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TRANSCRIPT
2024 Address of the State of the City
Delivered by: Mayor Malik D. Evans
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Arbor Midtown, 183 E. Main St. Rochester, NY
And the Lord said: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19.
I opened with that scripture because there are new things springing forth in Rochester, and I hope we can all perceive them. There’s never been a better time to live, work, or play in Rochester than right now. Today.
Rochester’s neighborhoods are more diverse than ever before. Our businesses have more opportunities to succeed than ever before. Rochester’s jobs are more varied and expansive than ever before. Our public spaces and public accommodations are more accessible, more barrier-free and more welcoming than ever before.
Rochester’s many offerings for entertainment, recreation and enrichment are more exciting and abundant than ever before; beginning with our natural environment that’s probably cleaner and greener today than it’s been since the early days of the Industrial Revolution.
I don’t need to remind anyone that Rochester is no longer the city it was in the middle of the 20th century, when the population hovered near 350,000 people and large-scale industrial manufacturing drove the economy.
We have had to transform and adapt! And things are getting better with each new day because of our collective work and toil! This is why I’m proud to stand before you tonight in this beautiful building; this magnificent monument at the intersection of our gilded past and our blossoming future, to offer an audacious assessment of our inspirational present.
I stand before you tonight to report that the State of Our City is strong and getting better every day because of our residents!
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
We are making improvements, pursuing growth, and building equity. We still have work to do. But as my mother used to say, thank God we aren’t where we were. Look at where we are and you see a Rochester that, for the first time in more than 70 years, is nurturing growth and gaining value. You see a city where people in every neighborhood are building equity and creating generational wealth. A city where parents strive to leave their children a legacy—not just an inheritance—but a legacy.
Perceive this new thing that springs forth.
You see a city that is its Brother’s Keeper. A city that seeks to leave no one behind as it grows and prospers. You see a city that is moving into a prosperity mindset. And all of this is accelerating the pace of positive change; where each new improvement begets more improvement. As I said in last year’s State of the City Address, the solutions to Rochester’s greatest challenges can be found in the hopes of the people who live in every neighborhood.
And our role at City Hall is to deliver the opportunities that can turn those hopes into reality. And we’ve been doing just that. We’re inspiring hope and delivering opportunity for everyone. And, through the Grace of God, and the determination of those giants whose shoulders we are standing on tonight, we’re not doing it alone. For the first time in generations, Rochester’s elected leaders at every level of government are working together with the shared recognition that our city’s greatest asset is the human potential of the people of Rochester.
From City Hall to the County Office Building, to the State Capitol in Albany, to the halls of Congress in Washington, all of Rochester’s elected leaders are working together toward the same fundamental goal: empower the people of Rochester to reach their full potential, so the city of Rochester can reach its full potential.
Cities are more than just places. They’re congregations of people whose interactions spark change and whose relationships drive progress. My partner, and my friend, County Executive Adam Bello knows this, too. He and I both recognize that the city is the economic, social, and cultural core of the entire region.
So, if we are going to strengthen Monroe County and the Rochester region, we have to strengthen the people at its core—so they can strengthen their community.
Or as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The large house in which we live demands that we transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
Rochester has its first generation of leaders who not only share this viewpoint but are actively working together to harness the awesome power of that worldwide brotherhood. Leaders who are committed to inspiring hope and delivering opportunity for everyone. This is our path in the wilderness, our rivers in desert as described in the Book of Isaiah.
And together we’re creating a safe, equitable and prosperous Rochester by inspiring hope and delivering opportunity for everyone. Perceive this new thing that springs forth! Perceive how we are creating a safer Rochester.
Public safety is our number one priority and every department in City Hall is playing a role. We’re enhancing our recruitment efforts in the Fire Department and Emergency Communications Department to reflect the community we serve. And we re-booted the Pathways to Public Safety Program for high school students to attract more city youth to these rewarding careers. We deployed new Code Enforcement Inspectors. We made numerous design upgrades to our streets and sidewalks to improve pedestrian safety. And soon, we will be rolling out our Vision Zero plan that will help to chart our future of eliminating crashes that have robbed too many people of their lives.
