NYC waterfront rebirth, green economy and career training highlighted at City & State’s Economic Development and Workforce Summit

Headlined by New York City Economic Development Corporation CEO Andrew Kimball, City & State’s Economic & Workforce Development Summit Thursday saw representatives from the public, private and not-for-profit spaces share their thoughts on developing labor opportunities. 

Kimball in a keynote speech at the event held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan described the EDC’s massive undertaking underway on New York City’s waterfront in the form of the “Harbor of the Future” and “Blue Highways” plans. The idea, according to Kimball, is to develop underutilized space along the city’s waterways, develop jobs in emerging fields like life sciences and create a waterborne transportation corridor that would lessen industrial reliance on trucking and claw back commerce from neighboring states. Ultimately, the idea is to improve residents' post-pandemic quality of life.

“We need to figure out, whether it's Midtown or Broadway Junction or Jamaica, how we build neighborhoods where people can both live and work, take short commutes, also be educated, have access to workforce development and have great community facilities recreation,” Kimball told attendees. 

Panelists also stressed the importance of clean energy as a driver for economic growth, pointing to the offshore wind project at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal as an example, and referencing the need to prepare a workforce that can work in the industry.  

“The green economy, we believe, as a whole, is going to dramatically change the city's economy,” said Cecilia Kushner, chief strategy officer at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. “...We issued a report last February, the Green Economy Action Plan. We foresee that by 2040 we'll have 400,000 people that directly work in the green economy…we have an extremely long way to go in terms of infrastructure development to meet these goals, and the energy transition is a very complex one – we're just basically redoing an entire infrastructure that has been built for several hundreds of years in a very dramatic different way.”

But workforce development leaders had an eye toward the future as well, specifically how to ensure that young professionals entering the workforce would emerge with the right training and the proper motivation to push the city’s economy forward. Panelist and New York City Council Member Gale Brewer said she’d heard from young people interested in pursuing studies in the city’s Career and Technical Education programs were being dissuaded by their parents. 

“Their parents don't want them to go into plumbing or electrical. They want them to go to college, particularly some of the immigrant parents,” said Brewer. “So these kids, I mean, they're amazing. They want to go into EMT. They want to go into plumbing, they're amazing. So they need to overcome their parents' worries and support with the Department of Education and get those jobs. We need them. We need them badly.” 

Ultimately, it came back to quality of life. Panelists agreed that finding employment held limited value if the cost to get there was debilitating long-term. Vilda Vera Mayuga,

commissioner of the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, said employment and training shouldn’t come with perilous strings attached. 

“School is expensive, trainings are expensive, and who's paying for them? Am I putting all that money up front, and how am I going to pay it back? Is somebody going to give me a grant or some set of assistance to do it,” Mayuga asked. “And so I want to make sure that we're always having that conversation and not just solely focused on ‘That's such a great job. Whatever it takes to get it.’”