Celebrating CenterState CEO’s 15th Anniversary

In this special anniversary episode of Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank, host Katie Zilcosky sits down with CenterState CEO President Rob Simpson to reflect on the organization’s 15-year journey. He recounts the state of Central New York’s economic development landscape in the early 2000s and how the creation of CenterState CEO in 2010 from its two predecessor organizations aimed to unify and strengthen efforts to drive sustainable regional growth for all people.

Looking ahead to envision Central New York another 15 years from now, Simpson shares why he foresees the region as a thriving growth market. With coordinated efforts, he believes the region is poised to become a national model of creative and equitable economic development.

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Transcript

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This is Talk CNY, a semi-monthly podcast by CenterState CEO. We're an independent nonprofit committed to creating inclusive, equitable and sustainable economic growth in Central New York. Join us as we meet the people and explore the projects driving the regional economy forward. This is Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank. I'm Katie Zilcosky, director of communications at CenterState CEO and your host for Talk CNY, CenterState CEO is celebrating its 15th anniversary. And in its honor, we sat down with CenterState CEO President Rob Simpson to reflect on the last 15 years. I do want to take some time to reflect because it is CenterState CEO's 15th anniversary this year. Imagine that. I want to talk a little bit about May of 2010, when you announced CenterState CEO as an organization to a room of over a thousand people at the Oncenter. What was going through your mind then? What were you hopeful about? What were the challenges that were looking you kind of dead in the face in that moment? Well, I think first and foremost, we were trying something really new. When I moved back here in 2003, there was a lot of confusion in the economic development landscape. And that was not something that I immediately recognized, but it was something that pretty much everybody I met with told me I should be looking out for. And before long, it turns out it was very true. There was a fragmented environment, just even within the business community itself. There was the Metropolitan Development Association, there was the chamber, there were all sorts of other additional entities that were all doing some portion of this really critical function for Central New York, but that were doing it in ways that were siloed, where people weren't collaborating, in fact, where oftentimes people and organizations were directly competing with each other for mind share or for attention or for resources. I think the thing that really dawned on me the longer I'd been in the role was just how we were fighting the wrong battle. Right. Here we were, little Syracuse, New York, with this proud history that had been battered by economic forces. We were in a global fight for our lives and instead of fighting that battle, we were fighting ourselves. I think it took me as an emerging leader at that time, it took me a while to really understand that that was a core problem. That wasn't just something that should be on the list that maybe we'll get to someday, but it was a fundamental problem that we were facing. There was one very specific moment that I will never forget, and that was in 2008. Shortly after I had been named as the incoming CEO of the Metropolitan Development Association and we had a turnover in state leadership. We had a new governor, David Patterson, and David Patterson did what every new governor does, which is the road show up and down the Thruway, going to talk to all the different organizations. I remember getting a phone call from my friend who was working for Governor Patterson at the time, and he said, "Hey, the governor wants to come to town. Can you put a roundtable with 15 or 20 CEOs together so the governor can hear about what Central New York needs to turn around?" Amazing opportunity. I'm brand new in my new role, getting a chance to host the governor, have this conversation. At the end of a 60 or 90-minute conversation, which had gone really, really well, I remember talking to my friend in the corner of the room and just saying, "Hey, thank you. This was really good. I really appreciate the opportunity. What else are you guys doing while you're in town?" My friend kind of hedged a little bit. And then he looked down at his shoes, and I was like, are you going to visit a company? Are you doing anything else? And he said, well, we're going to go down to the Chamber of Commerce. And the Chamber at the time was running the Tech Garden, right? So they were the ones who built the Tech Garden. So there were plenty of things that they could have gone and done down there that would have been different from what they'd done. But when I probed a little bit further, what he told me was the governor was going down to the chamber to have a round table with 15 or 20 CEOs to find out what Central New York needed. In that moment, it was so blatantly obvious, the governor of the state of New York is coming to our community and leaving, probably laughing, going back down the Thruway or just tremendously own time was wasted, more likely, with a completely uncoordinated message about what we were trying to accomplish. In that moment, it just became so clear to me that something different needed to happen. And I will forever be grateful to the leaders who I was working with at the MDA, the volunteer leadership, and also to my friend and partner, Darlene Kerr, who was the president of the chamber at the time, for a willingness and openness and to do some hard work to figure out how we build a different mousetrap. CenterState CEO is the product of figuring out how we could do it better so we could position our community for success. And here we sit 15 years after its formation and while there have been challenges and not everything has been perfect, I think it's been pretty good. Yeah. Could 2010, Rob, imagine bringing the largest private investment of state history to the region or becoming one of 12 