COUNTY COURTS CHINESE: Investors Visit Rockland County

COUNTY PRESS RELEASE

Rockland County Executive Ed Day last week hosted a delegation of Chinese business executives looking for investment opportunities in the area. The visit was part of Rockland’s ongoing effort to encourage both tourism and investment from China.

“These are business leaders with money in their pockets who are looking to make an investment in Rockland,” Day said. “We are showing them what we have to offer.”

The executives were from the Jilin province, an industrial center in northeastern China that is home to 20 million people. The visit to Rockland was arranged by Lucy Redzeposki, Rockland’s Director of Economic Growth and Tourism

She worked with the U.S. Small Business Administration, which was hosting the Chinese delegation along with the Jilin Chamber of Commerce of America. The Empire State Development Corp., the Rockland Industrial Development Agency and Rockland Community College also worked collaboratively with the county to arrange the visit on very short notice.

“We are working to make Rockland both a tourist destination for visitors from China as well as a location where Chinese business can make investments,” she said.

While they were in Rockland, they attended a breakfast meeting hosted by County Executive Day. The Chinese executives also met with Thomas P. Della Torre, associate vice president of academic and community partnerships at RCC, who discussed plans for a Rockland business incubator.

They went to Pearl River to meet with representatives of IRG, the real estate company that now owns part of the former Pfizer campus and is working to develop a mix of science, technology, educational and retail businesses.

John Cunningham and other IRG officials gave them a tour of the facility, a presentation about the company and they took part in discussions about business opportunities. The Chinese visitors also toured the former Letchworth site in North Rockland, accompanied by Stony Point Supervisor Jim Monaghan. Part of the land is available for development.

The delegation met with a Rockland company looking for investors and ended their visit with a stop at the Time hotel in Nyack. “We hope these visitors liked what they saw and decide to come back to Rockland to visit or to invest,” Day said.