{"id":2473,"date":"2010-08-11T10:49:17","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T14:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2473"},"modified":"2010-08-11T10:49:17","modified_gmt":"2010-08-11T14:49:17","slug":"a-new-path-of-economic-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/08\/11\/a-new-path-of-economic-development\/","title":{"rendered":"A new path of economic development"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not the basketball team, but the city.\u00a0 An op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times<\/a> profiles a change in economic development philosophy in Syracuse, including a project that sells people dilapidated houses for a buck:<\/p>\n

It holds classes for new home owners and counsels potential foreclosure victims. It buys vacant homes, partially or fully renovates some of them for resale and dismantles others to supply pieces for renovation efforts elsewhere.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good but small start: Syracuse has 3,300 vacant parcels, 1,600 of which have structures on them, a daunting number in a Rust Belt city that over the past 50 years has lost 36 percent of its population and much of its core industry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve always felt if my college years had shaken out differently, I would have been an urban design major.\u00a0 Maybe it’s from growing up in Buffalo, but I’m fascinated by attempts to make downtrodden cities, villages, and communities better places to live.<\/p>\n

And the phrase “if you built it, they will come” is one I believe in.\u00a0 Not as in, “build an expensive, risky venture [like a Destiny Mall or a St. Lawrence River aquarium]”.\u00a0 Rather, build a vibrant, comfortable community for the people who already live there, and other people will follow.<\/p>\n

Bike paths.\u00a0 Parks.\u00a0 Community fitness centers and gyms.\u00a0 Indoor playgrounds and outdoor ice rinks and cafes and bar and brew pubs and generally places for people to meet and see one another and do things in close proximity.\u00a0 And chances to turn bad housing into good.<\/p>\n

It seems to me North Country economic developers historically have spent too much time worrying about people who they want to come here, and not enough about people who already live here.<\/p>\n

I thought St. Lawrence County’s Karen St. Hillaire was on to something when she started the “Grow By One” campaign a few years ago – encourage every business to add one job.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Massena town supervisor Joe Gray’s been spouting off lately about economic development on his blog:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
If desperate times call for desperate measures how about we take a few chances.\u00a0 First, we need to reduce the number of balding and grey-haired men sitting at the Econ. Dev. tables.\u00a0 Let’s get some younger men and WOMEN to sit down and map our future.\u00a0 Let’s do away with the IDAs, and the BDCs and the host of other “economic development” (I challenge someone to tell me exactly what the hell that term means) offices from Stockholm to Star Lake, from Piercefield to Pitcairn, and all points in between.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>\n
What would your philosophy be as an economic developer in the North Country?\u00a0 What could we do that would get someone in the NYT op-ed pages saying, “hey, the North Country’s doing something cool!”?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not the basketball team, but the city.\u00a0 An op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times profiles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}