Building for Growth: A Development Strategy for New York City's Long-Term Prosperity

Executive Summary

While the need to plan for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan has been the major focus of all New Yorkers and all levels of government throughout 2002, New York City's long-term, and long overdue, development needs must now also become part of the public deliberation and planning.

This report has been prepared and is being offered as a draft for public comment and discussion by the New York Building Foundation and the New York Building Congress, whose members believe that New York City needs a long-term, twenty- to twenty-five year economic development strategy to ensure that the City continues to grow and prosper and maintains its competitive position in the national and global economies.

The principal goals of this long-term development strategy are to:

• ensure that an ample capacity of housing, office space, transportation and cultural facilities will be forthcoming for future development;
• transform the vast stretches of the City’s underused waterfront into attractive locations
  for commercial, residential, and leisure uses;
• assure that fundamental infrastructure systems – transportation, electricity and natural gas supplies, telecommunications and Internet access, water and waste disposal systems -- and educational and public health facilities, are of the highest possible standards to attract and retain businesses and
  residents in the future.
  

A comprehensive long-term development strategy must include the following components:

• Transportation and Infrastructure: Enlarge the capacity to accommodate recent and future growth.
• Major Project Development: In addition to the World Trade Center site, initiate planning and development of mixed use office, hotel, retail, residential and recreational facilities for the City’s large vacant districts, e.g. Hudson River Yards, Sunnyside Yards, Atlantic Terminal, Jamaica Center.
• Housing: Substantially increase the annual flow of housing units at all income ranges and in all boroughs.
• Waterfront Redevelopment: Institute a major program for development of the City’s next frontier.
• Electricity and Communications: Assure adequate capacity for growth, security and market stability.
• Cultural, Educational and Research Institutions: Develop a long-term program of increased investment by public, non-profit and private sectors in facilitiies and programs throughout the City for arts and culture, for secondary and higher education, and for medical and scientific research.
• Economic Development: Reformulate the City’s goals and administrative delivery of its economic development programs, and embody in a new amendment to the City’s Charter a mandate to develop and present a long-term, 10-year economic development strategy, with annual updates and reports to the City Council and the public.