Business
Life Sciences in LIC
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
he Long Island City Partner-ship
was awarded $100,000
by the state to create a com-prehensive
business plan out-lining
how to make the neighborhood
viable for life sciences companies.
Through the 2017 Regional Eco-nomic
Development Council Awards, the
state provided grants to organizations
in all 10 regional councils.
In December 2016, Mayor Bill de Bla-sio
announced his intentions to create a
life sciences campus through an initiative
called LifeSci NYC. The campus would
focus on “cutting-edge cures, novel tech-nologies”
and building new companies.
There has been a 16 percent growth in
the biotechnology sector since 2009,
which has convinced the city to invest in
new jobs in that industry, de Blasio said.
The mayor also floated Long Island
City as a potential site for his initiative.
According to Long Island City Partner-ship
President Elizabeth Lusskin, her
staff recognized that the area could cater
to this industry when they completed
their 2016 LIC Comprehensive Plan.
“We had been fortunate to get a similar
grant a few years ago for the compre-hensive
plan,” Lusskin said. “This plan
is an outgrowth of the findings of the
comprehensive plan where we found that
it was worthwhile to foster a life science
and tech-related hub in Long Island City.”
Lusskin and her staff hope to create
a “road map” for how to foster that hub
and will begin to speak to leaders in
the life sciences industry to figure out
what steps should be taken to make
the neighborhood an attractive place
for employers.
“We are hoping to complete this in a
fairly tight turn around next year because
the idea is to work with industry experts,
area stakeholders to create really a road
map for how we can create that cluster
here,” she said.
40 JANUARY 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
She also added that Long Island
City’s proximity to schools like LaGuardia
Community College and the Cornell Tech
campus on Roosevelt Island translates
to a workforce that is “ready, willing and
able” to work in these industries.
“There’s a lot here that’s very syner-gistic
and can be mutually reinforcing to
allow us to leverage the great workforce
in the area, as well as continuing to
improve the neighborhood,” she said.
“We think Long Island City has certain
location and people advantages that
can possibly make this industry that
everyone has talked about really blos-som
here.”
In de Blasio’s announcement last
year, he said that jobs on the campus
would include lab technicians, micro-biologists,
research scientists, data
analysts, medical coders, marketing
managers, sales associates and more.
About 80 percent of these jobs require
a bachelor’s degree or less and the
average salary in the sector is $75,000.
Approximately 9,000 jobs will be in
commercial life sciences and 7,000
“indirect jobs” will be created in other
industries such as marketing or con-struction.
As many as eight existing nonprofit
institutions that focus on research in the
life sciences industry will receive $50
million for research and development
facilities and more than $300 million
in tax incentives will be dolled out to
develop new lab space, he said.
The initiative would also create
1,000 internships for New York City
high school, college and doctoral stu-dents
and money will be invested to
create five new incubator and innova-tion
centers.
“This is a sector that could reach
100,000 jobs or more in this city if we
make the right investments quickly, if
we work with all our partners aggres-sively
and agilely and we maximize our
competitive advantage,” De Blasio said
last year.
Photo courtesy of Flickr/Gabe Shore
