Video, Audio, Photos, & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Haverstraw and Ossining as $10 Million Mid-Hudson Winners of Fifth-Round Downtown Revitalization Initiative

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that Haverstraw and Ossining will receive $10 million each in funding as the Mid-Hudson region winners of the fifth round of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI). As part of DRI Round 5, each of the state's 10 regional economic development regions are being awarded $20 million, to make for a total state commitment of $200 million in funding and investments to help communities boost their post COVID-19 economies by transforming downtowns into vibrant neighborhoods.

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 afternoon, everyone. Wow. It is great to be here at this amazing site, to a place where people are used to gathering and celebrating. And I want to thank everyone who's been involved in the process that's led us here. You don't know why we're here, right? Nobody let the cat out of the bag, right? I just thought this was a party. It's what you do on Monday mornings, Monday afternoons.

First of all, Marsha Gordon. You have been more than a friend. You're an extraordinary leader who has served this community through some really tough times. We did a lot of zoom calls together during the pandemic, checking in to see how the businesses were doing, how the regional council was doing. I want to thank you for helping us get through this, but also your advocacy for childcare in the workplace and all the issues that you have worked on with me together. So let's give a round of applause to Marsha.

Shout out to our Secretary of State Rossana Rosado who has loved working on this particular project, the DRIs, and she's done an amazing job and she'll be leaving us soon. We already announced it, we'll announce it again. I said, you're such a talented individual, whatever you want to do in our administration and her heart was in the criminal justice services. So, she'll now be the leader of the Criminal Justice Services for the State of New York, soon to be replaced by Robert Rodriguez, the Secretary of State, but she left a mark that is incredible. And I want to thank her for all her service and her future service.

Hope Knight, the fairly brand new head of Empire State Development, who brings such an incredible perspective on the opportunities that all of these communities deserve. Let's give Hope Knight a round of applause.

I also have to say to our mayors, I was a local official for fourteen years. I never got the kind of applause that your mayors get. So you're doing something right here. Michael Kohut, the Mayor of Village of Haverstraw and Rika Levin, the Mayor of Ossining. So, let's give them a round of applause as well.

Our senators are here. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick, I want to thank him for his friendship, the advice he gives me, we talk a lot on the phone. I thank you for that as well.

Also, Assemblymember Sandy Galef is here another great friend. Ken Zebrowski. Ken, we talked recently, I think even yesterday and Senator James Skoufis, let's give them a round of applause for what they do.

It's the first time we've combined two communities to have an announcement. Maybe it's because I got a lot on my schedule these days and I wanted to make sure that we gave a lot of love to our communities and not just put this out as a paper press release.

When I stand here and I look out in a room like this, it does remind me of my early days of being a citizen activist in my hometown, a very small community, a community that had been beaten down. The industries that supported it, not unlike the brick-making industry, we made steel where I come from, we made steel, and those were the jobs for thousands and thousands of people, lift so many people out of poverty, like my Irish immigrant grandparents.

And when those jobs went overseas, our small town was crushed. The boarded up storefronts places that we used to be able to shop and get shoes and women's clothing and jewelry, they were all gone. At the same time, the malls were coming in, sucking up all the livelihood. Everybody went to the malls instead of walking the downtowns. It was disastrous.

My mother at this time, right when I graduated from law school, my first week out of law school, she says, I've decided I want to start a flower shop in our village. It's like, Mom, not a good time, everything's closing. She says, I didn't like the flowers that were done for your brother's wedding last year and I think we need a better flower shop in this town. So her daughter, the lawyer, is told to start the business, file the paperwork, go down to the county clerk's office, which I'd never been to before, to make sure I get all the paperwork done and the DVA and going to the bank to start.

So, I understood how challenging it was to start a small business in a little town that was spiraling out of control and decline. My mother and I have formed a coalition, a village action coalition, to gather all the businesses who had hung on and talk to them about how we can create a little bit more of a sense of downtown and a sense of community. People wanted to gather downtown once again and give that spirit of vitality that would have been sucked out of my community and we were successful.

Many years later, with a lot of support from other levels of government, we had the money to do what we needed to do, but no one ever handed me a check for $10 million. I would have had a fabulous time with that when I ran for local official. I was a council member for many years and so I know personally how transformative a day like this can be where people who've lived there a long time or even the newcomers who discovered this beautiful part of our state during the pandemic because they wanted an escape, to see the potential to understand the history, to celebrate what we have is an outstanding quality of life, right in these two communities.

But to give it that little extra boost that it needs, that extra resource to just say, how do you want to be defined? You want a viable, livable, walkable, downtown. You want connections to the waterfront. You want to make sure that there's gathering spaces. You want to make sure you celebrate the green space and create places people want to be together with their families and children and grandkids. You also want to have housing downtown. When I was growing up, the American dream was to live out in the suburbs, away from everybody else,and have that isolation, maybe even a picket fence to keep you separated from neighbors.

That era has been long gone. People want to congregate in downtowns, but for too long there was not affordable housing options or even housing options whatsoever. All the storefronts that were there for decades, no one thought to put housing above them. No one thought of the possibilities that people are willing to have smaller space, but they want the creative collisions that exist when you walk into a coffee shop and run into someone you know, or have a chance to talk to the local baker and go to your local diners.

This is what New York is all about. It's small towns where they're populated by people who love them to their core and will find all kinds of ways to contribute. Our small businesses, our larger employers, the elected officials, the labor community works so hard to build, our business people who never give up, this is the ecosystem that is making New York so spectacular as we emerge from this pandemic.

So, investments in places like Ossining and Haverstraw, these are investments into the future. But most importantly, and I thank the members of the Regional Economic Development Council, you've worked so hard, many of you from the very beginning and you see countless proposals come before you, but all of a sudden you say yes, that hit it. That's exactly what we're talking about. That's how the money can be used to give a comeback story to every one of these communities, because every community matters.

No longer is the era of Albany dictating your destiny because I was on the receiving end of that for a long time, ask anybody at the Thruway Authority, the DOT, the DEC, I battled everybody because I really thought that there was a disconnect between state government and the local government. When I took office exactly three months ago today, I said that era is over. I understand how important our local communities are. I understand the values of small villages and towns, and what they need to do is be liberated to do what they do best.

Give them the resources, let their community members come up with their vision, not a vision driven by Albany, a vision driven by the local people who love their community. That's what this is all about. And that's why both of your communities have one $10 million each.

Congratulations! Well done, well done.

Going forth, you'll be working together to put forth the projects. I know a lot of communities say they'll put forth maybe 15, $17 million with the projects, go for it. It's still not going above 10 right now. Okay. But tell us the ones you believe in the most. We take some time to evaluate them, then we'll be coming forth and announcing the specific projects that you recommend that we have the resources to fund.

So I look forward to returning many times for the groundbreakings, the ribbon cuttings and all the signs that say these communities matter, and they are roaring back during this pandemic. So congratulations to everyone involved. Thank you.