The Westchester County Business Journal held the inaugural Yonkers Visionary Awards on May 7 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.
Operating off the motto, “It takes a vision to build a village,” the awards honored five individuals or companies whose entrepreneurship, business savvy and unselfish work have helped the city and some of its surrounding areas develop and prosper.
Four of the award winners were selected by a panel of judges, and the readers’ choice award recipient was selected through a public online nomination process.
The winners were Ned Sullivan, president of Scenic Hudson; Barbara Segal, a Yonkers-based sculptor and artist; the late James Hill, co-founder of Youth Theatre Interactions Inc.; The Morris Cos., a real estate developer; and the readers’ choice recipient, Dion Drew, a bakery trainer at Greyston Bakery on Anderson Street.
Sponsoring the event were the Westchester County Business Journal, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Yonkers Partners in Education, Yonkers Chamber of Commerce, Yonkers Industrial Development Agency and Sarah Lawrence College. Supporters included Liberty Lines, the Yonkers-based bus company, and John Meyer Consulting.
Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano spoke of his excitement of the city’s future in front of the packed theater.
“I”™m very proud to be mayor of Yonkers at this time,” Spano said.
The event was hosted by Tim League, founder and CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. After describing his humble beginnings as a 23-year-old founding the company in Austin, Texas, League spoke of his excitement of opening the Yonkers theater, Alamo’s first location in New York, in 2013. He said the company reinvests profits from its theaters and plans do to so in Yonkers.
Westchester County Business Journal Publisher Dee DelBello, who was Yonkers first lady while her husband, Alfred, was mayor of the city from 1970-73, said she was proud to honor the city’s visionaries and hoped to continue the tradition in years to come.
Sullivan leads Scenic Hudson, a nonprofit that has preserved more than 16,000 acres of open space and farmland throughout the region. His efforts helped lead to the Walkway Over the Hudson; Dia: Beacon; and “daylighting” the Saw Mill River in Yonkers.
In 2011, Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed Sullivan as an environmental representative on the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council.
“We’re creating jobs while protecting the environment,” Sullivan said of Scenic Hudson. “Here in Yonkers we can see the fruits of those collaborative efforts.”
Segal, the artist and sculptor who founded Art on Main Street, a nonprofit organization that brings art to downtown Yonkers, has been a major contributor to the waterfront revitalization in the city. Working out of a Yonkers studio she called her “dungeon,” Segal helped create Yonkers Sculpture Meadow on the Hudson in 2003 and founded Yonkers Arts, a Yonkers arts council, in 2007.
“I am honored and touched to receive this award,” she said.
Hill’s daughter, Brenda Allen-Hill, accepted the award on behalf of her father, who died in 2004. She called Hill a “humble, soft-spoken man” who loved sharing his love of playing the saxophone with the city’s youths to keep them away from drugs and crime. A self-taught musician, he began the School 12 Program in 1971 as a music workshop, which became Youth Theatre Interactions in 1973.
“Jimmy’s love of music was a moving force in his life,” Allen-Hill said. “It also was for the hundreds of children who walked into YTI.”
Mark Bava, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of The Morris Cos., accepted the award on behalf of the real estate development company, which was founded in 1971. The company developed property adjacent to the New York State Thruway that eventually became the Stew Leonard’s, Costco and The Home Depot shopping center.
“It’s been a good partnership with the city and there’s still an even better future for us,” Bava said shortly before receiving his award.
Perhaps the most impassioned acceptance speech of the afternoon was that of Dion Drew, the readers’ choice winner.
Drew, a bakery trainer at Greyston Bakery, known for its open-hiring policy, broke down upon accepting the award. He described his plight of serving time in prison for drug charges, then being hired by the bakery in 2009 as an apprentice baker and making his way up the ranks to where he is now.
“It’s funny how life is,” Drew said. “I was incarcerated 10 hours away for four years and now I’m receiving an award.”
“But it would be selfish for me to accept this award for just myself,” he added. “I want to accept this on behalf of the bakery.”
