Long Island's Future Economy
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Long Island’s Future Economy A NEW BEGINNING FOR Nassa U A N D SU ff OLK COUNTIE S A STR A TEGIC ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PL A N FOR THE LONG IS L A N D REGION Prepared for New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Lieutenant Governor Robert J. Duffy By The Long Island Regional Economic Development Council Kevin S. Law and Stuart Rabinowitz, Co-Vice Chairs Long Island Regional Economic Development Council November, 14, 2011 Mr. Kenneth Adams President & CEO New York State Empire State Development Corporation 633 3rd Avenue, 37th Floor New York, New York 10017 Dear Mr. Adams: We are very pleased to submit to New York State an exciting strategic economic development plan for the Long Island region: “Long Island’s Future Economy – A New Beginning for Nassau and Suffolk Counties.” Prepared by the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council, the plan capitalizes on our region’s strengths and assets; invests in our people, institutions and employers; and encourages private financing as leverage to persuade the State to invest in our region, as thousands of jobs will be created and the return on New York’s investment will be high. We want to thank Lieutenant Governor Robert J. Duffy for his commitment to our state and dedication to this new process and Irene Baker and ESDC Staff for guiding us through this complex and all-consuming effort. We also commend the Regional Council as well as the more than one hundred people who served on our Work Groups. All helped us reach regional consensus on the plan and priority projects. We especially applaud Governor Andrew M. Cuomo for creating the Council system and for empowering the Regional Council to develop plans for Long Island’s future economy. We now believe our region is truly “Open for Business.” Respectfully Submitted, Kevin S. Law Stuart Rabinowitz President & CEO President Long Island Association Hofstra University Long Island Regional Economic Development Council Chair Lieutenant Governor Robert J. Duffy Long Island Regional Co-Vice Chairs Stuart Rabinowitz, President, Hofstra University Kevin S. Law, President, Long Island Association Long Island Representatives Samuel Aronson, Ph.D., Director, Brookhaven National Laboratory Dr. Calvin Butts, III, President, SUNY College at Old Westbury Joseph Cabral, Senior Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer, North Shore-LIJ Health System Noreen Carro, Owner, LMN Printing Co., Inc. James D'Addario, Chairman & CEO, D'Addario and Company, Inc. John R. Durso, President, Long Island Federation of Labor Lutricia (Pat) Edwards, Vice President, Community Development - Long Island, Citi Tracey A. Edwards, Region President New York North/West, Verizon Communications Mark Fasciano, Managing Director, Canrock Ventures Marianne Garvin, President & CEO, Community Development Corporation of Long Island V. Elaine Gross, President & CEO, ERASE Racism Rupert Hopkins, President & CEO, XSB, Inc. Harvey Kamil, Vice Chairman, NBTY, Inc. Patricia McMahon, Sector Vice President & General Manager of Battle Management Engagement Systems, Northrop Grumman Corporation Belinda Pagdanganan, Government Relations Manager, National Grid Desmond M. Ryan, Executive Director, Association for a Better Long Island, Inc. Paulette Satur, Owner, Satur Farms, LLC Anne D. Shybunko-Moore, President/Owner, GSE Dynamics, Inc. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., President, Stony Brook University William Wahlig, Executive Director, Long Island Forum for Technology Table of Contents Vision Statement …………………………………………………......…..1 Executive Summary..…………………………………………......………2 What We’re Doing: Investments to Achieve our Vision ........…...............Pullout Section Where We’ve Been: The Long Island Story ……………………….......10 How We Know: Public Participation ..………………………………....12 Where We Are Now: Regional Assessment …………………………....14 Where We Want to Be: The Economic Development Vision .………....17 How We Get There: Implementation Plan and Agenda .…………….....63 How We Know We’re Succeeding: Performance Measurement Plan …………………….....….