And, most importantly, we’re bringing crime and violence under control with our strategy of prevention, intervention, and suppression. We convened unprecedented partnerships with law enforcement and public safety agencies at the county, state, and federal levels to address illegal guns, the most violent offenders, and the areas of the city with the highest incidents of violence.
And our strategies are working. Incidents of crime and violence, especially firearm violence, continue to fall. Together with the brave men and women of the Rochester Police Department, we are bringing crime and violence under control!
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
In the two years I’ve been in office, shootings, firearm related deaths, and total homicides have all declined significantly. Shootings are down 31 percent. Firearm-related deaths are down by 29 percent, and total homicides have fallen by 32 percent. And those numbers continue to fall.
But as I have said, I am gratified, but I am not satisfied. I want to see them fall even further! Our community deserves nothing less! And I’m confident crime will keep falling because our partnerships are growing stronger, and our methods of collaborations are more effective. Especially a method of crime reduction that I call focused accountability.
While crime and violence are systemic issues with factors that touch almost every aspect of society, we are seeing that we can make a difference. We are making a difference, one illegal gun at a time, one arrest at a time, one hot-spot for violence at a time. Violence is function of human behavior. And what influences human behavior more than anything else? Other humans.
By focusing accountability for the most violent perpetrators, we’re removing those influences from the social dynamic of our neighborhoods and shutting down the deadly cycles of shootings and retaliations. For instance, the Rochester Police Department is the first municipal police agency in America with 24-7 access to an ATF agent who reviews all gun arrests for the possibility for federal charges.
As a result, we’ve sent more than 100 violent offenders into federal custody, where they can no longer wreak havoc and perpetuate violence on our streets. And the RPD took more than 800 illegal guns off the streets last year, a rate of more than two per day.
We launched a similar initiative with the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office, where an Assistant D.A. responds directly to non-fatal shootings in the same way they do for homicides. Because anyone who is willing to settle a dispute with a gun must be taken off the street before they can wreak more havoc and perpetuate more violence.
Our Law Department also plays an important role in focused accountability by going after property owners who think it’s okay to host large, illegal gatherings at their businesses and homes, where they can become venues of violence. We closed down more than 20 such properties last year.
And we’re preventing violence and crime with targeted investments to keep people busy and help them prosper: one job at time, one paycheck at a time. One child’s future at a time. Nowhere is this truer than inside Rochester’s R-Centers. Rochester’s recreation and community centers are powerful community resources that offer much more than fun and games.
We are preparing young people for future employment. Teaching them how to handle money. How to manage their finances. We’re teaching them entrepreneurial skills and work readiness. There’s even an innovative class called “Flocabulary” that uses hip-hop to teach vocabulary. And we’re making sure our program offerings reflect the latest trends and interests of the young people we serve, such as E-Sports, skateboarding and robotics.
Speaking of robotics, the robotics team from the Frederick Douglass R-Center, Rhythm Robotics, made it all the way to the regional championships in this year’s First Lego League Robotics competition, where they were also recognized for their work to get more city youth engaged with this very enriching and constructive activity.
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
Rochester’s greatest asset is the human potential of its people, and that starts with our youth. And we’re empowering our youth to hone that potential in the city’s R-Centers. And beyond the richness of our program offerings, City R-Centers provide children with access to caring adults who have their best interests at heart. The people who work in the R-Centers are among the most dedicated public servants you’ll ever meet; and they’re passionate about helping our young people sort out their concerns.
And we know they have many. So we brought in mental health counselors to give our young people the tools they need to confront their challenges; and we trained the staff to recognize signs of trauma so we can provide children with the proper support.
To help focus on the root causes of crime, I created the Mayor’s Office of Violence Prevention, which launched the Rochester Peace Collective, where 19 partner agencies are teaching more than 3,000 residents the skills they need to gain employment and be successful.
One of those is the Community Vanguard Program, which helped city residents complete more than 400 courses for professional certifications.
We’re making Rochester safer with targeted investments in programs like Pathways to Peace, where workers completed more than 10,000 hours of street outreach in the past year and have Youth Intervention Aides in nine city schools.
