By Rich Bockmann
Borough President Melinda Katz rubbed shoulders with Queens’ movers and shakers during a meet-and-greet breakfast at the LaGuardia Marriott Hotel Tuesday, when she said tackling the borough’s unemployment rate and luring a big-name retailer to Far Rockaway will be some of the keys to driving the borough’s economy.
With an unemployment rate sitting at 6.7 percent in December, Queens outperformed both Manhattan and Brooklyn, state Department of Labor figures show, both of which had rates hovering above the citywide average of 7.5 percent.
Speaking before a crowd that packed the hotel’s banquet hall for the breakfast hosted by the Queens Chamber of Commerce, the new borough president said she would use her leverage over land-use decisions to require builders to include local businesses and community-benefits agreements in their developments.
“I plan to utilize real estate development projects to create temporary and permanent jobs for our unemployed and underemployed, as well as create business opportunities for our small, local and [minority and women] business owners,” said Katz, who formerly chaired the City Council’s Land Use Committee.
“Just so you know, when you come to my office for a ULURP application or a BSA application,” Katz said of the approvals developers seek for certain projects, “or any type of thing that the borough president’s office needs to opine on, I am going to ask certain questions. I’m going to ask who you’re hiring …. I’m also going to ask how you get the folks in and out of that establishment.”
Katz, who has previously emphasized linking transit improvements with development, said better subway service and high-speed bus links between the planned technology campus on Roosevelt Island and the borough’s industrial zones will be key parts of her strategy.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to extend ferry service to the Rockaways, she noted, proves a commitment to investing in the peninsula.
“We need to get a new anchor tenant out there, all those developers out there in the audience listening,” she said. “We need to get a new anchor tenant out there in the Rockaways and Far Rockaway to spur economic development and retail establishments.”
The borough president took time to press the flesh with attendees and introduced the members of her cabinet heading up different initiatives.
When asked how she planned to address dwindling health-care options in the face of hospital closures, Katz said she favored the model of “pop-ups,” in which facilities have emergency rooms that also have space for overnight observation.
“It doesn’t require the huge swaths of land that a lot of the larger hospitals require,” she said.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
