Latest news with #EconomicDevelopmentCorporation
Time Out
3 days ago
- Business
- Time Out
A long-abandoned Queens airport is being transformed with 3,000 new homes
After four decades of weeds, wetlands and what-ifs, the long-dormant Flushing Airport site in College Point is finally getting its next chapter—and it's looking residential. Mayor Eric Adams announced this week that the city will transform the former municipal airfield into a mixed-use community with 3,000 new homes, roughly 60 acres of public green space and a dash of economic revitalization. The $3.2 billion development will be led by Cirrus Workforce Housing and LCOR Incorporated and is slated to begin construction in 2028, pending environmental and land use review. Flushing Airport, New York City's first airfield, closed in 1984 and has been slowly reclaimed by nature ever since. But under Adams' 'City of Yes' housing initiative, the city is reclaiming the land right back, with a plan that includes affordable, market-rate and 'deeply affordable' housing, all built with union labor and funded in part by union pension dollars. 'For too many decades, this valuable land has sat vacant,' Adams said. 'Now we are excited to create around 3,000 new homes at the site of the former Flushing Airport.' The city's Economic Development Corporation says the redevelopment will generate over 1,300 construction jobs and 530 permanent positions, while preserving the site's natural wetlands. Think workforce housing meets eco-conscious design: mass timber construction, native landscaping and walking paths woven into the existing marshland. While the project still faces a lengthy planning runway, Adams is betting big on its long-term impact—especially for middle-income New Yorkers, first responders and union families increasingly priced out of the boroughs they serve. To prepare for the added traffic, a new .7-mile stretch of 132nd Street has already been completed, laying the infrastructure groundwork for what officials hope will be a neighborhood renaissance. 'This is a win for New York's working families,' said Paul Capurso of the NYC Carpenters Union. 'It will deliver the kind of affordable, quality housing our city desperately needs.' After 40 years stuck in neutral, the Flushing Airport site is finally cleared for takeoff. And with a blueprint that blends housing, nature and equity, it just might help Queens land a brighter future.
New York Times
11-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Does Brooklyn Need a New Waterfront Neighborhood?
For artists seduced by dilapidated industrial shorelines, the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, spanning 122 acres along New York Harbor, has long been a source of romantic inspiration. Only real estate developers have looked toward the landscape with a more ardent sense of creative opportunity. For years now, in a city where most of the waterfront has already been repurposed in the name of views-first living, they have fantasized about turning the docks into a creative-class Oz. One proposal that emerged more than a decade ago imagined extending the No. 1 train from the southern tip of Manhattan, under the East River, to the terminal site with a stop on Governors Island. None of these ideas gained traction until last year, when ownership of the land transferred from the state to the city, and the vision-boarding took off with a momentum not generally observed in municipal governing. If you believe that the housing crisis is the most urgent problem the city is facing — as the many voters who made Zohran Mamdani the Democratic mayoral nominee clearly seem to — then the logic of what the city is advancing might strike you as irrefutable. The 'city,' in this instance, is the Economic Development Corporation, the agency charged with transforming a largely desolate property distinguished by underused cranes, containers and a noxious concrete recycling facility. In its place would be an entirely new, economically diverse neighborhood that would stretch from the brownstones of Cobble Hill to Red Hook, where roughly half of the neighborhood's 11,000 residents live in public housing. Last month, the city came forward with a plan that would seem to have addressed nearly every contingency and conceivable point of grievance. It calls for 6,000 homes to be built, with 40 percent of them — 2,400 rental apartments — set to be affordable in perpetuity. This is a significantly higher share of affordable units than most new developments provide. And they would serve people at lower income thresholds than these projects ordinarily deliver. Even opponents of the overall concept admit that the configuration is impressive. In an effort to acknowledge the historically neglected Red Hook Houses, devastated during Hurricane Sandy, 200 of the affordable units would be reserved for people who live there and $200 million earmarked for building repairs in the public housing complex. Among the 28 committee members tasked with studying the plan and approving or vetoing it — a group made up of local politicians, community board members, union leaders and others — is the head of a tenants' association at the Red Hook Houses; she has voiced her support. The plan includes other commitments suggesting a similarly broad civic spirit: 28 acres of parkland and public space, various resiliency strategies to protect against storm surges, 225,000 square feet of industrial space at discounted rents, more ferry service, more bus service (by way of priority lanes), more micromobility, a free shuttle bus to subway stations and an expanded and revitalized port that would supply a crucial node in what urban planners call the 'blue highway,' a means of transporting goods around the city via waterways to reduce dependence on trucks. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Clark County breaks ground on Southwest Arkansas Mega Site, hoping to attract industry
