Annual Report 2017

The Five-Borough Agenda

New York City is in the midst of a historic era of development, growth, and positive changes.

While much of the attention has focused on the remarkable progress being made at Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center, as well as with the New Year's Day opening of the Second Avenue subway, the real unsung heroes of this story and the key to New York City's continued growth are the boroughs of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

The New York Building Congress is dedicating 2017 and beyond to celebrating the amazing work being undertaken in these areas (as well as in Upper Manhattan) and promoting the next steps in the city's transformation. The simple fact of the matter is that New York City's future must be a five-borough proposition.

LIVE-WORK-PLAY

The world's most successful 21st century cities are getting younger, greener, and more diverse. The coming generation of city dwellers is increasingly attracted to authentic communities that allow them to work, live, shop, play, and eat all within the same neighborhood.

No city is better positioned to benefit from this global trend than New York, which has already proven to be a pioneer in this movement. Neighborhoods like East Harlem, Long Island City, DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn, and Williamsburg are attracting businesses, residents, and visitors at incredible rates and the private sector is responding. More than 13 million square feet of new offices, thousands of residential units, and dozens of hotels are currently in the design and construction pipeline in Brooklyn and Queens alone.

In addition, Staten Island will soon welcome Empire Outlets located at the base of the St. George Ferry Terminal. This first-of-its-kind shopping experience will serve as the retail centerpiece of a new entertainment, residential and hotel district being developed on Staten Island's waterfront, which also will feature the borough's biggest tourist attraction - the New York Wheel, the world's largest observation ferris wheel at 630 feet tall.

Meanwhile, a number of recent and ongoing redevelopment projects in Mott Haven and other portions of the Bronx waterfront has led The New York Times to select the South Bronx as one of the top 52 global hot spots for travelers in 2017.

THE INCUBATOR ECONOMY

The emergence of viable new business districts is vital to New York City's ability to attract new industries and ensure that existing companies will have the space they need to grow.

Not content with a "build it and they will come" approach, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his administration are strategically using City resources and incentives to create and grow industry clusters throughout the five boroughs.

Often working alongside the city's universities and healthcare institutions, as well as with private investors, Mayor de Blasio and his team have undertaken a number of initiatives to incubate new centers for fashion, film, biotech, life sciences, healthcare, innovation, manufacturing, and technology.

As part of the Mayor's plan to create 100,000 private-sector jobs paying at least $50,000 over the next decade, these initiatives are designed to nurture the next wave of New York City entrepreneurs and start-ups in such neighborhoods as Harlem in Manhattan; Jamaica and Astoria in Queens; Sunset Park and the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn; Hunts Point and Eastchester in the Bronx; and the South Shore and Rossville in Staten Island.

INSTITUTIONAL LOGIC

New York City's public and private institutions have also been a powerful source of investment for neighborhoods outside of Manhattan's central business districts. Columbia University recently completed the first phase of its ambitious Manhattanville campus, while Cornell Tech is putting the finishing touches on the first phase of its $2 billion Roosevelt Island campus. The city's other bedrock educational institutions, including NYU, Fordham, St. John's, and the two dozen colleges and universities that comprise the CUNY system, are similarly in the midst of major, multi-year campus improvement and expansion programs.

Healthcare institutions, which reach into every corner of the city, are investing billions of dollars to upgrade and expand their services. Notable examples include Northwell Health in Staten Island, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, and Mount Sinai, which recently completed a major new hospital facility in Queens.

New York's cultural institutions, large and small, have also stepped up to improve their offerings and physical spaces across the city.

GOVERNMENT'S ROLE

While visitors to areas such as Downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, Harlem, and Hunts Point would be led to believe that virtually every vacant lot in the city is now an active construction site, the truth is that New York has barely scratched the surface of its potential. If New York is to have any hope of accommodating anticipated growth and maintaining its status as the world's preeminent city, every opportunity for smart development must aggressively be pursued in every borough.

City and state governments must play the leading role in these efforts. The first priority is infrastructure. New York's elected officials need to devote the substantial funds necessary to invest in transportation upgrades that can promote sustainable, transit-oriented growth. These include Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's proposal to create four new Metro-North Stations in the Bronx and the second phase of the Second Avenue subway, which would extend the new line farther north to 125th Street.

Other worthy transportation projects include Governor Cuomo's vision to re-create JFK and LaGuardia Airports, as well as the Brooklyn Queens Connector (BQX), which is being championed by Mayor de Blasio.

Government must also enact new legislation and approve incentive programs designed to spur construction and rehabilitation of housing that is affordable to New Yorkers of all income levels.

Now that the State has authorized Affordable New York, the next iteration of the 421-a tax incentive program, the City Council, the de Blasio administration, and local communities must come to agreements on a series of rezoning initiatives designed to spur desperately needed new housing and jobs in such neighborhoods as Greater East Midtown, Bushwick, Flushing, and the Jerome Avenue corridor.

On the economic development front, greater urgency is needed in order to implement long-simmering proposals to re-imagine Staten Island's Stapleton waterfront, the South Bronx side of the Harlem River, and Coney Island, all of which promise to be as transformative as recent investments in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Queens waterfront. The time is also right to develop a bold plan for the next phase of Governors Island's redevelopment.

Moving inland, the private and public sectors should team up on plans for new developments over the Sunnyside and Harlem River rail yards, as has been done at both Hudson and Atlantic Yards. And serious consideration should likewise be given to other bold ideas that will open new economic development frontiers, including submerging the Gowanus Expressway, which would pave the way for a new frontier of mixed-use development in Brooklyn.

REALIZING THE VISION

New York City is more popular and dynamic today than at any point in its history. All five boroughs have played a direct role and gained from this unprecedented trend. Likewise, the design, construction and real estate industry, which is overwhelmingly comprised of New York City residents, has been a major player and direct beneficiary of this 21st century renaissance.

The key now is to build upon this momentum by taking a comprehensive, forward-thinking and sustainable approach to further economic growth. By working with government, local communities, and businesses, the building industry can help identify and implement initiatives that promote economic development and improve the quality of life for residents and workers in all five boroughs.