Outsider Pryor has inside role in reviving economy

HARD SELL: Pryor with Greg Pilgrim, left, chief operating officer at Murdock Webbing. As an economic-development official, Pryor has built a career making companies look twice at cities that they might not have considered. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
HARD SELL: Pryor with Greg Pilgrim, left, chief operating officer at Murdock Webbing. As an economic-development official, Pryor has built a career making companies look twice at cities that they might not have considered. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Stefan Pryor moved quickly through what he called the challenges and promise of Rhode Island’s economy before an attentive breakfast audience of Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce members last month. They’d heard much of it before, but not from the New York native taking on the high-profile role as the state’s first secretary of commerce.

Though he’d only been on the job a few months, he later deftly fielded queries on everything from the wisdom of the Pawtucket Red Sox moving to Providence and whether a statewide tourism campaign could begin this fiscal year, to the state’s plans to leverage next month’s Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Newport.

“We will be there,” he said of the international sailing race. “We’re going to make it happen at this and other events that showcase Rhode Island.”

After the breakfast, Chamber President John Gregory watched as Pryor stayed to speak with several dozen business representatives who wanted to take their own measure of the newcomer.

- Advertisement -

“The diversity of his experiences,” is what he brings to the job, Gregory said. “He may make us look at things a little differently.”

If Pryor, 43, is relatively unknown in Rhode Island, his position is one of the most powerful, created to bring all the economic-development functions in state government under one office. He oversees state offices in charge of tourism, economic development, housing, workforce development and business regulation. He may also play a key role in deciding how the former Interstate 195 land where much of Providence’s near-term development hopes are pinned gets developed.

So how did someone still finding his way around the Ocean State gain such a leading role in the fight to revive its economy?

It starts with what sparks many business deals, a relationship: In this case his friendship with Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, who’s known him since they were classmates at Yale Law School.

“I’ve known him for more than 20 years. I trust him,” Raimondo told Providence Business News. “But he was my pick because he has an extraordinary track record of success in economic development in Newark, N.J., and in New York City. His approach is one where he believes in very comprehensive plans for economic development. You have to keep a focus on everything from regulatory reform to job development and employee training, to the tax climate.”

TRACK RECORD

Over the past 20 years, Pryor has built a career making companies look twice at cities that they might not have considered. First in New York, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and then in Newark, N.J., which was stigmatized by blight and unemployment, he was seen as someone who could reset executives’ conceptions about a place.

Educated at Yale University, both as an undergraduate and at its law school, Pryor has had a career along two veins, economic development and public education. He sees them as interrelated.

He most recently worked in Connecticut, where he served for three years as state education commissioner. He was praised for efforts to redirect state funds to poor schools, and for efforts to narrow the disparities in test scores among students of different ethnic and racial groups. The state’s four-year graduation rate increased during his appointment, according to state statistics.

Pryor as education commissioner also ushered in a new process for evaluating teachers and administrators, one that required yearly classroom observations for veteran teachers. Many teachers were critical of the new process, and he was challenged by some parents and teachers who felt he was moving too quickly on initiatives, according to reports in the Hartford Courant newspaper.

His experience in Connecticut, as it related to workforce development, has directly influenced Raimondo’s budget. A proposed education-employer partnership program, which would allow high school students to graduate with an associate degree and opportunity for a job with the employer-mentor, is based on a program in Norwalk, Conn.

At Norwalk High School, the Norwalk Early College Academy has 100 students enrolled this year as ninth graders. They are paired with mentors at IBM and will take a specialized curriculum developed in collaboration with the school district, the corporation and with Norwalk Community College. When they graduate, they will have an associate degree in either computer information systems or in engineering technology, according to Principal Reginald Roberts. The degrees come at no cost to students or their families.

As education commissioner, Pryor advocated for the program and the funding it needed from the state, and collaborated with the industry and state and city leaders, according to Roberts.

Immediately before becoming education commissioner in Connecticut, Pryor was deputy mayor of Newark, N.J., for five years, under then-Mayor Cory Booker, now a U.S. senator. In that role, Pryor oversaw economic development and housing, attracting investment to a city often associated with poverty, crime and blight. The process involved selling the strengths of the city, including its access to transportation systems and the Port Newark Container Terminal, one of the largest for container shipments in the United States.

“Newark was not projecting a positive image,” Pryor said. “There was a lot to build upon, nonetheless.”

When Pryor arrived in 2006, said his colleague, former Chief of Staff Adam Zipkin, he realized quickly that the city would have to address economic development on multiple fronts, at once. He worked to change zoning in the city’s downtown, to accelerate conversion of empty office buildings into residential uses. He went to regional and national conferences, networking with executives and emphasizing the assets of Newark, including its proximity to New York.

He was “getting to people who otherwise would not have considered Newark, and getting them to take a second look at the strengths,” said Zipkin, who is now a legislative assistant to Booker. “Getting people to realize there was a lot of opportunity there.”

What impact did Pryor have in Newark? There was little in the pipeline when he arrived, according to Zipkin. By the time he left, the downtown had its first new hotel built in 40 years, a Courtyard Marriott, as well as plans for a 12-story office building to house the $150 million headquarters for Panasonic Corporation of North America. The electronics corporation had been looking to move out of New Jersey, and was attracted to Newark with the assistance of state and city tax incentives, according to Zipkin. The company received a $102 million state tax credit, according to a report published by The Star-Ledger newspaper.

