Menin on business retention and media/entertainment job loss

Okay, I just have a couple responses on that, because you referred to 9-11, and certainly after 9-11, and I served for many years on the board of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation, we launched...

specific programs to retain businesses.

I mean, that is why many businesses ended up staying in Lower Manhattan or moving to Lower Manhattan.

My concern is that, and particularly with what is happening around AI, we're going to see increased job displacement.

And if we do not put in plans in place right now to retain companies here and to also attract new companies, I mean, I'm very concerned about that.

I'm concerned around media and entertainment.

That you have job loss to other states.

And we're seeing in the financial sector where there are now more jobs in the financial sector in the state of Texas than there are in New York.

That's truly shocking.

We used to have triple the number not that long ago.

And so again, I'm just urging EDC

to start putting in place those plans to make sure that we are fully prepared to retain these businesses and to attract new businesses.

And the last thing I will mention is, you know, you talked about tourism.

The tourism numbers are not great.

We know that Broadway year to year is down.

Hotel occupancy year to year is down.

So I just...

We see all the warning signs, and it's incumbent upon us as government then to put in plans as place to deal with that.

Yeah, we appreciate that.

We appreciate your observations there.

And we are working hard every day.

Again, I think we have a dedicated business development team.

We also have an innovations in it.

industry group that focus on innovative

You know, as like New York City, while it has its stable businesses such as finance and tech, it is also an innovations economy.

So we want to make sure that we're growing like the next generation of companies.

And we're doing that especially with green economy, tech, AI, life science, et cetera.

So we are committed to growing that.

And also, I think what is really clear to us is that we want to make sure that these are good paying jobs and that they're accessing people who normally don't have access to these jobs.

Part of that is through a lot of the programs that we have, like the Founder Fellowship.

We also have a lot of sort of industrial-related construction programs that ensures that other

people who, small businesses who have not been part of these large construction jobs, such as Construct NYC, Waterfront Pathways is another program that we have that makes sure that our maritime work

addresses a lot of new companies coming into the industry.

Because industries are always and constantly changing.

So we are focused on that.

And I guess the other piece of this is the affordability piece, that part of economic growth is ensuring that the people that live and work here can afford New York City and that they stay here and that they're not going to leave New York City because it's too expensive.

And so we're very focused, as you may imagine, on the affordability part of it.

And let me just be clear.

We totally agree with that.

We are all in on building more affordable housing.

It's one of the reasons we announced our small lots program to build 35,000 new units of housing.

And that sort of gets to this issue.

I know there are several topics that we all want to ask about.