SYRACUSE — More than 800 business and community leaders watched the announcements of the Business of the Year Awards, a keynote address, and remarks from Robert Simpson, president and CEO of CenterState CEO, at the April 11 annual meeting of CenterState CEO at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter in Syracuse.

Awards

In the Business of the Year Awards, the economic development and chamber of commerce organization recognized Crouse Health in the “More than 50 Employees” category. The finalists in the category also included Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC; Tompkins Community Bank; and Woodford Bros., Inc.

Drakos Dynamics prevailed in the “Fewer than 50 Employees” category. The additional finalists in that grouping included 325 Productions; Potter Heating & AC – Perrone Plumbing Services; and ResilienX.

CenterState CEO recognized Food Bank of Central New York in the “Nonprofit” category. The additional finalists included Catholic Charities of Onondaga County; ConnextCare; and Housing Visions.

SGTR LLC was honored with the “Minority-owned Business” Award, which CenterState CEO presented in partnership with the Upstate Minority Economic Alliance. Additional finalists in the category included Brackens Financial Solutions Network; Cocoa’s Candle Bar; and La Liga.

In addition, CenterState CEO recognized NBT Bank with the “Community Involvement” award. The category’s additional finalists included CPS Recruitment, Inc.; Firley, Moran, Freer & Eassa, CPA, P.C.; and Novelis, Inc.

Simpson remarks

CenterState CEO President Robert Simpson talked about the opportunity for Central New York to “think bigger about its own economic future and to shape the growth that is coming.”

“As humans, we are so deeply rooted in what we’ve known … stagnation, population loss, progress that can sometimes feel glacially slow. But the moment we have now entered is entirely different,” Simpson said as he addressed the gathering at the annual meeting. “In a world of data, it’s an outlier, a full standard deviation or two from our past and even recent experience. Don’t believe me? Consider this: by the end of this decade there will be more people living in Central New York than at any other time in history. Over the next 15 years, projected job growth with Micron’s investment alone will drive our population up by nearly 8 percent, create as many as 50,000 new jobs. Can anyone tell me the last time we had 50,000 more jobs in this community than we have today? Of course not. It’s a trick question. We’ve never had 50,000 more jobs in this community than we have today.”

Simpson went on to say that Micron’s investment isn’t just reshaping the economic landscape, it’s “reshaping our nation’s economic competitiveness and vaulting upstate New York into an entirely new tier of criticality to our nation’s future.” 

“Within the next decade, when Micron has just two of its four fabs up and operating, one in four American-made chips will be produced within 350 miles of this corridor,” Simpson said. “No other area of the country will account for a greater share of domestic production of one of the most fundamental inputs to the modern economy that there is. This region matters.”

He also noted that the moment is “so much bigger” than Central New York alone, which is why CenterState CEO has joined with partners in Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca, and Syracuse to compete for the designation as one of 31 tech hubs nationwide. It works with almost 100 private-sector partners, academic partners, and community organizations across upstate New York. 

“The Smart-I corridor has a generational opportunity to build a globally leading semiconductor cluster to advance not just our region’s economic prosperity but our national security as well,” he said.

Simpson also says he understands why some might be anxious about future possibilities because they come with immediate challenges, such as housing with rent prices rising 57 percent in Onondaga County in the last seven years. The figure makes Syracuse “one of the places with the fastest rising rents in the country.”

 “Every single city and town and village in Central New York will benefit from our evolution from stagnation to growth and therefore we all share a responsibility for delivering real solutions in the form of more and more affordable housing for the people who live here and the people we want to move here,” Simpson said in his remarks.

And it’s not just housing that’s “under pressure,” but the region’s health-care system as well, he said.

“Aging facilities. A lack of necessary IT [information technology] infrastructure and an acute shortage of nurses and doctors that are going to require massive investments to modernize and to scale with the growth of our community,” Simpson said.

He also talked about Syracuse Hancock International Airport, which is now the fourth busiest in the state, surpassing Albany and Rochester within the last year.

“And yet, we will need more than a billion dollars of investment in that airport just to accommodate traffic that we can accurately foresee and plan for today,” Simpson said.

He also mentioned the energy grid, which he said faces the simultaneous challenges of growth in energy-intensive industries like semiconductor manufacturing and advanced manufacturing.

“But also an electrification and a decarbonization mandate from New York State that, absent rational debate and new carbon-free generation, will actually slow or stall the growth that we anticipate,” he said.

Housing, transportation, energy, he added, are just a few of the systems “that are going to be strained by this moment that we’re in.”

Simpson went on to say it was the region’s “civic cohesion” that allowed it to fight back from economic collapse. 

“Our civic leadership and our collaboration and our creativity and our willingness to work together is what brought us back to this moment, and it is that civic cohesion that must not only hold but strengthen for us to maximize this moment,” Simpson said.

Keynote address 

Prior to Simpson’s remarks, Elizabeth Kelly, CEO of the U.S. AI Safety Institute at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), delivered the keynote presentation, speaking about the positive power of AI and the need for safeguards.

“First and foremost, AI holds transformative potential. We would not be having any of the conversations we are having today if we did not recognize the tremendous potential and want to harness it. The number of positive uses for AI truly has no limit but the human imagination.”

She then elaborated using Syracuse as an example. She pointed to chemical manufacturing, one of Syracuse’s earliest industries.

“Today, AI holds the potential to revolutionize chemical discovery and engineering processes. It has the ability to digitally synthesize tens of thousands of different chemicals and then choose among them [to] select the best one for the job. That makes chemical [research & development (R&D)], like other types of R&D, go a lot faster,” Kelly said in her remarks.

NIST is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which Kelly said works to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness and advancing AI safety is a “key part of that.”