…......73 Appendix A…………………………………………………………......75 Appendix B……………………………………………………………..76 Appendix C……………………………………………………………..83 Appendix D……………………………………………………………..86 Vision Statement For Long Island’s economy, innovation has been our past and will be our future. This is a region whose agriculture and fishery harvests have fed the nation, whose natural assets have inspired poets and tourists alike, whose businesses produced the aircraft that helped win a world war and first put men on the moon and whose institutions cracked the genetic code. Long Island will reassert itself as a global center for innovation and the model for a knowledge-based suburban economy that creates new high-paying jobs and improves the quality of life for every one of our residents. The Long Island Regional Council’s vision for long-term economic growth is character- ized by increased collaboration among academia, the private and public sectors and labor to protect and grow our advanced manufacturing base while encouraging innovation in the life sciences, information technology, clean energy, defense and homeland security industry clusters. To accomplish this, we will build on the successes of our existing businesses, commercialize the valuable research conducted at our world-class research institutions, and strengthen our highly skilled and educated workforce. At the same time, we will be vigilant in promoting and protecting our unrivaled natural resources and in providing equal opportunity in housing, employment and education. Furthermore, we will continue to invest in our students, transportation, housing and sewer infrastructure, as well as our tourism and harvest-based agriculture and fishery industries. Our goal is to support a sustainable, innovative and inter-connected job-generating economy that also redevelops areas suffering from disinvestment and mobilizes the entire region for years to come. 1 Executive Summary Rising to the catalytic challenge of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to create a community-wide consensus on job creation, the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council (LIREDC) has empowered a diverse team of leaders to craft a five-year plan featuring transformative strategies that will encourage innovative, collaborative initiatives for growth. The LIREDC has built on the outreach and some of the recommendations of the Long Island Regional Planning Council’s LI2035 Regional Comprehensive Sustainability Plan, enabling us to more quickly produce a complete, holistic framework for change that is not only broadly-supported, but fact-driven and focused on achievable - and measureable - results. We are determined to deliver a strong return on New York State’s investments in the Long Island region. Collectively, the LIREDC’s strategies seek to leverage Long Island’s considerable competitive advantages - its critical mass of a superbly-educated workforce, attractive natural assets, successful high-tech businesses and world-class research centers stocked with Nobel Laureates - to create appealing new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. A high priority is selling more high-tech goods and services outside the region and especially overseas – such as China, our largest potential export market - to bring new wealth and jobs to the region and state. Another priority is to ensure that our small businesses, which make up the bulk of the region’s economic activity, have access to the financing and other resources they need to thrive. At the same time, to be truly successful, our strategies urge that Long Island overcome long-standing, inter-related obstacles to growth that hurt employees and employers alike. Our strategies also recognize that the economic ecosystem can only thrive if all its parts and people are sound and in sync. Our goal is to encourage a culture of cooperation - even amid intense competition - among businesses, labor, government and community organizations. The LIREDC plan points out that Long Island has a long history of innovation and resiliency – a history that contains the seeds of its current problems and its future promise. We do not shy away from a stark appraisal of our economic predicament. Long Island once stood as a national model of rising middle-class opportunity, but “America’s First Suburb” – really a complex collection of suburbs from the starkly urban to the serenely rural – is troubled by tough new challenges that drove us to reject simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions. These challenges include a loss of young workers, slow population growth, inadequate transportation, inadequate housing and waste disposal infrastructure, governmental fragmentation, growing poverty, continued racial segregation, and a decline in high-paying manufacturing jobs that once were the engine of our economy. Promising young high-tech sectors have not yet come close to generating the jobs and income from outside Long Island that the defense industry once did. 2 But not for long: The LIREDC also documents the Island’s immense potential to incubate and “accelerate” the rise of major new industries. Our plan envisions long-term growth characterized by close, ongoing collaboration among academia, the private sector, labor, and government to protect and grow our advanced manufacturing base while encouraging innovation in life sciences, defense, homeland security, information technology and clean energy. The plan sees exciting synergies among the private sector and Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Stony Brook University, the Feinstein