And Pathways to Peace is establishing even more partnerships and collaborations. They launched a basketball tournament at Baden Park last year that promoted the values of teamwork and friendly competition, while opening the door to new connections with more than 50 community-based organizations. We saw one early outcome from that in February, when members of Peace Collective partnered with Pathways to host a Bookbag and Resource Fair.
And then we saw the Office of Violence Prevention work with our friends in the labor community to host the second-annual Rochester Labor Council Apprenticeship and Career Fair with 26 vendors from the trades.
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
We’re making Rochester safer with our on-call Person-In-Crisis Team counselors who actively work to help residents understand that it’s okay…not to be okay.
The PIC Team responded to 10,000 calls last year. And we invested and enhanced PIC through our budget process last year. And their competence, compassion, and empathy literally save lives. The PIC Team responded to 33 calls for people with homicidal thoughts, including eight with an intent to act. And 268 calls were for people with suicidal thoughts, including 20 that were already in progress.
We are confronting and addressing some of the most heartbreaking and tragic maladies plaguing our neighborhoods. Our Neighborhood Ambassador Program, for example, will offer care and support for those dealing with the pain of opioid addiction. Too many people are suffering in silence. Too many lives are being lost or ruined by these silent killers and thieves of potential.
If it takes a village to raise a child, then it also takes a village to heal our community’s deepest wounds. And if ever there was a time when we need to bring the village together, it’s now. We can start the process of healing. We are starting the process of healing by leading our most vulnerable neighbors to the paths in the wilderness, the rivers in the desert.
And one of our most innovative programs, the Advance Peace Fellowship, introduces a new word to our violence-reduction vocabulary; Redemption. Advance Peace is a mentorship program where the mentors bring their hard-won experience to the table. We call them Neighborhood Change Agents because they are credible messengers whose own life trajectory prepared them to talk without judgment and offer meaningful support.
We focused this program in the 10th Ward, where Neighborhood Change agents hit the streets to recruit those who have become involved in violence to become Advance Peace Fellows. They meet with these individuals twice a week with the initial goal of each conversation being nothing more than to have another conversation—to keep the Fellows coming back.
Over time, they gain one another’s trust and move on to more in-depth conversations. They discuss how small steps can lead to big changes. How the world is bigger than the corners of the 10th Ward. How their lives have value and how the lives of others have value too.
They take them to get their driver’s licenses and social security cards for job applications. They take them to buy clothes for interviews. They even took a trip out of state, which for some was their first flight on a plane, or even their first time away from Rochester. And it’s working. Focused redemption is working. Since launching Advance Peace, homicides in the 10th Ward have fallen more than 50 percent. And we’ll be working to bring this model to other areas of the city.
One of the Fellows in the first cohort, a man named Master Glover, is a case study in focused redemption. Master came into the Fellowship with the scars of eight gunshot wounds, a lifetime of emotional trauma, and goals that barely stretched beyond the day. Over time, the Change Agents helped him see that he had more control over his life than he realized. Showed him to how set goals and check them off, one at a time. He got his own apartment. Completed physical therapy and found a job.
Master and other Advance Peace Fellows have set out on a path forward and realized that violence on the street doesn’t have to be normalized. That their lives deserve respect and so do the lives of others. Now Master Glover is a credible messenger himself. He took a job with Rise Up Rochester, one of our partners in the Peace Collective that provides support to victims of violence. Master is here tonight. Master, will you please stand up?
Thank you for sticking with this program and working to help others find their new path in the wilderness, their new rivers in the desert to begin the healing. Hope inspired and opportunity realized! Let’s give Master a round of applause!
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
Perceive how we are creating a more equitable Rochester. We’re bringing people together to provide more residents with the foundation of a home, prospects for better-paying jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities; and the essential elements of financial security, like homeownership or starting a savings account. In addition to creating equity, financial security and economic mobility are truly paths to long term, sustainable safety.
Two years ago, we established the Office of Financial Empowerment to normalize entrepreneurship, home ownership and setting children up for financially successful futures. Our KIVA Rochester program has been very successful helping small business owners who have traditionally been locked out of the financial market gain access to capital with crowd-sourced, interest-free micro loans of up to $15,000. In the past year, we’ve helped businesses obtain 21 interest-free loans totaling $188,000.
