Joe Campolo, CMM Managing Partner and HIA-LI Board Chairman, moderated HIA-LI’s panel discussion, “Hauppauge Industrial Park: Current and Future Growth,” on April 24, 2019 at IBEW in Hauppauge. He delivered these remarks to the hundreds of guests in attendance.
I’d like to welcome everyone to our Hauppauge Industrial Park Update this morning. As Chairman of the HIA-LI Board of Directors and a Long Island business owner, I’m honored to join you as the moderator for this event as we embark on our region’s next chapter.
As steward of the Hauppauge Industrial Park, the second largest in the nation behind only Silicon Valley, HIA-LI has spent the last several years working tirelessly to spread the word about this incredible economic engine. And we have indeed made an enormous impact. One of my proudest accomplishments as Board Chairman is our success in making the numbers and facts that we learned through the Economic Impact Study so well known – so much so that the Park’s identity as an economic powerhouse is no longer a secret, but rather part of the fabric and story of Long Island.
Today you are going to hear new incredible numbers and facts that we’ve discovered about the economic power of the businesses in the Park, this time from the opportunity analysis that HIA-LI, Jim Lima, the RPA, and the Suffolk IDA have been working so hard on.
You’re going to learn how our beloved Long Island possesses economic assets that are greater than any other per-capita district in the country. You’ll hear new ways that Long Island can leverage these incredible assets to achieve greater economic growth, by capitalizing in the tradable industries that are already prospering and growing in the Park. During this presentation, you’re going to learn that not every dollar is created equal. In fact, a dollar generated in the Hauppauge Industrial Park is worth $2 generated elsewhere on Long Island and about $1.25 nationwide. That is truly incredible.
Our mission now is to accelerate this growth by relentlessly pushing and marketing and spreading the word about the Park as the region’s premier hub for growing businesses, and to continue building bridges between the public and private sectors to truly make a tremendous impact.
The fact is, the opportunity analysis concludes what we’ve always suspected: that there are amazing companies in the Park doing incredible things for the economy. Now that we are armed with this critical information, our task is to determine how the private and public sectors can work even better together to facilitate growth.
You see, this project is an example of a successful partnership between industry and government. It’s this collaboration that will ensure Long Island’s economic viability in the future. We need both business and government support: society doesn’t work well if it’s just one or the other.
We are fortunate to have elected officials who get it, and continue to express a renewed commitment to investing in the Park. We thank them and assure them that, in return, we at the HIA-LI will always tirelessly fight for Long Island and its business community.
Thank you.
Download the Executive Summary of the Opportunity Analysis here.
