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As population slumps, Cape Cod ponders diversifying its economy
Megan Baroni, a waitress, greeted customers Tanya Johnson (left) and Chelsea Costa last week at Columbo’s Cafe in downtown Hyannis. How to preserve Cape Cod’s character while building a more dynamic economy is a big issue in the Cape’s 15 towns. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff) 
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When Teresa Martin tried to start an online game company in Mashpee, right in the middle of the Upper Cape, she found the town’s Internet service was inadequate for the massive game files she needed to send and receive. So she took her budding enterprise - which she thought would create 40 or so jobs - to Providence.
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That was five years ago, and in the end, the business never got off the ground. But now Martin has another venture: developing social-networking software for middle schools.
Again, she’d like to locate the business near her home, which is in Eastham, and this time she’s working with the nonprofit OpenCape Corporation, which is trying to improve Internet access on Cape Cod, to make sure she can get the bandwidth she needs.
OpenCape is one of several endeavors to pave the way for a more robust economy on Cape Cod by creating jobs and attracting more people to live there year-round, a chicken-and-egg challenge. Efforts are being made to relax the stringent building limits that were imposed in past years to preserve the quaint nature of the Cape’s villages, encourage the growth of a green technology industry, and build new companies from scientific discoveries made by the Cape’s oceanographic laboratories.
Resistance to such progress has long been ingrained on Cape Cod, but even residents who treasure the character of this summertime haven realize there is a growing need to light a fire under the economy.
“If we aren’t doing something to keep younger people on the Cape, all these beautiful things we like are going to wither on the vine,’’ said Elizabeth Gawron, another Eastham resident and executive director of the nonprofit Cape Cod Foundation. “I think this is a very important time for the Cape.’’
Although it is renowned as a desirable place to visit, the Cape can be a hard place to make a living. There is little affordable housing, prices are high, and the main industry - tourism, which the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce said provides as many as two-thirds of the region’s jobs - doesn’t pay well, isn’t growing, and thrives for only three months a year.
“People on the Cape are like little squirrels gathering their nuts during the summer to get through the winter,’’ said Bill Waldron, owner of the Orleans coffee shop Cape Cup.