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
We launched the Business Start and Growth Entrepreneurial Training Program to provide small business owners with workshops and mentorships to learn such things as writing business plans; marketing; finance; and grant writing. On the homeownership track, we gave more than 775 clients the skills to improve their financial outlooks. Collectively, they reduced their total debt load by more than $1.5 million and increased their total savings by $231,000.
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
We’re partnering with the Rochester Housing Authority to help renters learn how to apply their assistance benefits toward a mortgage payment with financial counseling and incentives for down payments. We’re encouraging property owners to shift to a prosperity mindset by hosting workshops that teach them how to leverage the equity in their homes to lower their payments, improve its value with smart home improvements, and prepare to pass that value and wealth on to the next generation.
We’re preparing our children for futures of economic mobility by working with a consortium of agencies on an exciting new program to establish an automatic Childrens Savings Account at the start of the 2025 school year. Every child who enters kindergarten in 2025 will be provided with a savings account and a nominal deposit of seed money, along with a schedule of matching incentives and bonus deposits that will continue through to their high school graduation. Just imagine the excitement they’ll feel as they watch their very own money in their very own savings accounts grow and collect interest year after year.
I’m so grateful to our many partners who are working with us to make all these programs possible. Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
We’re taking a page out of the former Mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson’s playbook, to help more Minority and Women Owned Enterprise firms get their fair share of the millions of dollars the City spends each year on goods and services—everything from office supplies and tires to construction projects. Over the past two years, we’ve increased City spending directed to MWBE firms by more than 120 percent.
We’re using our ARPA dollars to work towards equity by funding innovative programs like the Guaranteed Basic Income pilot program and Buy the Block homeownership program in formerly redlined neighborhoods.
The Guaranteed Basic Income program launched last year with the goal of providing more than 300 qualified individuals with 12 monthly payments of $500—without restriction. We put the power of the purse in the hands of community members who need it most. And our partners in the effort, researchers from the University of Notre Dame, provide us with valuable insight into the challenges of living near the poverty line.
Another very important equity initiative of ours is the Lead Service Water Line Replacement Project, now in its second year. We’re continuing the work of replacing every old lead pipe by 2030. And we’re prioritizing these replacements to occur in our most disadvantaged communities by using state-of-the-art mapping technology in line with our work with the Bloomberg City Data Alliance. Since 2021, we have removed 5,200 lead pipes, with more than half coming from homes in disadvantaged neighborhoods; we have plans to remove another 2,900 lead pipes by the end of the year.
Perceive this new thing that springs forth!
And, of course, one of the most effective ways to break the cycle of poverty is to provide more residents with the foundation of secure housing, either with rents they can afford; or home ownership. Too many people are rent-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing. This leaves them with too little to spend on other necessities, like food and clothing, let alone establishing savings accounts to serve as buffers against emergencies and improve long-term prospects.
This paradigm of rent burdening perpetuates the insidious damage of the poverty mindset. Children watch their parents scrape from paycheck to paycheck and learn that living in the moment is more urgent than preparing for the future. They aren’t learning how to thrive; they’re learning how to barely survive. Fortunately, Governor Hochul has increased the state’s investment in affordable housing, and Rochester is reaping the benefits.
Our Housing Bureau distinguished itself with the State by speeding up the timetable on housing developments, from concept to completion, which is making Rochester an attractive place for new housing investments.
Projects underway include:
- the 164-unit Center City Courtyard, which is under construction at Plymouth and Main;
- 123 units in Canal Commons on Canal Street;
- 128 units in the old Hickey Freeman Building on North Clinton;
- the 76-unit Alta Vista project at Franklin and Plymouth, and
- the soon-to-be re-purposed, historic Edwards Building with 114 affordable units.
