By Bill Parry
When Gayle Baron retired as president of the Long Island City Partnership last year, she was replaced by Elizabeth Lusskin, the former chief of staff and vice president of strategic initiatives at NYU-Poly, the second oldest engineering school in the nation.
“Thanks to Gayle’s many years of effort, the LIC you see now is a far cry from that of 15 years ago,” Lusskin said. “The big question we all have is what will LIC be like 15 years from now. I hope that it is a bigger, better version of the authentic mixed-use community encompassing industrial, commercial, tech, residential and cultural activity.”
One particular sector sure to be nurtured in the future is LIC as a tech hub. When Lusskin put together the panel for a real estate symposium last month, she included Cathy Dove, the founder of Cornell NYC Tech, now being built on Roosevelt Island.
“When we decided to put the campus on Roosevelt Island, we wanted to become a member of the community,” Dove said. “Our students will be looking to live, work and play in Long Island City.”
State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) is counting on this influx to directly affect LIC’s future.
“Cornell will be a boon because it’s bringing hundreds of people with tech skills and the only land link is the bridge linking the island with LIC.” Gianaris said. “The state has designated funds for the tech incubator run by Jukay Hsu and the Coalition for Queens.”
Coalition for Queens is an LIC-based non-profit promoting the tech industry founded by Hsu, who grew up in Flushing.
“Tech is already the No. 2 industry in the city with 70,000 high-paying jobs that start at $95,000 a year available for people with the proper skills set,” Hsu said. “We want to help people gain the coding skills needed for these jobs and we want to encourage them to start their own companies right here in Queens.”
They would follow a model set by Digital Natives, the tech firm in Long Island City that designed the popular “This Is Queens” phone app for the Queens Chamber of Commerce last year. Digital Natives followed that by designing an online campaign for author D. David Putnam that helped drive his book “Grain Brain” to become a No. 1 New York Times Best Seller.
“LIC as tech hub, it’s starting to happen now, thanks to the Coalition for Queens helping startups,” Digital Natives co-founder Vladimir Lackovic said. “We were in Armonk and looking for a space when we went to a tech meet-up that Jukay was running. We realized that this was the place for us and it worked out perfectly.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
