Air quality so bad it shuts down airlines.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Tom Gretch. He is the president and chief executive Efficer of the Queen’s Chamber of Commerce in New York. And so many things happened in New York this week, the economy, the forest fires from Canada. Tom, would you give us an update what the heck is going on?

0:20 Speaker 2 So John, thanks again so much for having me, and I hope you and your family are all well during these challenging times. So thankfully it looks like as of this time, the impending doom of that smoke situation is somewhat a leaving itself. But I will tell you over the last thirty six forty eight hours, between flight cancelations

0:39 and people not going to work and school, it definitely had a crimp in the business economy of Queen’s County and beyond. I know a lot of folks were not going into work out of the concerns. There was a palpable fear of with the masks being back out again.

0:55 So I think, I hopefully think this is going to pass. But it was really a challenge for the airlines and for our airports that are that are in the midst of a resurgence to have the situation kind of come back again.

1:09 Speaker 1 Well, the airputs have to be in a resurgence because uh uh crude oil is down to uh, you know, the high sixties, low seventies, so uh airline uh you know, airline Uh tickets have to be cheap and people have they want to get out and go see the world.

1:28 Speaker 2 Now, yeah, you know what the biggest challenge is and I see it still to this day, and we always scratch our heads about the inability of companies large and small to hire people. I know that jeff Blue had to curtail some of their flights because of a lack of air traffic controllers. Other airlines have talked about the

1:45 fact that they can’t get people to go to work. It’s still a strange, strange situation in our in our in our country, but especially in New York. We had a we had our job fair a few weeks ago down in Southeast Queens Resports World Casino, with hundreds and hundreds of people attending looking for jobs, which is a

2:04 good thing, but by and large, the folks that were there with exhibit tables trying to find employees are still struggling. And these are people that are looking for jobs and offering jobs in the public sector and the private sectors.

2:19 So we don’t know what’s going on in that world.

2:23 Speaker 1 In Manhattan where I live, I tell you we have a great deal amount of stores that are closed and no sign are being re rented. And now that congestion pricing is going to be coming in in the future, I don’t know what’s going to be.

2:43 Speaker 2 You know, John’s interesting. I hear these stats, and I’m a big believer in numbers and stats to an extent, right, but thirty six percent of the citizens of Queen’s County do not work in Queens. They work in the other boroughs and outside the area. And I always tell people about getting back to work. Really important to get back

3:01 to the office. We know what’s happening in the commercial real estate sector, in the office sector and conversions from office to residential. That’s gonna take a lot of work in a lot of years, and maybe as importantly, a lot of money to get done. So for right now, I encourage everybody to get back to work because the

3:17 jobs you save at some point might be your neighbors, your friends. We need people to get back to work, go to their offices and conduct business. I’m not gonna say like the old ways. I mean, I get it, some people are going to be working hybrid schedules. But we’re big advocates of getting back to work and doing well.

3:35 But I will tell you on the other side, Queen’s County one of the three thousand counties in America. By last count we have twenty eight billion dollars twenty eight billion dollars of activity, and most of it’s all private sector.

3:49 So whether it’s innovation Queens, a two and a half billion dollar project in Astoria, the Flushing Waterfront, our new soccer stadium going in behind city Field, and a myriad numer of other projects, all capped off by our nineteen billion dollar JFK Airport project. Things are sunny in Queens, regardless of the smoke. Things are sunny. We’re doing well well.

4:12 Speaker 1 I’m glad to hear that you guys are doing well. And I think Brooklyn is doing well. Staten Island is surviving the Bronx. I don’t know they’re coming and making a comeback. By Manhattan. Well, I went to a lot of restaurants this week. All of them were empty.

4:30 Speaker 2 Yeah, John, you know it’s funny you say that. It’s also very true. I was interviewed on television last week about what do I think some of the biggest problems are. And while we open up our on the grand sum of immigrants, I know you’re an immigrant. We all are immigrants at one way of form. But right now it’s

4:48 incredible how bad our friends in Washington are handling, or should I say not handling this crisis. Last count it was eight million dollars a day in cost for the City of New York. It’s training our reserves, it’s training our budgets, and it’s just not a good thing at all for our for our economy in general.

5:07 Speaker 1 We are really one, Tom Gretch. Keep us informed. If anything important happens during the week, give us a call and have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

5:19 Speaker 2 I always will. And give my best to your family, to Margo and your kids.

5:21 Speaker 1 All right, Thank you,