Since the start of 2022, we’ve completed or started projects to build or renovate more than 1,000 market-rate rental units and almost 1,700 affordable units; including 72 for extremely low-income residents and 689 for very low-income residents—for a total investment of an astonishing $685 million. That’s over three-quarters of a billion dollars in citywide investment in just over two years. Since 2022, we’ve helped new owners close on 118 homes with a total value of $14 million.And our Land Bank is celebrating 10 years of recovering vacant properties from tax foreclosure, returning 162 formerly blighted homes to vitality and generating more than $16 million in private investment.Perceive this new thing that springs forth!Our property values are rising for many neighborhoods for the first time in decades. In the coming months I’ll be working with our partners in the affordable homeownership sector, including Flour City Habitat for Humanity, the Rochester Housing Authority, and lenders, to develop a comprehensive strategy to move the needle upward on Rochester’s homeownership rate.The reality is that the market conditions have changed and likely for good. So it is important that we work together, because we can always do more together, than we can do alone.Like we are in the CONEA neighborhood, where the Buy the Block program is closing on the completion of 24 new homes, and is getting ready to build 30 more near the Bull’s Head area. This is one of my favorite projects because not only are these houses good for the owners and their families, they bring much needed stability to some of our most challenged neighborhoods.It’s not a coincidence that the locations of the majority of homicides over the past 10 years closely align with the redlined neighborhoods of the old Third and Seventh wards. Same goes for concentrated poverty.Buy the Block, along with our Home Repair Grants for existing homeowners, are two examples of how we are making long-overdue investments in these neighborhoods.I met Mianel Martinez, who lives in a Buy the Block home on Weeger Street. Growing up in Rochester, Mianel attended five different elementary schools because her parents kept moving to follow factory jobs in the shrinking industrial-manufacturing sector. Mianel has a daughter now, and she was determined to give them a home of their own.She became a medical secretary and began saving for a house. But that dream always seemed to be just over the horizon. So, when the opportunity to apply for a Buy the Block house presented itself, she jumped at the chance. Not only was she selected to participate, she got her first choice floor plan, the Durand, which has an extra bedroom so family can visit.She participated in the required financial management program and learned about the challenges and opportunities of home ownership. She learned so much that she is encouraging her family and friends to take these courses. When she moved into her new home, Mianel bought a new bedroom set for her daughter. She decorated the upstairs hallway with pictures and posters of her favorite place, New York City, along with a picture of her mother.Sometimes, when she’s in her new home drinking her morning coffee, remembering all that it took to get there, she starts to tear up. Because her dream has come true.Perceive this new thing that springs forth!Recently, Mianel’s daughter told her she was going to join the National Guard after high school. Mianel is proud of her daughter for taking such a courageous early step into adulthood. Military deployment can take her anywhere in the world. And when the time comes to send her daughter off to Basic Training, Mianel will know one thing: The house her daughter leaves from, will be the same one she comes home to. Mianel’s story reminds me of a beautiful African proverb: Parents wish to bequeath two things to their children. One is roots. The other is wings.Buy the Block has given Mianel and many other families in our city solid roots that enable their children to launch into flight. Mianel is here tonight. Mianel, can you please stand and accept our gratitude for sharing that beautiful story?Perceive this new thing that springs forth!Perceive how we are inspiring hope and delivering opportunity. Perceive how we are a more prosperous Rochester because we are positioning our city for growth and preparing for more. Yes, it’s true. The 2020 Census reflected Rochester’s first population increase since 1950. And beyond the tally of the census, we see evidence of the city’s growth in the demand for housing and the pace of new construction. And there are indicators to suggest that more growth is on the way, driven by things like climate migration, refugee resettlement, and remote work, to name a few.And you can see evidence of this growth on the ground—literally on the ground. Two of the housing developments I mentioned earlier, Center City Courtyard and Alta Vista, are springing up from empty parcels that were left when vacant buildings were torn down. Developments like Center City Courtyard and Alta Vista are tangible proof of a Rochester that’s growing and gaining value.Fortunately, we’re ready for this growth because our Rochester 2034 comprehensive plan set the stage for it. We’re re-drafting our Zoning Code and updating our Zoning map to assist with