A proposal by Long Island economic development officials to establish a facility where entrepreneurs can create prototypes of their products for eventual sale has won $30 million in a New York State competition.
The award was announced earlier this winter by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said the Long Island proposal to create a so-called Regional Commercialization Center was one of four to share $150 million in the competition. The state’s 10 regional economic development councils were invited to participate. Other winners were New York City and upstate Ithaca.
The Long Island Regional Economic Development Council had sought the funding to help establish a 50,000-square-foot manufacturing center, which is to be open to start-ups in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and New York City. The facility’s location has yet to be determined.
“This award reflects our council’s commitment to advancing transformational economic initiatives that build on Long Island’s unique strengths,” said Linda Armyn, and Kimberly Cline, the Long Island council’s co-chairs. Armyn is CEO of FourLeaf Federal Credit union, formerly Bethpage Federal Credit, and Cline is president of Long Island University.
While the location of the manufacturing center is unknown, the facility is to be operated by Newlab LLC, an organization based at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Newlab also has business incubators in Detroit, New Orleans, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Uruguay.
Once the facility is open, it is to focus on three areas that are already familiar to Long Island: Aerospace-defense, clean energy, cyber systems, semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
The hope is that the facility will keep companies and their employees on Long Island, which like most of the rest of the country, has shed manufacturing jobs in recent years. Aerospace and defense were once Long Island’s largest industries, but the largest of those companies, Grumman Corp., now employs only a few hundred people on the Island, down from thousands in the 1980s.
Liz Keen, the chief strategy officer for Newlab, had said that start-ups will have access to the incubator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Economic development officials are hoping that some of the ideas the start-ups develop will turn into commercial products.
That has been an idea advanced on Long Island and in other places, but progress in this area has been slow. Long Island has been trying to develop a bio-tech industry that would include small state-ups utilizing Cold Spring Harbor Lab, Northwell Health, the State University at Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Lab. Little has come of that idea yet, but economic development officials say they remain determined to develop such an industry here, citing the area around Boston, which has been successful making use of Harvard, MIT and other major educational institutions in the area.
But little actual progress from the latest award by New York State can be expected any time soon. While the location of the facility the start-ups would use has yet to be determined, the facility itself is not expected to open until late in 2027.
Steven Kent, chief economist for the Long Island Association, said in an interview with the Press that the Island is likely to see more start-ups in the future as a younger generation enters the workforce. Kent, who is also a professor at Molloy University in Rockville Centre, said he talks often with his students about their future.
“What I hear from my students is that they don’t want to sit at a desk,” Kent said. “They want to be doing something. They want to be out there. They want to physically see what they produce.”
Earlier this year, Hochul announced the launch of the 2025 Regional Economic Development Initiative. The initiative has allowed the state’s ten economic development councils to advance regional and statewide priorities. Hochul added a $150 million competition called Advanced Collaboration for High-Impact Initiatives for Economic Visions & Expansion, or ACHIEVE.
Walter T. Mosley, New York’s Secretary of State, who was named chairman of Hochul’s ACHIEVE initiative, said he had traveled the state examining many of the proposals offered by the regional councils.
“I’ve seen first-hand the great work of the regional economic development councils,” Mosley said. “I’m honored to help lead this knowledgeable and dedicated group of individuals.”
Dan Lloyd, program director for Accelerate Long Island, a business group, said, “it takes a long time” to develop a group of start-ups that will help boost the economy. But of the money the Island will receive, he said, “is a very important step.”
