Investors seek safe communities with good schools

Investors and the business community sent important signals in 2023 about public safety and public education that elected officials should carefully consider.

One signal was Target’s decision to close stores in East Harlem and in eight other parts of the country due to theft was a harsh reminder that public safety fuels economic vitality. In the same week that Target closed an East Harlem store, it opened a new, 132,000-square-foot location on Oct. 21 at the Cross County Center in Yonkers, a city that repeatedly lands on the list of the safest mid-sized cities in the country.

Another signal from developers and investors who seek to build family housing is that public schools must be environments where their prospective tenants would be comfortable placing their children. On the educational front, no other school district in New York state has reimagined its full potential more than the Yonkers Public Schools. We have the best graduation rate of any big city in the state — almost 20% higher than just a decade ago.

The safest-city distinction and highest-big-city graduation rate didn’t happen by accident. Yonkers spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars improving its police department and schools.

In 2012, we began to reimagine policing in the 21st century by focusing on new technology, mental-health response training, diversified police hiring and community policing initiatives to effectively connect residents to our officers.

The results speak for themselves. Crime is down by about 23% over the past decade. Our department is more reflective of our diverse community and complaints against our officers are down. Arrests also fell because we concentrated on the small number of people who commit most of the crimes. This spring, Yonkers Police opened New York’s first Motorola AWARE Room — a monitoring center that receives data from surveillance cameras, computer information systems and drones to give police a real-time picture of crime.

Yonkers made an important public safety investment in June with the ground breaking on a new police and fire training center at 120 Fullerton Ave. The new training center will have buildings that simulate the structures found in Yonkers. Firefighters will be able to practice rope rescues, roof cutting and more.

Yet lower crime is not enough. Public education needed an overhaul, and today we can boast that 90% of our students are graduating with Regents or Regents with Advanced Designation diplomas. The Career & Technical Education program currently has nearly 7,000 students enrolled – preparing them for highly competitive careers in tech.

We are also building new schools. This year we topped off the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Community School, we advanced plans for the new media arts school at the Rising Ground property, and we announced a new pre-K-to-8th grade school on a vacant property near Ashburton Avenue.

Yonkers taxpayers’ massive investments in public safety and schools are delivering big dividends.

The most recent example of investor confidence in Yonkers occurred on Nov. 21, when the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency approved an inducement for a long-delayed development on Buena Vista Avenue. The 510-unit towers at the former Teutonia Hall site represent a $458 million endorsement of our policies.

Yonkers’ rising profile among investors allowed our city to break ground this year on the new Mediapro Studios in November; a 10-story St. Clair affordable housing complex in September; and a new transit-oriented housing development at 70 Pier Street in March.

The signals we receive from retailers, investors and developers remind us that perceptions about safety and public education are essential to any city’s prosperity. As we’ve seen in cities nationwide, shoppers and families vote with their feet, and they will go where they feel safe and nurtured.