Remarks at the Inauguration of the Roche Translational and Clinical Research Center

This morning, I was honored to speak at the Inauguration of the Roche Translational and Clinical Research Center at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, located in my Senate District.  Below is a transcript of my remarks.

Good morning. My name is Brad Hoylman and I am the Senator representing the 27th State Senate District, which includes NYU Langone Medical Center, one of the leading academic medical centers here on the East Side of Manhattan.

It is my great pleasure to welcome Roche to the district. And back to New York City, after having left here over one hundred years ago.

I understand that Roche will be moving nearly 500 jobs over time to this spectacular new facility from Nutley, New Jersey, where I’ve been told that Valium, among other drugs, was invented fifty years ago. I’m thinking the Governor of New Jersey might have needed a Valium when he heard he was losing all of those jobs.

Companies like Roche are attracted to New York City because of our city’s intellectual capital, infrastructure, low crime rate, educational and cultural amenities, environmental sustainability, and high quality of life.

Government plays a key role in making these indicators excel and work in tandem. So I want to thank Speaker Silver, Deputy Mayor Steel and the Bloomberg Administration, and ESD President Ken Adams and the Cuomo administration, my other colleagues in government, and Community Board 6, for their leadership in smart-growth policies that make our city a magnet for top talent and the job creators of the 21st century, such as life sciences and technology.

The city’s business leadership, also, was early in recognizing the life sciences as crucial to the future of our city’s economy and convincing visionaries like Joel Marcus to invest in New York.

So, for that effort it is my pleasure to thank my friend and former colleague, Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, and her colleague from the Partnership’s Investment Fund, Maria Gotsch, for their foresight and persistence in supporting the theory that New York City could be the next big thing in bioscience.

Today, as they say in your business, is our proof of concept. Congratulations to all. Thank you.