Westchester must face up to reality

Westchester has some 6 million square feet of vacant office space. Several deals are in the works, but much of the space sits idly as rumors swirl about more companies eyeing less costly and more business-friendly environments.

Many of the big players ”“ Nestle, Texaco, General Motors, Purdue Pharma ”“ are gone. Starwood Hotels & Resorts plans to move its headquarters and 800 workers from White Plains to Stamford, Conn., next year.

Of course the county still boasts corporate citizens such as PepsiCo and IBM, the latter whose Watson wowed “Jeopardy!” viewers and captured the eyes of the world.

But the Fortune 500-image is being overshadowed as a growing sect ”“ biotech, health care, life sciences ”“ and its breed of sharp, young minds settles in.

Westchester”™s landscape has changed. It”™s time for the mentality here to change, too.

Consider this: If Mark Zuckerberg, wearing a hoodie, jeans and flip-flops, walked into your reception area would you take the meeting?

If he left word with the desk ”“ “Let”™s meet at the Yonkers train station so you could show me some space” ”“ would you be there?

So asks Westchester”™s Director of Economic Development Larry Gottlieb.

“My father was in real estate and I don”™t think he would have,” Gottlieb says. “He would have said, ”˜What is this kid crazy?”™”

And yet, Gottlieb continues, look at the businesses being valued in today”™s marketplace and the billions of dollars being generated by them.

“The Facebooks and those like Groupon, it”™s all kids. All young people. They”™re the billionaires of today, the Mike Bloombergs of today. How are we engaging them or getting them interested in the county?”

Good question.

Zuckerberg is from Westchester. He grew up in Dobbs Ferry and attended Ardsley High School.

“In the movie ”˜Social Network”™ I was struck by a scene where he talks about wanting to grow his business, really launch his business, and he says ”˜I”™m going out to California, I”™m going to Silicon Valley,”™ Gottlieb said. “And that to me solidified my belief that we”™re just not doing a good job at saying ”˜Why not here?”™”

The Business Journal sat down with Gottlieb recently to hear his office”™s plans to answer that question and deal with a number of issues. See excerpts of the interview in next week”™s edition and watch it online at westfairinc.com.

The county appears to be headed in the right direction, in terms of its biotech-heavy push as “New York”™s Intellectual Capital.” It makes sense, given that sector”™s growth.

In terms of empty spaces and underutilized office parks, the answer is not so simple.

Gottlieb recounted meetings with CEOs of some of the county”™s biggest corporations.

“The message was pretty similar. They”™re not going to hire in great numbers. They”™re trying to make it through this bad economy. And real estate for them is not primary, meaning an IBM is more or less about building relationships where research campuses are around the world. It”™s not centrally locating everybody in one place here and then communicating out to the world. It”™s being out in the world and then connecting everybody.”

As Gottlieb sees it, the focus needs to be on getting county residents back to work, on creating jobs rather than reshuffling them. To do that requires attracting companies from the growth sectors such as health care, life sciences, education and hospitality.

“That”™s the problem. We can have a company move from the city to Westchester and take that space in a building, but out of 200 individuals, 190 of them live in New York City, the Bronx or Queens.”

And this has been the dialogue with real estate developers, he said.
“We have to be more creative. We can”™t have round holes and keep trying to plug that square peg in it. The economy has taught us that we need to be more flexible, we need to be more nimble and I think we have some incredible real estate developers here who have always stepped up the plate and changed the way they do business. I think they realize this is the time to do it.”

We think so, too.