Crains New York - May 6, 2013 - (Page 11)

Request for Proposals Building Manager for PSAC2 KATHRYN WYLDE Next mayor must think globally A s the mayoral race heats up, debate is focused on immediate, local concerns, with virtually no discussion of how the next mayor will ensure the city’s success as an international center of business, innovation and job creation.While not the meat and potatoes of political campaigns, longer-term vision is something we should look for in the man or woman who will preside over the world’s largest city economy. Across the five boroughs, entrepreneurs and business leaders hope for a mayor focused on improving the city’s competitive position across the globe. That means offering employers a great environment for job creation and ensuring that New Yorkers are well prepared to excel in the jobs of the future. While most New Yorkers agree with these priorities, they are not front and center in campaigns. That needs to change. Today, New York has more people and more private-sector jobs than at any time in its history. Its GDP growth is outpacing the nation’s, and it is widely considered the safest and “greenest” big city in America. The Partnership for New York City’s recently released “NYC Jobs Blueprint” tracks economic progress over the past decade and expresses our aspirations for continued growth and expanded economic opportunities. It assesses the challenges the next mayor will encounter and offers ideas for how business can collaborate with government, organized labor, civic groups and nonprofits to address them. The blueprint is ambitious in its goals: to continue growth across diverse sectors, to reduce unemployment, to increase middle-class jobs and to do more with less by improving productivity in government, health and education. Achieving them will depend on the next mayor’s Economists cast their eyes on Sandy T he six-month anniversary of Superstorm Sandy last week received only a modest amount of attention for an event that was supposed to derail the local economy and require years to overcome. In the week after the storm, The New York Times headlined a major story “Estimate of Economic Losses Now Up to $50 billion,” and The Wall Street Journal predicted “Long Recovery Ahead for Battered Region.’’ Six months later: ● The economy has recovered. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who are writing a series of very insightful reports on Sandy, found the storm caused the temporary loss of 32,000 jobs in the New York region. Employment rebounded by the end of the year, with New Jersey posting in December its best private-sector job growth since 1986. Now the rebuilding efforts are boosting employment, with the New York Building Congress attributing the 2012 gain in construction jobs in large part to Sandy. ● Local governments will be made whole, and maybe even come out ahead. As the Independent Budget Office explained in March, the city sent the federal government a bill for $6.3 billion for the cost of cleanup, relief and repair. One doesn’t have to be a cynic to guess GREG DAVID that every possible expense was counted as storm-related. The feds will cover every single dime of that—90% through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the rest through community block grants. Since the repairs in many cases ability to leverage the city’s assets— its talent, world-class industries and institutions, and global brand. The city is a hotbed of business startups, but the blueprint reveals that, in contrast to other innovation hubs, these companies are not expanding here. Since 2002, there has been no net increase in the number of city companies with 50 or more employees. The report proposes actions to encourage business growth and to make the city more competitive and attractive to job creators. With respect to education, closer relationships between educators and employers could scale up school-to-work partnerships that make relevant education, work experience and job placement broadly available to the city’s public and community college students. Great world cities, with their depth and diversity of talent, transportation infrastructure and vast institutional resources, are the essential platform for business in a globalizing economy. New York’s rise from the urban crises of the 1970s to the forefront of the innovation economy has been propelled by the extraordinary vision and collaborative spirit of its public- and private-sector leaders. We hope that a new generation of city leaders will have the vision necessary to keep that positive momentum going. The City of New York acting through the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications is seeking a Building Management vendor to provide turn-key building management, operations and maintenance of the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC2) facility currently under construction in the Bronx. The Request for Proposals can be obtained at http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/miscs/buildingman agement.shtml. There will be a Site Visit and PreProposal Conference on May 21, 2013 and Proposals are due July 23, 2013. Kathryn Wylde is president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City. will upgrade infrastructure, there is really an economic gain for the city. ● Private individuals have collected billions, too. The Insurance Informa- tion Institute reported recently that 93% of all Sandy claims have been settled and that $18.8 billion has been or will soon be distributed to policyholders. That’s the third highest ever for a storm, and doesn’t include payments from the National Flood Insurance Program. It is significant that, like the economic fallout estimates, the amount is well below early projections of some $25 billion in claims. Of course, there are individuals who lost their homes, businesses that may never recover from being closed and all those still fighting with their insurance companies. And there are shore communities in the early stages of restoring their beach areas that may not do well during the summer tourist season. All have suffered, and it isn’t any solace to them that others are benefiting at their expense. But Sandy wasn’t like Katrina, which destroyed large parts of New Orleans. While the initial disruption was widespread, the areas affected by the storm long-term are a relatively small portion of the region. Now the economic impact of the destruction and disruption is being offset by the massive infusion of federal and insurance money, and relatively quickly. This is Hurricane Economics 101,one of the best-studied issues in all of economics. May 6, 2013 | Crain’s New York Business | 11 http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/miscs/buildingman

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - May 6, 2013

THE INSIDER
IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
BUSINESS PEOPLE
REAL ESTATE DEALS
SMALL BUSINESS
OPINION
GREG DAVID
REPORT: DIVERSITY
THE LIST
CLASSIFIEDS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS

Crains New York - May 6, 2013