Inspiring Growth Through Innovation

This episode will start with a trivia question. What do the dental chair, the tool you use to measure a person’s shoe size and the 24 second shot clock all have in common? 

They were all invented in Central New York. 

This region has a rich history of inventing, creating, and bringing new ideas to life. As we embark on this new chapter of growth in our community, we want to grow with respect to our roots. That’s why CenterState CEO’s new innovation hub will reflect both where we’re going and where we’ve been. 

On this episode of Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank, CenterState CEO President Rob Simpson discusses how the new name and look of the innovation hub captures the region’s legacy of innovation and the vision for the future.

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Host: Katie Zilcosky LinkedIn 

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. We're going to start this episode with a trivia question. What do the dental chair, the tool that you use to measure the size of your foot and the 24-second shot clock all have in common? They were all invented in Central New York. This region has a rich and vibrant history of inventing, creating and bringing new ideas to life. It's something we wanted to honor. It was something that inspired us as we picked the new name for our Innovation Hub downtown. On this episode of Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank, CenterState CEO President Rob Simpson joins the podcast to talk about how the new Innovation Hub captures our region's legacy and our vision of the future. Rob, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me. We have some very exciting news to share for this show today. We are finally able to share the name of the new Innovation Hub that we have been working on for months and months. Will you do the honors? I will. The INSPYRE Innovation Hub. We are so excited about the fact that our technology ecosystem, which 20 years ago basically did not exist, right? The supports for startups and entrepreneurs in this absent from the civic landscape and today we've had more than 20 years of operating The Tech Garden. We've planted so many seeds, so many companies that have grown and matured out of this ecosystem that our entrepreneurial environment is now one of the bright spots in our economy. But I think the reality of 2025 is so different from Syracuse of 2004 when The Tech Garden first opened. We felt really strongly, our entire team, that this was a chance for us to lay down a new marker for where we want our economy to go next. Not just about what we're doing today, but what we see for the future. And that future in Central New York right now needs to be defined by a new level of aspiration for what we can accomplish and where we can go. We're not planting little seeds for startup companies anymore. We have $3 billion companies that have emerged from our tech ecosystem in the last five years. That's incredible for a community our size, and we want to see more of that in the future. We want to welcome more entrepreneurs into that building. We want to support companies across multiple industry verticals, not just technology, but we want to support manufacturing based businesses and we want to support food and retail based businesses, expanding our product offerings, expanding the types of companies that we are intending to support and constantly sending a signal to future generations of Syracusans and Central New Yorkers that the future is ours to write. And that's just the most exciting thing to be able to have this building, this physical manifestation of our challenge to the community to always be looking to the future to make it better than what we have today. Now, like you mentioned, The Tech Garden has been around for years and the CenterState CEO staff has spent those years really building that brand, making the name recognition known in the community so people know where to go if they've got an idea. Kind of picks the question, why change the name? Why was it so important to open this new chapter for this space downtown? Well, I think I just shared some of those ideas, but more precisely when we were undertaking the expansion, one of the things that we did is we did focus groups with companies that were in The Tech Garden. Companies that had graduated out of The Tech Garden. We also talked to people who had never engaged with The Tech Garden to better understand why. And there were some very interesting points of feedback that we received, but I was shocked, actually stunned perhaps at how many people, including people who had engaged with us in that building, who'd gone through our programs, who'd graduated out, who'd become very successful companies who told us that The Tech Garden brand didn't really resonate with them. That they kind of engaged despite the name. That it was more about what was happening in the building than it was about that brand. And we also heard from a lot of companies, particularly those that weren't in the tech space, that the branding and the messaging around The Tech Garden didn't feel particularly inclusive. That people felt like, well, if I don't see myself as a technology company, that space is not for me. And I think one of the most important things we want to do with this new facility, which is going to be remarkable when it's complete, is to make sure that everyone knows that it's a place for them where everybody feels welcome. Everybody feels like they have access to our tools and resources and our staff to help build and grow their venture. And that's us as an organization leading with our values and listening to honest feedback and again, wanting to move the marker just a little bit over the horizon and push people to think about how they can make these businesses that they're launching the very best they can possibly be. