No one was sweating on the bus visiting spots in Orange County to view available commercial properties. As the outside temperature approached 90, they sat in air-conditioned comfort at the Falkirk Club in Central Valley on June 7, letting their fingers do the walking through the commercial real estate offerings.
County executive Edward Diana opened the program by welcoming brokers from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Ohio. “Orange County is open for business. We will work with you through our Industrial Development Corporation, the Orange County Partnership, our Office of Business Assistance and the Orange County Chamber of Commerce. We have a Foreign Trade Zone that may be helpful to your clients.
“Our goal is to attract business, create jobs and keep taxes down and to work with you and your clients to make it happen. We”™re 60 miles from the greatest economic hub in the world, surrounded by excellent schools and a highly skilled workforce and a great infrastructure of roadways. We”™re here to work with you.”
Meghan Taylor, Orange County Partnership”™s business attraction director, kicked off the virtual tour, inviting brokers to come up and show properties available for lease, shovel-ready sites and Class A office space in the county.
Twenty of the 151 available commercial sites were showcased on the virtual tour, and brokers had the opportunity to go to different screens to check out all the properties available.
“We wanted to do something new,” said Maureen Halahan, president of the Partnership. “It would not be as accessible to take these brokers to these various sites around the county. This was very appealing and a great way to showcase what we have to offer.”
Diana added that amenities like Stewart International Airport, a new hospital ”“ Orange Regional Medical Center, opening on Aug. 5 ”“ as well as the county”™s close proximity to New York City and its location in the center of the Boston-Washington corridor make Orange “the ideal place to relocate a business.
“We have a triple-A bond rating,” continued Diana. “Only Westchester can boast the same and has had it for several years. We received ours at the height of the Great Recession, which I hope tells people we are serious about making business happen here.”
Diana praised the choice of Ken Adams as president and CEO of Empire State Development: “Hopefully, the governor and Legislature will start listening to the needs of business.”
Max Raphael, associate at River Management in Poughkeepsie, liked the concept of the virtual tour, which also allowed participating brokers to upload the tour on their own websites. “You see a lot in a much shorter period than going by bus to visit sites. You can only see so many. This gave us the opportunity to visit many more at different locations around the county.”
Halahan was happy with the turnout and with the virtual tour. “We asked our brokers what they wanted. They wanted to see more sites than we can usually accommodate on a bus tour. We”™ve definitely seen an uptick in action in 2011 and had more site tours in the first half of this year than we did in all of 2010. That”™s very encouraging. The trade shows we”™ve attended have been packed. People are coming back to the marketplace.”
Halahan said Gov. Cuomo”™s decision to create 10 regional councils is a “step in the right direction. We need incentives. When we lost the Empire Zone, we lost a very valuable tool to attract business. Hopefully, these regional councils will work together and come up with creative ideas to spur economic development here in the state.”
Lou Heimbach, president of Sterling Forest L.L.C. and chairman of the Orange County Partnership”™s board of directors, said the tour was “very well done. Companies are going to come to New York ”“ yes, the economy is making it harder but people who want to be in New York will come, no matter what is said about the business climate. Cuomo is structuring the state to cap property taxes, tackle the unfunded mandates and make the regulatory process less onerous. The state can”™t continue as it has in the past.”
