The Ulster County Industrial Development Agency (UCIDA) is seeing plenty of toes dipped into the business water, but few taking the plunge by filling out applications for assistance.
Members of the UCIDA discussed how they’re working to help turn the corner on this relatively fallow during a mid-August meeting, with chairman Michael Ham saying it’s not that there isn’t interest from businesses looking to open or expand, but moving forward has been an issue.
“We have activity coming in and out of the IDA as far as meeting with potential clients and developers,” said Ham, “You know, we meet with them, and then we’re asking them for further conversation, to please come to us with an application and we’ll keep going from there. Other than that, we just keep spinning our wheels if they don’t start coming to us with an application. But we keep on meeting with people. We get so far and then we don’t see an application.”
The UCIDA incentivizes Ulster County companies and businesses with potential tax abatements, mortgage tax and real property tax abatements, and tax-exempt bonding for investments in commercial or industrial property. The goal is to attract new enterprises and give existing businesses the opportunity to expand and thrive.
Between the July and August meetings of the UCIDA, the agency received just five inquiries, none of which resulted in a completed application. Going back three months, the number of inquiries has only been around a dozen. The agency is looking at ways of simplifying the application process.
“What we were finding was we were having meeting after meeting after meeting with projects and feeling like it’s hard for us to get a good sense of the project from an IDA perspective without having that information on an application,” explained executive director Hillary Nichols. “So we streamlined our process.”
Some of that boils down to communication.
“I do kind of like an initial, ‘Hey, so glad to hear from you, let me hear about this, this is what the IDA does,’” said Nichols. “And then if they’re interested, let’s set up a second meeting, bring counsel in on that meeting to make sure that this project would be eligible for IDA benefits.”
The next step in the process is the application.
“It’s when they need to come to the IDA, when we want to get that application and really looking at how that process flows,” said Nichols. “And I think it’s been good because we were able to get a draft application from that. That’s just one example, and we’ll keep tweaking it till we get it right. But we really do want to feel like we have a good process when it comes to this, and organizational skills to make sure that projects feel like the IDA is professional. They come to us, they know us, they know what to expect and we move them through in a timely manner.”
Nichols stressed that the five potential applicants between July and August may yet move forward, but sometimes it takes time. “IDA incentives are a marathon, not a race,” Nichols said. “So you don’t ever expect to hear from someone and have an application in front of the board the next day.”
The UCIDA is planning more community outreach, like attendance at job and career fairs. It’s going to be reaching out to the principals of past IDA projects and encouraging them to participate.
“The idea,” Nichols said, “is for people who maybe are underemployed or who are unemployed to come out and see what types of professional jobs are out in the county and what other opportunities there are for them. Because I would imagine that there’s a lot of skill here, and there could be some people that if they shifted around could have some more opportunity here in Ulster County.”
Community outreach includes a greater online presence.
“We have to put together just some of our outreach goals that really lean into the work that we’re hopefully going to be doing with some rebranding, a new logo, and hopefully getting our social media up and running,” Nichols said. “And so we’re excited to kind of launch that out within the next few months. All good things ahead.”
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