David Ehrenberg serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC), overseeing the Yard’s diverse tenant base and 1.8 million SF expansion. Prior to joining BNYDC, Mr. Ehrenberg was an Executive Vice President and co-head of the Real Estate Transaction Services group at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). While at NYCEDC, Mr. Ehrenberg was a senior manager on many of the City’s priority economic development projects including: the Applied Sciences initiative that resulted in Cornell’s new campus on Roosevelt Island; the redevelopment of six acres of vacant land on the Lower East Side known as Seward Park; the Atlantic Yards project; as well as the creation and implementation of hundreds of millions of dollars of programs to support small businesses after Hurricane Sandy.
Mr. Ehrenberg will be speaking at the upcoming SmartCities NY Conference, taking place May 8-10 at Brooklyn Navy Yard and Pier 36 in New York City. To learn more about SmartCities NY or to register, visit the official website: https://smartcitiesny.com/
Smart Cities: Harnessing Technology with Purpose
There are so many technological advances happening in every walk of life. To a large extent, we’re starting to see more and more of those affect the way that we live and experience the city each and every day. Sometimes those are all to the good, and sometimes they have unintended consequences…Whether it’s in traffic and congestion or public safety, there’s a lot more that cities and municipalities can do to harness the potential of that technology and innovation in a way that’s a little bit more, perhaps, purposeful and thoughtful than just “more technology is always good.”
Deciding What Data Is Actionable
Having the real-time adjustments is critically important, but I also think that there’s another side of that, which is, in the era of big data, actually figuring out what data you can act on and what’s just interesting data, but that you can’t possibly actually implement a solution towards. On a smaller scale here at the [Brooklyn Navy Yard], as we’ve tried to get smarter in the way we run what is, basically, a city within a city, we’re finding that there are lots of applications and lots of opportunities to gather data. It’s a really important filter to put on it asking, “what am I actually going to do with this data?” and how is it going to affect the way we operate this place tomorrow, not 10 months from now or two years from now.
Brooklyn Navy Yard: Dedicated to Technological Advancement
The Yard’s got an extraordinary history, but we’re in the process of really reinventing it for the modern era of manufacturing and asking ourselves and the city and the country and posing the question, “what does a really equitable economy look like in an urban setting?” …We’re really trying to use the Navy Yard as a test lab for new technologies. We’ve got miles and miles and miles of streets here–what looks like streets, but they’re actually private property–and so the regulatory regime here is much more limited. Basically, if you get our permission you can deploy new technologies here in our streets or in our light posts or whatever within a matter of days, not in the months and years that it can sometimes take to deploy in public streets anywhere outside the Yard in New York City or other cities.
Offering Stability to Encourage Business Growth
A lot of small businesses struggle to find a home in New York that they can not only afford but also where they can be long-term stable, where their landlord is not, two years later, going to throw them out or raise their rents dramatically. We really set up a situation where our tenants know that they’re going to have a long-term future here and that importantly allows them to continue to invest in their intellectual property, in their people, in their equipment, and continue to innovate, which for any company in New York City is extraordinarily important, because to make it here you’ve really got to be at the forefront of your industry.
Economic and Social Sustainability: the Next Challenge for Cities
A lot of cities around the country have become extraordinarily good at producing very high paid, very high skilled jobs. Along with those high skilled, high paid jobs come along retail and hospitality and other service sector jobs in service to those high-paid jobs. I think that’s a lot of why you see this pulling apart of the economies in our city where you’ve got extraordinarily high earners and then folks in the retail industries who struggle to make a middle-class wage. When we think about what we’re doing here, it’s around building a different kind of infrastructure, a different kind of sustainability for New York City and one that’s really asking, “Okay, how do we build and create those jobs in the middle?”
Download full transcript (PDF): David Ehrenberg on The Infra Blog
Tags: #SCNY18, BNYDC, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, David Ehrenberg, New York City, NY, Smart Cities NY, SmartCities NY
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