Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul, Mayor Adams Announce Plan for SPARC Kips Bay, First-of-Its-Kind Job and Education Hub for Health and Life Sciences Innovation

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced plans for the Science Park and Research Campus Kips Bay, an innovation hub that will be the first of its kind in the state. Driven by an historic investment from the city and state, SPARC Kips Bay will make New York a global leader in creating and attracting accessible jobs in life sciences, healthcare, and public health by creating a pipeline from local public schools to careers in these growing and essential fields.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Good morning. Making the magic happen every single day, right, Mayor? That's how we roll. That's how we roll.

I am so delighted to be here today joined by the distinguished individuals, starting with our mayor. Partnerships that are real, they're genuine, they're based on trust, faith, and a common purpose to lift up the people of our city and our state. So, let's give another round of applause to our great Mayor, Eric Adams.

Felix Matos Rodriguez, our Chancellor. Thank you for being the steward of the opportunities that lie before thousands of young people to have their lives turned around so dramatically with the power of an education. So, to our Chancellor, we thank you for all you do. We also have our Chair of the Trustees. Keith Powers, thank you for your engagement and supporting and elevating local projects. I know a little bit about New York City, they're not always easy to get done, and it takes leadership at the local level as well, so, thank you. I spent 14 years as a council member, I've felt your pain, but also when there's a big win, you need to be part of that as well and you are. So, thank you. I know Brad Hoylman's here. Yes? No? Brad may be here.

Gary LaBarbera. Where's Gary? Okay, good. Gary, do you have enough workers for all the jobs we're giving you these days? Okay. Don't be sitting here. Get out there and get me more workers. We have so much work to be done here in the State of New York. So grateful for his support of this, but also all the projects that we'll be talking about going forward. Jennifer Raab, the President of Hunter College. Let's give a round of applause to Jennifer Raab. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. Andrew Kimball, he is CEO of Economic Development for the city, part of the dream team. I had my dream team as well with James Katz, our Deputy Secretary for Economic Development. Robert Mujica was all over this helping us out and of course, the highest position - appointed position in state government, Karen Persichilli Keogh, who worked with Frank Carone to get this over the finish line. I'm grateful for them.

Now I mentioned, what a great week this has been. Upstate, downstate - just within the last week. Announcing the largest private investment in our state's history, $100 billion invested by a semiconductor manufacturer that could have gone anywhere. Thought they might have looked at another place called Texas, and we won the deal, and I'm proud of that. I don't mind bragging about that one. But then within days to be able to close the deal on the Mayor's most significant achievement in his short tenure as mayor. Our first meeting - we met a lot - all he talked about was this project. It was, "Get this done." This can be transformative, it can give people the chance to get a good job, a good education, an opportunity, have different healthcare outcomes, bring the smartest and brightest to a common place, a campus, which will be extraordinary. He had this vision, and our teams working together were able to break through decades of roadblocks and hurdles that needed just the commitment, the ability to get things done and just roll up the sleeves and work together.

What a radical idea. City and state working together. How about that? How about that?

So, dreams do come true. Dreams do come true. And I also think back, as Andrew mentioned, how focused we are now on healthcare, more than ever. Something that we all took for granted for a long time, and then you get slammed with a global pandemic. Right here, the epicenter, New York City, and all of a sudden, you're starting to say, "Wow, do we have enough healthcare workers? Do we have people with the skills they need? Do we have the facilities? Will we be able to handle this again if it happens again next year?" That's why we're studying how we got through this. We're going to have a report, a blueprint. But we also have to say, "Let's use this opportunity while the attention is focused on the needs of the healthcare industry. Let's do some magnificent things."

So, I want to make sure that we build the very best healthcare system in the world. We have what it takes. We have the will. We have the political clout necessary. We have the leadership at the local level. There's nothing stopping us now. And I believe we can revolutionize the delivery of healthcare for all New Yorkers. Sure, our work is cut out for us. We say bring it on. We embrace challenges.

