An ambitious $44.6 million plan from the Harlem Community Development Corp. to revitalize La Marqueta in East Harlem is not gaining support among public officials, Crain’s reported. In a sign of the city’s shifting economic development strategy, this latest attempt to transform the market would extend it to East 132nd Street from 116th Street, creating up to 4,000 jobs and giving a jump-start to budding food manufacturers. With projects like Willets Point, Atlantic Yards and Hudson Yards stalled or scaled back, the Economic Development Corp. has shifted its focus from major real estate development to small-scale efforts. The goal is to reinvent the city’s economy through the promotion of emerging sectors like green building and biotechnologies. But critics say the new approach isn’t doing enough to help small businesses. “Too few of our immigrant businesses grow beyond the mom-and-pop stage,” said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future. However, large investments are still coming from the private sector, such as Columbia University, which spends $2 billion a year in the New York area and has 14,000 employees and whose presence encourages developers to build in the area. [Crain's]

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While New York City has long been the country’s top dog when it comes to the financial sector, few biotech firms have called the city home, citing untenable office rents and availability. But that’s quickly changing, according to Crain’s, due in part to the city’s push to bring tech-friendly firms to the area. The number of small- to mid-size medical and biopharma companies in the city has quadrupled to 120 today from 2002, according to the New York City Economic Development Corp, due to the city’s recruitment and the accessibility of academic centers in the area. Jonathan Bowles, a director with the Center for an Urban Future, said that the shift is clear. “The city has made huge progress,” Bowles said. “People don’t instantaneously rule out New York as they did a decade ago.”

More than four dozen national chain retailers have taken advantage of low rents to expand in New York City over the past year, according to Bloomberg’s Patricia Wu. Some of the stores with the most significant expansion plans include Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, McDonald’s and Starbucks. Jonathan Bowles of the Center for an Urban Future said those stores have had deep enough pockets to survive the recession so far and see it as an opportunity to expand. But Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said he is not seeing this kind of retail expansion outside of New York. [more]

Thirty percent of top national retailers expanded their presence in New York City over the last year, according to an annual report released by the Center for an Urban Future today. The report, which tracks 277 retailers with two or more stores in the city, looks at data from July 2008 through July 2009. In addition to the 30 percent of retailers that expanded despite the poor economy, 30 percent of the stores listed maintained the same number of locations they had in the five boroughs the year before.

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