guiding future development with a growth mindset. We must also remember that true prosperity includes more than financial success.And that’s why I’m so proud of the progress we’re making on the Percent for the Arts Fund, where we aside one percent of our capital improvement budget each year to spend on public art, which can be permanent and physical like a statue or a mural; Or it can be for the performing arts, or arts education.We launched the first round of the ArtsBloom initiative last year and awarded $100,000 to six arts programs, including: the Avenue Black Box Theater on Joseph Avenue; the Borinquen Dance Theatre; and the Revelation Arts Center, which is providing art classes at the House of Mercy. It’s hard to think of anything that promotes a prosperity mindset, or a growth mindset, more than the arts. As Maya Angelou said: “We need to remember that we are all created creative…and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”We’re also making sure our residents play an active role in shaping growth and investment in their neighborhoods through our Community University. And I’m excited to develop a new citizen engagement initiative modeled on the award-winning Neighbors Building Neighborhoods program. We are seeing prosperity – and the prosperity mindset – take hold all across the city.Our Business Development Team is facilitating job growth and job retention. Since the start of 2022, they’ve supported more than $151 million in total investments among businesses that are opening or expanding in the city.These include GreenSpark Solar, the number one company on the Rochester Business Journal’s latest Top 100 list of fastest growing companies. GreenSpark will be moving into Downtown Rochester, bringing 80 jobs and plans to create more than 240 new jobs within five years. The Business Development Team also supported the acquisition of the old Hickey Freeman building by Thomas James Clothiers, preserving 200 jobs, creating 45 more and maintaining the long tradition of high-quality men’s clothing being manufactured on North Clinton Avenue.Perceive this new thing that springs forth!At Sibley Square, almost one million square feet of mixed-use space is nearing full capacity. The Commissary, Rochester’s downtown kitchen incubator, is preparing aspiring food entrepreneurs to make the jump into restaurants, catering and food truck businesses.We can expect to see more dining establishments become the new anchors of our commercial corridors the way El Pilon and Borinquen Bakery are vital anchors on North Clinton Avenue; or People’s Choice Kitchen on Brooks Avenue; and Jamaican Soul on Genesee Street. These places are neighborhood institutions that create vibrancy and opportunities for the residents and businesses around them.Meanwhile, Rochester’s history of innovation has prepared a foundation for the next generation of high-tech companies. SunDensity and Bandwidth recently opened here. And JCS Process and Controls and its UltraPhil subsidiary are using space in the Sibley Building to launch a new technology that makes it easier for small beverage companies to start bottling and batching lines.NextCorps is expanding; and its highly successful Luminate accelerator program is moving more photonics, optics, and imaging companies like SunDensity into our high-tech sector. One of them, Oculi, was operating out of Baltimore when it entered the Luminate program; but upon graduation, they opted to stay in Rochester. CEO Charbel Rizk had this to say about his decision.“The Luminate program team, and the region, surpassed my expectations. I learned so much about the beautiful Finger Lakes region and the relevant ecosystem that exists here. Had I known that earlier on, it would have been my company’s home from day one.”Had I known. Had I only known.So many people say that about living in Rochester and doing business here; once they get to know us. And as we attract businesses from other states, our city also draws in visionary companies from our own backyard. In just a few short months, Rochester will welcome its first Fortune 500 Company to downtown in decades: Constellation Brands!Perceive this new thing that springs forth!This long-time king of the adult beverage industry will be moving into the Aqueduct Building this summer, infusing our Downtown with hundreds of workers and, more than likely, more than a few new residents to join the more than 10,000 people who call Downtown home as part of the growing live-work-play environment of our Center City.We know that one of the major factors that attract businesses and residents to Downtown is the ongoing physical transformation that we’re driving with hundreds of millions of dollars of capital projects across the city, especially the ROC the Riverway Waterfront Revitalization Program.We’re closing in on completion of the new street design in the Aqueduct District and the Main Street Bridge area. We also upgraded Genesee Gateway Park and High Falls Terrace Park, including the new Brewery Line Trail that extends the path from the Pont de Rennes across the river. We’ll be upgrading the St. Paul Street Underpass to make it more inviting for bicyclists and pedestrians to travel between the Saint Paul Quarter and the High Falls District—with a stop at the Genesee Brew House, of course—or along the newly