Governor Cuomo Announces Plattsburgh to Receive $10 Million in Downtown Revitalization Initiative

Thank you, thank you very much. It is my pleasure to be back in Plattsburgh and it is my pleasure to be here in the Strand Theatre. What a beautiful asset you have and what progress you have made. And as the Mayor said, it is a perfect metaphor for everything that today is all about. The Mayor has been doing a great job, let's give him a round of applause and thank him. I am pleased to be with my colleague from Albany, Assemblywoman Janet Duprey who is a pleasure to work with. We do not always agree on everything but we always move the ball forward. Let's give her a round of applause. Senator Betty Little is going to join us, she was a little bit detained, but in absentia I can say really nice things about her because she really is a star. Not just for the North Country but she is great to work with on all the state issues so let's give her a round of applause.

I am excited about today and I am excited about today not just for today but for the narrative that it is part of. The Mayor is exactly right, there is a different day in upstate New York today than there has been in decades. Upstate New York, in truth, has had a bad several decades. Somebody once said to me in Buffalo, "When it comes to the economy, we've had a bad 40 years." He was not joking, it was a bad 40 years. Upstate New York has seen a significant economic decline for a long period of time. Why? Because the economy changed. The economy was a manufacturing economy, and that was what we did and that was what made New York New York, that was what made upstate New York, New York. The Erie Canal and all those manufacturing plants and then it changes. And the manufacturing plants go oversees or they go to cheaper parts of the country. Upstate New Yorkers are left without an economy. And then to aggravate the situation upstate New York is basically ignored by the state government. Even for those communities that wanted to do an economic transition a transformation, somebody had to invest in them and the state government was nowhere to be found.

I am sad and sorry to say that, but if you do not acknowledge a problem you are never going to solve it. Downstate got a lot of attention from state government. Upstate was basically ignored. So you are already in an economic slump, they then tell you you have to retool your economy. There's no one who is willing to invest in upstate New York to actually do that retooling. And that went on 20, 30, 40 years. We said when we started we were going to exactly reverse that - that the downstate economy was doing very well, thank you very much. There is an energy about the downstate economy, the metropolitan area economy that it is self-fulfilling. It is running and it is keeping itself running. Upstate New York needs help. And sometimes it takes money to make money. I am proud, as the Mayor said, we have invested more in Upstate New York than any administration in the history of the State of New York and I am proud of that. Because it is an investment, over $25 billion. Revitalizing the Upstate economy. It is good for Upstate. By the way, it is good for downstate too because we are one economy, we are one set of books. The more money Upstate makes the better for downstate. So we invested over $25 billion and we changed 180 degrees the way we were doing it. Rather than having people sit in Albany and make decisions. We sent everything out, all the decision making went out to the regions. In Regional Economic Development Councils, Tony Collins, maven of the North Country REDC. Let's give him a round of applause.

We said Albany cannot figure out what the economy is for the North Country. The North Country has to figure that out. We then said from a methodological point of view, the economic unit that is relevant, is the region. The economy doesn't see county lines or town lines. You're not going to redevelop Plattsburgh as Plattsburgh without the county, without the region, without Essex working with Jefferson, etcetera. And that was difficult, because people said, "Well I am Essex County, and that's Jefferson, and we are a little like this sometimes." Those lines mean nothing. The economy does not see lines. You have to develop the regional economy. That is what the regional economic development councils were all about.

We then said to make it work, you need a comprehensive holistic approach where you are doing housing, and economic development, and social services all together. We said that you have to focus on the economy. Why? Because it is all about jobs. If you get those jobs coming to your community, everything else takes care of itself. If you are bringing in jobs, the young people stay. Why? Because there is opportunity. If you are bringing in jobs, the mayor is happy, the County Executive is happy, the County Board is happy. Why? Because there is revenue that is coming in, and you can reinvest. But it has to be about driving the economy.

Then we said that when you look around there are two big economic generators. One are institutions of higher education, which are coming up with the new ideas and then commercializing them. Right? That was Silicon Valley; young students coming up with great ideas and then they become products. We have invested very heavily in SUNY, so SUNY develops those great ideas and then they get commercialized and they stay in New York rather than going anywhere else. The second economic generator is downtown areas, and the Mayor is right. There is a resurgence and a renaissance in downtown areas and it's very interesting.

I was the Housing Urban Development Secretary during the Clinton years. What HUD did was economic development, basically in cities. In 1994 there was a new Speaker of the Congress named Newt Gingrich. Remember Newt Gingrich? He was a Congressman? And, just at that time the internet was a big deal, and everything was going to be on the internet and everything was going to be on a computer. Newt Gingrich used to talk about the home-centered society. He said that because of the internet, society was going to change, and it was going to become home-centered. Meaning that since the internet facilitated your ability to stay at home, everybody would stay at home and do everything from their home. You could shop from home, you could go to school from home, you could do everything on the internet. So his prophecy for HUD was, "Don't worry about these cities," because everybody is going to live at home, and they're going to stay at home, and they're not going to go to work. They are going to work from home in this new home-centered society. I remember debating with him that concept. I said because it leaves out 1 factor: people like people. Most people. Most people like people and most people like most people. There are some people nobody likes and there are some people that like nobody. But most people like people. Well, the downtown areas are that on steroids. Especially young people, millennials, retirees, they are flocking to downtown areas.

They want the density. They want the company. They want the energy. They want the synergy. They want to be able to walk out their door and go have a glass of wine. They want to be able to walk out the door and walk down the block and there's a concert. They want the amenities. They want to live near the water. What a beautiful magnet and attraction for development: the water. So there's this great downtown renaissance. So you take Plattsburgh, you have SUNY Plattsburgh, which is a potential economic generator in and of itself for economic development. It is certainly a magnet to bring young people into your community and into your backyard. Then you have downtown development and an exciting downtown to attract those young people, keep those young people, and actually incentivize the economic growth of the entire community. That is how you really start to put the pieces together to generate real growth. You put in a plan to develop the city center, which is the next step in your downtown revitalization. It is a dream you've been talking about for decades, literally. But you are exactly right. We just toured it on the way in, you have the Saranac River, you have Lake Champlain, you have all sorts of cute stores that have opened up on their own, you have young people, you have a sense of vibrancy and energy that is in the air that you can feel. And you say you want to expand that; you applied for a $10 million grant to give you the economic resources to expand it and grow it and keep that economy growing.

I'm here today to tell you congratulations, you won that $10 million dollar grant and you deserve it. I want to say to you congratulations and I want to say it was a lot of hard work and it was a lot of creativity by a lot of people, but you deserve it not just for this application, but for everything you've been doing around it. I know it has been a long slog for a lot of people who stood by Upstate New York in the bad days as well as the good days, but the arrows are really pointed in the right direction. It is a different day. This state and Upstate in particular are coming back in a way you couldn't have even expected, we're bringing jobs back to the state we have 7.9 million private sector jobs today, more private sector jobs that have ever existed in the history of the State of New York. That's what we have today. We've reversed our anti-business policies we've cut taxes for the past four years; State Income Tax for the middle class up to $300,000, the lowest rate in 70 years, believe it or not. So we got the memo, and we got the message, reducing taxes, bringing in jobs, investing in Upstate New York, investing in Upstate New York, investing in the local communities, and the proof is in the pudding.

You look at your unemployment rate over the past 4 or 5 years, 9, 8, 6, 5, the arrows are pointed down for unemployment and that is exactly right. And the best is yet to be, because you have a partner, you have an investment partner, you have a growth strategy, you are on your way. Congratulations to all of you.

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