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the physical space that the facility is in. I mean, you mentioned a little bit about welcoming everybody in who has an idea, who wants to see that grow and take the next step. How do you envision this facility interacting with The bus hub just around a corner. The Chimes building that is being renovated. The STEAM school that will go in a block or two down the street. I mean, there's a lot going on in that corridor. Let's talk about the STEAM school first because I'm very excited about this. Our ability to reach beyond the traditional network of entrepreneurs I think really cuts to the core of the rebranding. We want to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs in this community, and that means not just waiting until someone is mid-career in a job that may not be satisfying and they want to start a business to do something new. It means getting into the minds and behavior patterns of students when they're in college and beyond when they're in high school and maybe even in middle school. So the opportunity to build partnerships with the STEAM School right across the street is something that our team I know is very excited. We've been working with the district on figuring out how we can make programming available, how students can come over from the STEAM school and engage with some of our programming periodically. So I'm thrilled about that. I think second, recognizing that downtown Syracuse today is literally the heart, the center of economic activity for our entire region, not just for the city of Syracuse, but for all of Central New York and ensuring that the facility, the region's premier facility for new business formation is accessible. I think one thing that people probably haven't yet figured out, but they're about to as the building takes shape, is that the facility is oriented differently. Physically, we've moved the entrance of the building to the corner. It used to be tucked away in the back of the plaza that was hard to get to, wasn't ADA accessible, and we've taken that in the physical form of the building and we've opened the face of the building to this corner of Harrison Street and Warren Street and really tried to increase the welcoming presence of the physical space itself. I think there's just all these unique and creative things that have gone into the building design that I'm really excited to be able to show people when we get a chance to get them into the building and take them on tours and have them see and experience how we have been as intentional as we possibly can be with the design of the structure to invite people in, to inspire them, and to let them know that Syracuse, Central New York, our community, is willing to invest in their future success. This is a $32 million project that we've been working on for eight years. Eight years of effort and labor and hard work, not just by us, but all of our partners in state government, the city, the county, and so many others, private sector businesses that have been supporting. We are making a bet on the future of our region, and we are betting on small businesses and entrepreneurs as a fundamental cornerstone of our future economic success. This idea of betting on entrepreneurs and innovators as our future economic success is not one that's foreign to our region. We have a really rich history and legacy of innovating and inventing here. How did that play a role in this new building and kind of pushing everyone forward? One of the things that I have always found inspiring, for lack of a better term. Yes. See what I did there? I do. One of the things I've always felt inspiring about legacy of innovation. And one of the things that I found so confounding when I first moved back here in 2003 and spent a lot of time studying the regional economy, understanding where we were performing, where we were underperforming, was how completely absent the entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem was from our economic performance back in 2003. Didn't make a lot of sense for a community that literally developed and manufactured products that was sent all over the world that changed literally human habitation patterns, right? Think about air conditioning being sent, changing the habitability of climates in the South or in the West or in other parts of the world. We had lost that thread. And pulling that thread back up and placing it squarely at the front of our collective civic consciousness has been something that I think has been a big part of certainly CenterState CEO's objectives over the course of the last few years, certainly been one of the premier points of emphasis for The Tech Garden over the course of the last 20 years. We hope and we believe that this new building in its new form and its new manifestation with new programming is going to serve as a very long-term reminder that we can't fall into that trap again. We should never, ever turn our back on our small business community. They are the fundamental underpinnings of what makes our communities great, and they're also a massive potential growth engine when we are able to identify entrepreneurs and companies and help them grow and scale. If you look around downtown Syracuse today, there are a dozen graduates of The Tech Garden who are employing more than 1200 people in downtown Syracuse. If we ever as a community found a new employer to bring 1200 employees into downtown Syracuse, people would go bananas. They'd be so excited, right? Yeah. But we've done that. We've just done it through a different modality, which is supporting these entrepreneurs, and I am 100% convinced that their return on investment from continuing along that strategic path is going to provide really long-term dividends, not only for the INSPYRE Innovation Hub programming, but also for our community at large. INSPYRE Innovation Hub - We should note INSPYRE is spelled with a Y. So why the Y? At the core of every interesting innovation is a question and this question of why - why does something work the way it does? Why can't this thing be better? Why am I frustrated with how I interface with this tool or this program? It's an invitation, right? The why is an invitation to be curious. The why is an invitation to think about and conceptualize how something might work better. If you think about every major company out there, oftentimes, most often they're not even inventing new