renovated Pont de Rennes to take in a view of Rochester’s most commanding landmark, the 96-foot High Falls. ROC the Riverway Projects will continue moving forward, and this year we’ll launch the second and third phases of the ROC City Skatepark; and complete the Sister Cities Bridge.And we’ll also not only complete major renovations to Charles Carroll Park along the river, but we’ll rename it too. Because as we “perceive this new thing,” we’re shedding old, antiquated, and in this case, undeserved and racist histories. Charles Carroll was not a Rochesterian, and is not a figure we choose to continue to commemorate.As City Council proposed in 2021, we are renaming that plaza. And I am proud to announce that it will be renamed: Austin Steward Plaza, after our city’s first prominent Black business owner. An entrepreneur who not only gained freedom from slavery, but opened a successful business, operated the first school for Black children in Rochester, and wrote his memoir, 22 Years a Slave and 40 Years a Freeman.That’s the history we need to celebrate. That’s the mindset we want to lift up and let it serve as inspiration. We are connecting the dots to our meaningful and inspirational history. And we are connecting the dots to an inspirational future. As all of these projects come together, the image that is coming into view is one of a Downtown Rochester straddling a vibrant riverfront with dozens of destinations connected by a continuous walking and biking trail along the water’s edge.As these connections get made, it becomes easier to imagine students from the University of Rochester operating kayak rentals, ice cream stands and coffee shops at Brooks Landing. It’s easier to imagine the Vacuum Oil Site as an economic driver for the PLEX neighborhood with 15 acres of prime waterfront real estate and thousands of feet of shoreline.You can see how the Genesee River is becoming a ribbon of vitality flowing between the South Wedge and Corn Hill Landing, with its banks lined with people jogging or biking or simply enjoying a picnic lunch. Erie Canal boaters will stop for the night at Rochester’s Downtown Harbor, managed by a certified harbormaster from Corn Hill Navigation.Rochester’s two largest visitor destinations—the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center and the Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial—will face the river. And they’ll be connected by the Aqueduct, which will be converted into a pedestrian walkway that will tie into the North Terrace of the Rundel Library.From there, the Riverway Trail could continue to other waterfront destinations along boardwalks over the river, similar to the one at Turning Point Park. The possibilities are endless. And if you think all that progress ends at the north end of Downtown, think again.At some point, the revitalized riverfront will tie into more than 20 acres of brand-new real estate where the Inner Loop North used to be. We’ll soon be soliciting public input for this project; and we’ve reconvened the more than 50-member Inner Loop North Community Advisory Committee. In stark contrast to the process that ripped apart minority neighborhoods to make room for the original Inner Loop more than 60 years ago, we’re committed to engaging the public on the path forward.Likewise, the Bulls Head revitalization project is coming along, with community engagement playing a critical role here as well. We secured a $7.5 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant to design a new street pattern in Bulls Head; along with an $800,000 EPA grant for an environmental cleanup project that is already underway. And I’m very pleased that ESL Federal Credit Union announced its intention to build a new branch that would serve as an important anchor at the revitalized Bulls Head Plaza.Meanwhile, the construction phase of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative has already started, which will soon eradicate that abomination across the street from us here at the corner of Main and Clinton. I already mentioned the Alta Vista and the Edwards Building, but there is so much more. Stately buildings will be restored to their original architectural splendor with a modern, carbon-neutral twist to host a mix of uses including middle-income housing and storefront retail.The DMV, traffic court and Parking Bureau will remain in place; and the historic Glenny Building has already been restored for apartments. Next, the Kresge Building, where the old Family Dollar was, will lose that brown siding to reveal its rich architectural styling as the front of a new, boutique hotel. And that will overlook the new Main Street Commons outdoor plaza, extending back to Mortimer Street. Moving down to St. Paul Street, in addition to affordable housing, the Edwards Building will have commercial space on the ground floor.And this is just a small section of the ongoing metamorphosis of our city. From the beginning of 2022 through the end of this year, we’ll have started or completed more than 40 transformational infrastructure projects for a total investment of almost $300 million, creating more than 3,000 construction jobs.Perceive this new thing that springs forth!To get a clear picture of how this transformation is creating prosperity, consider the story of Lenora Paige, owner and president