Sen. Charles E. Schumer told a Business Council of Westchester audience the nation”™s biggest challenge is how to maintain its standing as “a production giant, not simply a consumption giant.”
In Westchester County and the lower Hudson Valley, the biotechnology and food and beverage industries and the Hudson River waterfront should be the focus of economic development, the Brooklyn Democrat said.
Schumer made his remarks Monday in Tarrytown at the Business Council”™s Key Bank speaker series breakfast.
New York”™s senior senator said he is optimistic that the state will receive the $2 billion federal loan it seeks to partly fund the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project. The estimated $5.2 billion project in April was not chosen by U.S. Dept. of Transportation officials in the first round of applications for infrastructure financing.
New York submitted the largest funding request among 26 submitted. Schumer said the $2 billion loan “would have been impossible” in the first round and he did not expect the state”™s “hyped” bid to be approved then.
“I am very, very hopeful that we will get that money,” he said. “I”™ll be pushing as hard as I can.”
In Westchester, Schumer said he secured $400,000 in federal funding for biotech worker training at New York Medical College. He said a biotech business incubator, expected to create 140 full-time and 75 part-time jobs, is needed at the college.
“The Hudson Valley should be a place where the nation turns to when there needs to be a new vaccine,” he said. “We can have lots of other Regenerons.” Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., with headquarters and labs on The Landmark at Eastview life sciences campus in Greenburgh, is the state”™s largest biotech company with 1,700 employees.
Schumer said the municipal approval process for developers must be streamlined to encourage residential and commercial development on the Hudson waterfront. Those projects will bring young residents into Westchester “and create lots of buying power here,” he said.
“We”™ve got to get government out of the way. There”™s just too much darned red tape when it comes to doing anything on the waterfront.”