Another large development, a $150 million, mixed-use complex called Teachers Village, was launched under Pryor’s tenure. The development in downtown Newark includes apartments for 200 teachers and others who want to live near their workplaces, four charter schools and 65,000 square feet of retail space. The project covers five city blocks and took the place of surface parking.

Some city leaders were critical of Pryor’s focus on downtown development, citing the lack of neighborhood investment, according to The Star-Ledger. But others credited him with helping to write the legislation that helped attract Panasonic to the city.

‘HE HAD A HEART’

Before moving to Newark, Pryor had lived and worked in lower Manhattan.

He was president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the city-state corporation charged with attracting development to the area south of Houston Street following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The work included the development of a permanent memorial.

Pryor lived near the towers, and on Sept. 11, he had fled his apartment through a stream of ash, according to an article in The New York Times. Then a vice president at the Partnership for New York City, a business organization, he developed a program to help businesses affected by the events.

Charles Wolf, a member of the family advisory council, established to advise the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. in the planning and execution of the National September 11 Memorial, recalls Pryor as reaching out to the families, listening to them, and not just for show.

“He not only knew what he was doing, he had a heart,” said Wolf, a widower whose wife was among the employees killed when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. The process that ended in development of the memorial was fraught with players and emotion, and Pryor was able to navigate that, Wolf said. In the immediate aftermath, it wasn’t known whether a memorial would be a part of the plan for the site.

“You can’t get any more highly charged conflict than what we had here,” Wolf said. “He really does listen. He wants to understand from your point of view. He doesn’t close his mind.”

FRESH PERSPECTIVE

People who know Pryor say he’s analytical, given to studying an issue and speaking with people before reaching conclusions.

Before he accepted the Rhode Island job, which he started in January even before his appointment was confirmed, he did his own evaluation of the state. He spoke to civic and business leaders and examined economic data, such as warehouse-development trends. In a recent interview, he said he was excited at the prospect of working with a new administration, committed to change.

“This state has tremendous unfulfilled potential,” he said. “There is no logical reason why Rhode Island should have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. It also has one of the lowest job-growth rates.

“I do believe there’s a real chance of changing Rhode Island’s economic trajectory, and creating a better economic future,” he said.

Under the state spending plan proposed recently by Raimondo, he will oversee a $76 million budget, and offices including the R.I. Commerce Corporation and the Interstate 195 Redevelopment District Commission.

As commerce secretary, he will earn $198,900. And he says he’ll have a hands-on role in the development of the I-195 district in Providence.

He is in conversations daily with the new chairman of the commission, Joseph Azrack. “We are coming up to speed together,” he said, adding they have been meeting with surrounding property owners and institutions located near the area.

He declined to discuss individual projects, including the publicly announced proposal to move the PawSox to the I-195 district. As of early last week, his office had yet to receive a formal proposal from the new owners of the PawSox.

He did say a proposed $25 million incentive pool for the land would not go to a sports-related development.

“The stadium proposal will be evaluated on its own merits,” he said.

Pryor’s first few months have been filled with meetings with business owners and state leaders. He’s taken tours of business parks and individual buildings.

“There are profound problems we in Rhode Island need to overcome, but the assets are extraordinary,” he said.

Rhode Island has a reputation for being skeptical of outsiders, but many business and economic leaders say in Pryor’s case, being a newcomer may be an asset, given his mission to raise the profile of the state for economic investment.

“You want someone with outside connections,” said Wendy Schiller, an associate professor at Brown University. “His job is to bring outside businesses to partner with businesses inside the state.”

Gary S. Sasse, director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Service at Bryant University, and director of administration for Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, agreed. “Economic development and economic competitiveness [are] national and international.

“You can’t sell bad ideas,” he said. “You have to have someone who understands economic-development trends nationally,” and who can convert those trends into state programs and sell them effectively.

Kevin Sheahan, vice president of Sheahan Printing Corp., a small business in Woonsocket, likes Pryor’s connections outside Rhode Island for another reason: There are no hidden political ties to color his views or actions.

“It’s a plus that he’s from out of state … if he’s not connected to anyone at the Statehouse,” Sheahan said.

Pryor has shown an early ability to follow up talk with action.

Gregory had invited him to meet his Chamber’s board of directors even before his confirmation. At that point, he said, Pryor was just listening. One of the issues that came up related to suppliers, and whether businesses should purchase more local goods.

That morphed into the proposed “anchor tax credit” in Raimondo’s budget proposal, which would provide large companies with an incentive to attract their suppliers to the state. The idea that instead of just buying local, why not get supplying companies to move here.

“We’ll offer a finder’s fee to anchor companies,” Pryor later told Chamber members at the March breakfast.

Gregory said he and other Chamber members at the earlier board meeting were impressed.

“It wasn’t just, I’m here to listen. … They refined the proposal and took it to the next level,” he said.

Such efforts to connect with local business leaders and their issues have generally made a good first impression.

“I think he’s phenomenal,” said Laurie White, president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. “He’s just arrived but it feels like he’s been around forever.”

She was impressed that he immediately reached out to business owners, walking around Providence and talking with shop owners who were impacted by the January blizzard.

Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien met Pryor for the first time in the winter, before the mayor had learned his city was in danger of losing the PawSox. Pryor has followed up with him several times since, a practice that Grebien appreciates.

“The positive in it all is the communication is open,” Grebien said. “He listens and he’s following through.” •

No posts to display