It is not a biographical detail one might expect from a Westchester County executive, but Jim Coleman grew up on a pig farm. He knows how to handle a slop bucket just as he knows his way with a corporate spreadsheet.
It is Coleman Crest Farm in Lexington, Ky., and Coleman, executive director of the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency since April, owns it now. His great-grandfather bought it in 1888. He and his family had tilled its acres as slaves.
With income from the farm, Coleman”™s great-grandfather was able to send his children to college. Coleman”™s father did the same, sending him off to Howard University in Washington. D.C. with a check that paid for his four-year education.
“He purchased it for $12,” Coleman said of his great-grandfather”™s real estate investment. “That one purchase had a generational impact for years.”
He said that is what he tells some businesses looking to invest and create jobs in Westchester County: Their investment in property and personnel can affect generations to come.
County Executive Robert P. Astorino last spring selected Coleman to replace Eileen Mildenberger as executive director of the IDA, which operates within the county economic development office. Mildenberger succeeded Laurence Gottlieb as the county”™s director of economic development when Gottlieb in February was named president and CEO of the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp. based in Orange County.
Coleman also serves as executive director of the Westchester County Local Development Corp., which shares a board of directors with the IDA, and heads the county”™s minority and women-owned business enterprise program.
Like Gottlieb, Coleman pursued a career in the corporate world before joining the Astorino team in county government. And like Mildenberger, he came to the job after public-sector work that stemmed from his active role in Republican Party politics. Coleman for two years was chief of staff to state Sen. Greg Ball.
In his development post, Coleman said he sees himself as “ambassador” for Mildenberger. “It”™s part ambassador,” he said. “It”™s part marketing. It”™s part being a coach. It”™s part being a connector. It”™s part a strategy-thinking position.
“Those are the roles that I play. I”™ve done it for 30 years.”
Coleman”™s long and varied corporate career included positions at the Oscar Mayer Co., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co., Altria Group”™s Philip Morris USA and American Express Co. He said he was also involved in the boom-and-bust dot-com era of the late 1990s.
When Astorino recruited him, he was director of marketing, acquisitions and development at Unicorn Contracting Corp. in White Plains, a job that Coleman said awaits him when he returns to the private sector.
“It”™s been a fascinating first few months here in this job,” he said. Much of his time has been spent meeting with business and civic groups around the county ”“ some 30 to 40, he estimated. “This is one of the few days that I”™ve been in the office,” he said.
Drawing on his business experience, Coleman with the help of three college interns this summer is launching salesforce.com as a software tool to enhance the agency”™s documentation of company applicants seeking exemptions on mortgage recording and sales taxes and property tax abatements, or so-called PILOT agreements, for their projects. The new office tool, long used in the business world, will track project applicants”™ progress in the approval process and in creating or retaining jobs as required for IDA assistance.
“It will also be good on transparency for me, our team and our customers,” Coleman said. “It”™s a dashboard, too. It tells us if we”™re driving too fast or too slow” with projects.
The IDA director”™s job includes calling on existing businesses in the county ”“ “penetrating the penetrated,” he said, quoting his former employers at Pepsi. “The first (mission) is to make sure that we hold on to them” and aid and encourage those companies with any job-creating expansion plans. “These companies are thinking about the future,” he said. “They”™re thinking about how to expand here and grow.” He also works to attract companies here from outside the state.
Coleman said he is talking to several companies that “are very interested in the intellectual capital of Westchester County.” Promoting the county”™s highly educated workforce to attract desirable companies that offer high-paying jobs has been a key element of the Astorino administration”™s marketing strategy for economic development,
Though Texas Gov. Rick Perry is trying to lure New York businesses to the Lone Star State, “Texas is not the place where you”™re going to get intellectual capital,” Coleman said.
According to its annual report, the county IDA in 2012 worked with 14 companies on investment projects that will keep 1,797 jobs in Westchester and create 1,182 new ones, in addition to 1,265 temporary construction jobs.
The cost of those projects totals nearly $307.3 million. That includes one of the largest projects supported by the IDA in its history, PepsiCo Inc.”™s $250 million reconstruction of its headquarters complex on its Anderson Hill Road campus in Purchase.
In 2013, “From what I see, we”™ve got about $150 million in potential capital investment if all of these deals were to close,” Coleman said. He estimated about 60 percent of those potential projects involved out-of-state companies.
“It”™s interesting that we”™re seeing a lot of companies from New Jersey and Fairfield, the Danbury area, that are really seriously considering taking a look” at Westchester for their operations, he said.