product categories. They're simply evolving how people experience with a certain product or a certain service. And we want that level of curiosity. It is literally critical to our success as a region and it's critical to their success as entrepreneurs. So the Y is very intentional. I'll also be really candid. You look carefully at the INSPYRE Hub and what you see inside there is SYR. We're rooting this building and the programs they're in in place because place really matters. This hub is very intentionally, as we said, right next to the bus station of the Transfer Hub. It's right in downtown Syracuse in the center of our economic region. Place matters a lot, and we wanted to offer a nod to the community that has welcomed The Tech Garden and now the INSPYRE Innovation Hub as part of its landscape and ecosystem for the last 20 years. We will have more with Rob coming up in just a moment. But first, we are going to take a quick break for a word from our presenting sponsor, NBT Bank. 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. Welcome back. This is Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank. I'm Katie Zilcosky, director of communications at CenterState CEO, and your host for Talk CNY. I am here today with CenterState CEO President Rob Simpson. Rob, thanks for being here. I'm glad to be here. So we were talking about the INSPYRE Innovation Hub and creating a brand new name for it, entering the last stages of construction, definitely keeping us busy, but certainly not the only thing on our plate. We recently announced with the city of Syracuse and Empire State Development, the site for the flagship ON-RAMP location: 1300 South Salina Street. So, before we get into the site, what's in store / next steps on ON-RAMP? Remind listeners, what is ON-RAMP, and how is CenterState CEO involved? ON-RAMP is a statewide program that Governor Hochul rolled out in her budget last year with the support of Empire State Development that is designed to catalyze workforce development investments, in particular for advanced manufacturing and construction. I think the governor recognized as we do that the future for Upstate New York right now in our economy is these large advanced manufacturing projects. And that is certainly, Micron is a huge example, GlobalFoundries over in Albany. The semiconductor industry is alive and well and growing here in Upstate New York. But it is by no means just that we have other companies like TTM and Saab and SRC and across so many different industry verticals that are also in a moment of their own. And it's actually really exciting. There was a point in time in the 1970s where manufacturing was 39% of the total Syracuse, Central New York economy, and today it's around eight and a half or nine percent. We'd lost a lot of that economic power over a lot of years. And I think the reasons are well known, we hear them talked about it at national level all the time. It was a move first South and then West and then offshore as companies were looking for lower-cost locations to manufacture products to sell back into the U.S. market. And what we have now today is an opportunity where our pipeline is full of advanced manufacturing projects. I think 73% of all the jobs in our current economic development pipeline, which is about 6.2 billion worth of activity, are in the form of advanced manufacturing. And many of these projects are hyper-capital intensive, a lot of equipment, and as a result, they're coming with a lot of construction activity. And it's not just advanced manufacturing jobs like Micron that are creating demand for construction activity, but we need to build a ton of new housing, which requires construction workers. We're building, rebuilding, completely transforming Interstate 81 through the city of Syracuse,$2.2 billion project, a ton of construction labor demand also. And so these two areas of our economy, we have a deep need for additional workforce development talent. Here in Central New York, we are administering about $80 million in funding from New York State to help acquire a site, which you mentioned, to help renovate that site into a world-class training center for advanced manufacturing construction, and to run programs over the course of the next five years, designed to engage employers and develop direct career pathways for people in our community that may have historically missed out on opportunity and to engage as much of our regional labor force as possible in the exciting opportunity that is being created across our region. So that's what ON-RAMP is, and this location on South Salina Street is something I am remarkably excited about. This building, for those folks who don't know it. I was going to say, where in Syracuse is it for people who don't have a map of the city kind of......Embedded in their head? Yes. Like I do. It is about four and a half, almost five blocks south of downtown. Cross under the railroad bridge, go past JMA as you're heading south down South Salina Street, past the new community health center. And as you turn the corner there, the Sears building just sort of emerges. And as this singular structure on an otherwise somewhat desolate and abandoned block, it screams for attention. It's been screaming for attention for a long time. I mean, it's pretty incredible. But the building has been largely vacant since the 1970s. It's been almost 50 years that this building has been underutilized or entirely vacant, and yet it's an iconic structure. It's beautiful. It has a traditional art deco style construction, different from obviously from the National Grid building downtown, but in a similar style, similar era. And it's in really rough shape. And I've driven up and down South Salina Street that block, I don't know, 10,000 times over the 20-plus years that And every time I do, I see that building and I think about the fact that that building and that neighborhood deserves something better. And so when presented with an opportunity, the ON-RAMP program that needed a physical location, that needed a physical location that was tied to the communities we were trying to serve, there was just a very natural evolution of the