes zoning regime that has choked our state ever since.

Mullany also benefited from where his house was. The benefits the state garners from the proximity of Fairfield County – the access to jobs, ideas, capital, and other economic drivers – in relation to the metropolitan area is well documented. But he also benefited from his proximity to the state’s existing manufacturing base.

Mullany started when rail was private and the interstate was just a plan. Today’s circumstances are different; public transit is underfunded and highways are congested and polluting. We need to take advantage of our geographical proximity in the region and create a multi-modal transportation system that prioritizes connecting people and materials instead of moving cars and trucks. That involves expanding rail, bus, and freight service, but crucially it means concentrating new homes and jobs near our transit system.

That brings us to infrastructure. Mullany’s Wiffle ball production started when water infrastructure and utilities were relatively new and functional and when power was cheap. Today, our water and sewer infrastructure is aging and inadequate; fossil fuel energy is expensive and fueling climate change.

Businesses and residences can’t rely on the same tools as the 1950s, but the needs remain the same: robust water, sewer, and IT utilities to support growth, and affordable, clean energy to power it all. The federal and state government are both making important if piecemeal investments in our infrastructure (Gov. Ned Lamont deserves credit for appointing David Kooris to lead the newly launched Municipal Redevelopment Authority ), but we must do more to overcome public and private bureaucratic and procedural delays and to neutralize local resistance to either investing in or permitting this sustainable infrastructure.

An abundance mindset is not new to Connecticut. Our state was the Silicon Valley of the 19th century because Connecticut leaders embraced its advantages: proximity to water power for energy needs, major east coast cities for markets, and immigration points of entry for its labor force. Connecticut has these advantages today – the potential for significant renewal energy, its central location within the megaregion, and its attractive quality of life for domestic and international migration. But we must focus on organizing public and private action around these advantages rather than guard the status quo, chase fads, or resign to a scarcity mindset.

The next great and unexpected Connecticut entrepreneurs, businesses, and industries are already here and more will come on their own when our local and state leaders step up to the plate and invest in the smart land-use policies and physical infrastructure we deserve. Together, we will unleash the creativity, innovation, and optimism of current and future residents to meet the housing and climate crises head on. When we do that, we’ll have a more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable home for all of us.

Pete Harrison is Connecticut director of the Regional Plan Association .