of Rochester Specialty Contractors, a proud MWBE certified business. She moved to Rochester from Mississippi more than 40 years ago with her brothers, who ran their own construction company.At first, like many Rochesterians, Lenora entered the world of work as an employee at the Eastman Kodak Company, which served as a valuable training ground for her future as an entrepreneur. When you own your own business, your customers are your bosses and the only performance review you can really count on is whether they return as repeat customers. At Kodak, Lenora was able to sharpen her skills with more precise feedback from her supervisors.But eventually, she was bit by the entrepreneurship bug and went to work with her brothers, where she could apply the administrative skills she learned at Kodak as an office manager. By 2007, her brothers had moved away and Lenora started her own company with three employees. Like many successful businesspeople, she started small, but with a plan for growth.She entered the construction industry as a subcontractor for larger companies, focusing on asbestos removal and other abatement work. Today she is a prime contractor with 22 employees, many of whom grew up in Rochester’s most challenged neighborhoods and now own houses of their own. Like many Black and Brown pioneers in many industries, Lenora overcame racist preconceptions and subversive practices to sabotage her success by setting an example of excellence that far exceeded her competitors.And that’s when the bite of that entrepreneurship bug really took hold. Because the completion of each new project infused Lenora with something she never experienced at Kodak: Pride of ownership. To this day, more than 25 years after starting her own company, Lenora can feel a sense of self-satisfying pleasure when she drives around the city and sees the buildings and landmarks that she and her employees helped build or renovate.These include the renovation of the Frederick Douglass International Airport, the MCC Downtown Campus, the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, and the Rochester School for the Deaf, along with many others across the state. Her crews have been inside just about every school in the city as part of the School Modernization Program, and one of her employees experienced his own pride of ownership when he worked on his own children’s school.Since starting her business, Lenora has witnessed a positive evolution of Rochester’s entrepreneurial ecosystem—driven in large part by the region’s investments in growth. For one thing, she’s seen the relationships between prime contractors and subcontractors become more positive, almost mentorlike, as a necessity to work together more effectively to meet the growing demands that comes with more projects to bid on.As her business has grown, Lenora now has plans to make her own investments in the city, to become the mentor she sometimes wished she had. She purchased an old factory building on Portland Avenue that’s been vacant for more than a decade. It will serve as her company’s headquarters, and she intends to include a small-business incubator and industrial kitchen for food truck operators there.This is why entrepreneurship is such a critical component of our work at City Hall. We need more small-business people like Lenora who can see the underlying potential of their employees and give them a chance to succeed. Lenora is here tonight. Lenora, will you please stand and accept our gratitude? Thank you for giving back to our city.Perceive this new thing that springs forth! Perceive how we inspire hope for everyone! How we deliver opportunity to everyone! Look at where we are and thank God.A little more than two years ago, I accepted the great responsibility to lead this great city. On that day, I issued a call. I asked you to join me so we could lift our city together in the spirit of the mantra: “It’s we, not me.”I asked you to let that be the day that we usher in the Rochester way. I asked you to let that be the day we re-affirmed our respect for the preciousness of life so violence and destruction would not be normalized. I asked you to let that be the day that any child who wants a job can find one.I asked you to let that be the day that we made sure no one would get left behind as we recovered from the pandemic. I asked you to let that be the day that homeownership becomes a reality for those who thought it never would be. I asked you to join me, and you did. I asked you to help me do these things, and now we are.We are doing these things, and Rochester is better than it ever was. Rochester is better than it ever was and getting better with each new day. And now I’m asking you to join me again. Join me today to perceive the new things that we are springing forth. Recognize and embrace these new paths we are creating. These new rivers that will continue to inspire hope and deliver opportunity, for everyone. Join me, Rochester, as we move to a prosperity mindset—together. Join us as Rochester grows—together.I’ll end with a quote from Dr. King as he discussed the future in a speech delivered on September 2, 1957. He stated, “And so let us go out and work with renewed vigor to make the unfolding work of destiny a reality in our generation. We must not slow up. Let us keep moving.”Thank you all.