And even before the pandemic, we saw trends, back in 2018, that our healthcare workforce would not meet the demands of our population. It was already shrinking and also exacerbated by preexisting disparities in healthcare outcomes in communities of color. But all of a sudden, as I mentioned, this pandemic just put a laser focus, a spotlight on all those problems, and brought them to bear. So now, we have to focus on retaining our workforce, making sure we have enough nurses and doctors who are equipped with the tools they need. And if we know anything, it's a focus of government as well.

And that's why in my very first State of the State, my first budget, I put $10 billion on the table. A record amount of money, to say we have to lift up the hospitals and the healthcare systems and the providers, but also, we have to have a new way to train more people and get them energized and excited to be willing to do what those brave heroes did during the pandemic. If our healthcare angels, our healthcare workers were angels, everybody else, the brilliant minds behind the remedies, the therapies they'd had to be the saints. And that confirms that New York truly is a place where miraculous things happen. And that's exactly what we're doing here today. Today is a miracle.

To announce that the state and the city are coming together to build a science and research campus. I love the word SPARC. It sounds like electricity and energy, whoever came with that, give them an extra drink tonight. On me, I'll buy, what the heck. Right here in Kips Bay. Like I said, the Mayor, all he talked about, "Can do we do Kips Bay? Let's do Kips Bay. Let's do Kips Bay." And this project is a $1.6 billion joint -- focused on the word joint --- project. The joint investment. They say, "We're going to break ground in a couple years." I'm not going to give you the numbers because I already said, "Now you're going to shave time off that aren't you?" So, I'm not going to give you any dates. That's how we do it, right, Mayor? We see a year slap off a couple, so I'm not going to tell you that one. But it's been stalled. The old way of doing business is over, and I'm really, really proud that we are able to announce this today. So, we will have the first-of-a-kind innovation hub and enhance our reputation as a global leader in science, healthcare, public health, creating the jobs of the future. And this is what gets me so excited.

We have a need. We have the demand. We have the young people in communities, particularly those that have been hardest hit. If we can make that connection to get them into the doors, to get the training, there's no stopping us. But also, the thousands and thousands of construction jobs as we continue to build. I need more people to go into our incredible workforce development programs, and we put $350 million on the table in our state budget, doubling the past investment in workforce development because this is how you bring it all together and establish a pipeline from our public schools to these dynamic careers. So, we're going have a high school focused on this as well. This is brilliant, my friends. Absolutely brilliant to bring it all together in one place, serving over 4,500 students from the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing.

So, I'm excited. I think this is extraordinary, and I'm excited also about the ability to generate revenues for this community, over $25 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years. So, that also grabs my attention as we supercharge our economy overall in this post pandemic world.

We are becoming the magnet; in case you haven't noticed. People are leaving the other states, I know this because I'm calling CEOs every day. I wake up and I call CEOs in other states, and they're understanding that the energy is flowing east. It's not the West Coast, it's not the South, it's not Austin, it's not the Research Triangle. They're coming right here to New York, and we have the data to verify it. It's an exciting time for all of us. So, the construction jobs, the long-term jobs are all transformative.

Also, we invested $620 million in our budget in life sciences overall. This is a part of that, but we're going to keep going and I'm so excited to be able to announce that today is the day it all begins. Can't wait to announce the day it's all done, and we start welcoming the students back in here and we'll move this along as fast as humanly possible. And again, it only happened because we had a mayor who stepped up and said, "We can do this. I believe we can do this, if we work together." And our teams were together day and night, and it was complicated. It was complicated, and people more faint of heart might not have been able to endure what our teams went through.

But that's how we get things done in New York. And I'm so proud to have the Mayor as my friend, and ally, and someone who's in sync with me in our efforts to lift this city up, lift our state up together, and that's what today's announcement is all about. With that, let me bring up our amazing mayor, Mayor Eric Adams, to talk about the city's role in this great project. Thank you, Mayor Adams.