thinking from the ON-RAMP leadership team, right? Stakeholders from around our community that are working with CenterState CEO on bringing this vision forward. That location made all the sense in the world, in part because we have all these other investments around it that we've also been making. Salina First, right across the street, a mixed-use housing development that's taking place. We mentioned JMA, the Community Health Center, the STEAM School, within a three and a half block radius, there's 250 million, almost $300 million of reinvestment that's happening in this neighborhood that has been under investment for a very long period of time. And this is part of our commitment. CenterState's commitment to continue the revitalization of that neighborhood in concert with a deep level of community engagement to ensure that the site is activated in a way that the neighborhood's going to welcome and that is going to add real value to the people who live there. I was going to say, I know that community involvement was a big part of the ON-RAMP planning process there. We held lots of town halls throughout the creation of the Strategic Blueprint, probably helped guide which site ended up being selected in the end. How do you see the community staying involved with this ON-RAMP process going forward? Well, I think first and foremost, the community is critical to helping us identify people who are looking to enter these career pathways. Our neighborhood-based organizations, our community-based organizations are the most important partners we have in our workforce development efforts. And that is not to undersell the value of our, call them, our higher education partners or our training partners, obviously, they are also key. But at the end of the day, this starts with humans and our ability to reach those humans and help them understand what the opportunities are that economy and give them tools and opportunities to explore those careers, find out if they're a fit, and then provide them clear pathways not only to training and employment, but also all the supports needed for them to take advantage of the training and to gain employment and to stay employed and to progress in their employment and build generational wealth. That's a really remarkable thing. So these community-based organizations are critical partners of ours. I'm really excited about how our team is engaging with them, not only today, but how we're going to continue to engage with them in the future. And I also think there's going to be opportunities for community engagement around how we choose to activate the site. We didn't just buy the former Sears building. We bought the entire piece of real estate about three acres of real estate with frontage right on Salina Street. And the city of Syracuse happens to own the parking lot immediately to the south of that building. So we've been talking with the mayor and the deputy mayor and others about members of the Common Council about how we can partner with the city to redevelop both parcels, right? To combine those pieces of real estate and help engage in a master redevelopment that can include not just the ON-RAMP center as an anchor tenant, but that could potentially include other uses that the community may identify would be valuable in that space. So I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities for feedback for listening. Certainly, at the end of the day, the commitment that CenterState CEO is making is to bring that site back to life in a way that's consistent with the community needs and community wishes. And that also helps us accomplish our goal of making this sort of flagship ON-RAMP location a best-in-class workforce training center from right here in Central New York. So what's next? What are the next steps for the ON-RAMP team to get this site prepped and get moving on creating this facility in that community? Well, we have a couple of things going on. One, we have an active job search underway. So we are searching for an executive director for the ON-RAMP program. ON-RAMP right now is being stewarded by CenterState CEO, but our vision is not to run this center. We have a lot of things on our plate. One of the places where we're best is standing up new initiatives and spinning them out. And that's what we're intending to do here. So ON-RAMP will be its own new organization, it will have its own staff, and we're in the process of trying to identify the leader who can build that team and execute on the vision that the governor and we have for what this facility can be. Second, we've got a lot of work to do on the real estate. At some point this spring, we will close on that property. Right now, we have a purchase option on that property, but we'll close on that property and then we'll have a lot of work to do to stabilize it. There's a lot of water in the building. There's asbestos, there's lead paint, there's other challenges. There's underground storage tanks on the property. And so we are going to need to put a lot of time and energy and resources and stabilizing the building and cleaning it out, getting it ready for whatever the future holds for it. Some combination of ON-RAMP and or other uses. That's going to take a lot of time and energy. And simultaneously, we are in the process of building the programming that's going to happen in the building that requires our team led by Aimee Durfee, the amazing Aimee Durfee. The amazing Aimee Durfee. Requires engaging with our training partners, OCC and SUNY EOC and CNY Works, and so many different organizations, Jubilee Homes and beyond, all for the purposes of ensuring that the right programs are tied to the right employment opportunities, and we're actually pushing people through a pipeline that will lead to a job and real opportunity on the backend. So it's setting up the organization, the nuts and bolts of that. It's working on the real estate and most importantly, it's working on the programs that are going to be the thing that we believe have the potential to change people's lives. Well, Rob, thank you so much for your time here today. Oh, thank you. 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.