CLARK COUNTY, Ark. – A new mega site development project to make the area more attractive for potential business projects is underway in Clark County. The Southwest Arkansas Mega Site is located right outside of Arkadelphia in Gum Springs near the Clark County Industrial Park. Port of Little Rock slated for $1 billion, 400-acre data center Shelley Short is the CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Clark County. 'It's about having the infrastructure in place, it's about having ready-to-go land,' Short said. The area is being developed so businesses considering locating in the county will have prepared land to use, for example, for factory construction. 'Part of the economic development process is getting your product ready for an industry to locate, and so while there may not be jobs associated with today's announcement, immediate jobs, it's all about getting a site ready so that industries that are looking can see its potential and value.' Short said. Short said the nearly 1,000-acre property will undergo site certification and erosion control to make it more marketable to companies. 'They want a ready-to-go, shovel-ready site so that they are able to get from spending money to making money, from not having product to making product as quickly as possible,' Short said. The $2.4 million project is funded through a $1 million site development grant from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and $1.4 million from the Clark County Economic Development Fund. Clint O'Neal, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, said Clark County is one of the inaugural grant recipients. 'So an opportunity for communities to better develop their industrial sites to make them more attractive,' O'Neal said. 'When prospects go around looking at the best sites, we want them to find sites that have due diligence, have infrastructure.' Entergy, Port of Little Rock announce 'shovel ready' 875-acre industrial megasite He added that attracting business requires having available real estate. 'Whether it's vacant industrial buildings like the one that Hostess took down the road, or great industrial sites like the Southwest Mega Site,' O'Neal said. Short said the community is a driving force behind the project and believes in economic development. 'They believe that while we may not see the results for a year or two years or five years down the line, that it's worth investing in,' she said. The site should be ready to go in about six months. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Time of India
28-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Two professors each from Goa colleges to get EDC training to mentor entrepreneurs
Panaji: To address the absence of entrepreneurship training in the formal education system, the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) Ltd has announced a new initiative to train two faculty members from each college across Goa in entrepreneurial skills. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The aim is to equip professors with the knowledge required to mentor and guide students in setting up their own ventures, said EDC managing director B S Pai Angle. The corporation, Angle said, is actively working to promote entrepreneurship among college students by embedding it into the academic structure. 'We are constantly looking at what the industry needs, and we realised that the industry needs entrepreneurship training,' he said. Angle said most colleges currently focus only on job-oriented skills, while training on how to become an entrepreneur is minimal. To bridge this gap, the EDC launched a series of structured training programmes. 'We began by holding one-day awareness sessions in colleges. Students who showed interest were invited to attend a more intensive three-day programme on entrepreneurship,' Angle said. He was speaking during an online programme to create awareness about the EDC's schemes and services under the Swayampurna Goa initiative. Currently, the EDC's three-day skill-building modules help develop key entrepreneurial traits such as risk-taking and initiative. Students are also guided through the basics of skills such as product identification, marketing, finance, legal procedures, and other operational aspects of starting a business. 'We now want to take this further,' Angle said. 'Instead of waiting for students to graduate and then approach us for support, we are embedding entrepreneurship training at the college level.'
Time Out
11-06-2025
- Business
- Time Out
The Bronx's floating jail is finally getting the boot—here's what's taking its place
The infamous 'floating jail' moored off Hunts Point is finally being sent downriver. The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, known to many simply as 'The Barge,' will be removed from the Bronx waterfront, clearing the way for a major new infrastructure project: the Hunts Point Marine Terminal. Mayor Eric Adams announced the plans on Monday at a press conference near the site, calling the project part of his administration's broader 'Blue Highways' initiative. The initiative aims to shift freight delivery away from diesel-guzzling trucks and toward marine and electric transport, using the city's waterways to cut emissions and ease street congestion. 'This is lowering emissions, bringing jobs and creating a vibrant community here in the Bronx by boosting economic output,' Adams said, standing near a rendering of the future terminal. The floating jail, opened in 1992 as a stopgap for Rikers Island overcrowding, was only meant to be temporary. Instead, it operated for more than 30 years, housing up to 800 detainees at its peak. The barge was decommissioned in 2023, but it remained docked until now. Its removal marks a milestone in the city's long-term decarceration efforts and in the transformation of South Bronx infrastructure. According to the city's Economic Development Corporation, the new terminal will generate roughly 400 construction jobs, 100 permanent jobs and $3.9 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years. It's expected to remove 9,000 truck trips from city streets each month, particularly from communities like the South Bronx, which have long borne the brunt of traffic-related pollution. 'The vision to transform the decommissioned Vernon C. Bain Center into the Hunts Point Marine Terminal will usher in a new era for this site that will result in not only a new 'Blue Highways' facility, but bring waterfront access, greenway improvements, and much-needed good-paying jobs for the Hunts Point community,' said NYCEDC president and CEO Andrew Kimball. The marine terminal is currently entering the design and planning phase. NYCEDC will also begin environmental remediation of the land, which is expected to be finished by 2027. The terminal will serve as a key node in the city's growing Blue Highways network, including the Brooklyn Marine Terminal and other proposed waterfront logistics hubs. For Hunts Point, the change signals a long-overdue shift—from isolation and incarceration to jobs, investment and cleaner air.
