HVDEC

The Hudson Valley Economic Development Corporation website explains that the company was established in 2003 to market nine Hudson Valley counties – Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester – as desirable locations for business. The website provides information about existing companies, from IBM to Gap to PepsiCo to Fujifilm, and reasons to move or start a company in the region – with its educated labor force, infrastructure, tax incentives, available buildings and land (there are no available brownfields at the moment), proximity to New York City and other major cities, and high quality of life.

One of the case studies in “Knowledge-Valley Cities in the Digital Age,” by Joel Kotkin and Ross C. DeVol, is Kingston, a town of 23,000 in Ulster County. Kingston is traditionally a blue-collar town, most recently supported by IBM’s 256-acre facility, which the company closed in 1992. While Kingston has a low unemployment rate, people are nonetheless under-employed. The new owner of the IBM facility, TechCity, is trying to attract businesses to its facility, using the same reasons and incentives as HVEDC. TechCity’s President, Alan Ginsberg, explains that the area offers low rent, electricity rates, and housing prices, economic incentives, and an attractive lifestyle. The study report (from 2001) tells that the facility is slowing being filled with smaller companies and the Kingston is restoring its town center. There is perhaps, then, “hope on the Hudson” because of available space and knowledge capital, which my classmates have discussed in previous posts.