federally funded Tech Hubs or having a multimillion dollar state-of-the-art Syracuse, and the list goes on. I don't think 2010 Rob would've imagined any one of those individual things. I think 2010, Rob and all of the other people, I want to be clear, who were engaged in this process, it was not a singular accomplishment on my part. In fact, the thing that I did most was probably just to enable and allow it to happen by not standing in the way. I think the perspective that I had that I still have, is that there's nothing this community can't accomplish. If we are coordinated. If we're aligned. If we work together. If we are clear about our vision. If we take calculated risks. If we are humble enough to recognize and acknowledge when we make a mistake, there's nothing we can't accomplish. I think that's been the ethos for CenterState CEO for 15 years. We are at our core. We're problem solvers. We want to see this community thrive. We're so deeply passionate about the community that we live in. And so while I would not have predicted any one of those individual things, the fact that we are being successful by leveraging our assets and turning that into a greater level of shared prosperity for our region, that was the vision, that was the goal. That's why we did it. And I'm so proud of this organization, what we've accomplished with all of our partners, but mostly I'm proud of the community for doing something that's really hard, which is pulling itself out of literally a deep gravitational well that was pulling against it and putting itself on a new glide path of prosperity. There aren't too many places around the country in the United States of America that have done that successfully. We are at the leading edge of that. That feels pretty awesome. What do the next 15 years have in store? 2040 project yourself into the future. Oh, 2040. In Syracuse and Central New York, we're a growth market. We have found ways to grow that, recognize and care for our love of our natural environment. I think one of the biggest mistakes that growth communities make is that they end up sprawling uncontrollably, taking up all their green space, using up all their natural resources. I believe in our ability to grow differently. We know the mistakes that other places have made. The first mistake that every growth community makes is they don't build enough housing. So what has CenterState been doing over the course of the last two years since Micron? We've been working more on housing than just about anything else because that's what the market demands. And we know that that will be a potential point of market failure. And we've got some exciting things that we're working on that we'll be able to announce later this year that are designed to help get more housing in the ground more quickly to help us mitigate that as best as possible. I think we're going to be a more global community. Micron is going to attract a universe of supply chain partners from all over the world, which means we're going to have companies that are from South Korea and Singapore and maybe Malaysia and Japan and Taiwan. And that just increases the richness and diversity of our community in ways that I think can be leveraged for further success. We are going to benefit from climate migration. We're already seeing it in the United States. We're seeing people move from areas where there are significant climate disruptions, be it wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, to different locations that are more isolated or insulated from that. We're going to be the beneficiary of that, which means population growth. And that will come with some downstream challenges like the need to improve our healthcare systems and hire more doctors and more mental healthcare professionals. So all of these systems, what we've come to know over the course of the last, just my career over the course of the last 20 years, this community is going to look a lot different. But I hope if we've done it right, the core ingredients of who we are here in Syracuse are going to be the same. We're going to be good people. We're going to be hardworking people. We're going to be a community that values each other. Most importantly, I want to make sure that we remain a community that looks out for each other, right? Neighbor, helping neighbor, helping lift everybody up, being unwilling to be a part of a growth narrative that leaves people behind. That's who we are in Syracuse. But I also think we're going to be able to show this new and emerging face of creativity and innovation to the rest of the world because I don't think that most people around the United States of America and most people around the world are paying attention to Syracuse yet. Even with the Micron news, it's often the periphery, "Oh, I heard about Micron." They're going to be paying attention before long. They're going to see what we're doing. And I believe we're going to be a national example for some really cool and creative things. And I believe that we have an opportunity to translate all that growth and that wealth creation into a higher level of opportunity for the people who live here and at its core, the CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity. That is what we stand for. A place where businesses thrive and all people prosper. We actually have a chance. We have a real chance to achieve our mission in the next 15 or 20 years. At least make real progress to it. And I'm so excited about that. Well, Rob, thank you as always for coming back. At NBT Bank, we know that this day starts with this one. This day starts with this one because no matter how unforgettable the extraordinary days are, there's a lot of every day that leads up to them. You can count on NBT Bank to help you get started. NBT Bank, it starts here. Centerstate CEO's podcast Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank, is available on all major podcast platforms or centerstateceo.com. Additional content and clips can be seen across CenterState CEO's social media channels for new episode reminders. Be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast listening app, and don't forget to leave a quick review or five-star rating. Thanks for listening to Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank.