Trip to New York City

Municipalities New York City

United States

From: 01 Jan 1987 - To - 01 Jan 1987

Description: A promotional trip, aimed primarily at business attraction, using the occasion of the inaugural Portland - NYC direct Delta Airlines flight to send a group of Portland “ambassadors” to meet with East Coast business executives.

• A delegation of “Ambassadors” from Portland traveled to NYC on a Delta flight, to celebrating Delta’s first non-stop Portland-NYC flight
• Sen. Mark Hatfield helped by making introduction s to business executives
• The Ambassadors recognized that Portland had low visibility among East Coast business leaders. although people who knew about Portland mostly had good image of the city
• Economic development executives were impressed with Portland’s downtown revitalization and regional planning
• Economic development executives also knew that Portland had attracted tech firms
• The NYC economic development executives tressed strategic investments, careful planning, and dedication to long-term outcomes public-private partnerships essential.
• New York has stressed recruiting knowledge-based industries. Note (2024): At that time and since, the greater Portland area also has stressed.
• At that time, New York was diversifying away from hardware-semiconductor field, stressing more software development (which was the high-tech area driving tech growth). Note (2024): The greater Portland region had been relying on hardware growth at that time. Software has grown dramatically in the greater Portland area in the past 20 years. Still, the greater Portland area is a leader in hardware development, and in 2024, hardware is now the region’s biggest opportunity.
• New York leaders stressed the importance ot putting more money in to education—as have most cities in the United States.
• Quality of Life is very important—but also very subjective!
• Attitude is essential and we beat ourselves up too much!