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The effort to redevelop Lower Manhattan in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will pull hundreds of state jobs out of Downtown Jamaica, a shift that may have a negative effect on the local economy in an area where Queens politicians and development officials have long fought to create jobs.

The removal of hundreds of state workers from Queens, part of a broad policy by Governor George Pataki to energize the ailing economy around the World Trade Center site, stands in contrast to Pataki’s earlier pledge, made in this year’s State of the State address, to turn Downtown Jamaica into a “job hub.”

A spokesperson for the state’s Office of General Services confirmed this week that 126 state administrators from the Department of Health (DOH) would be relocated from Gertz Plaza in Downtown Jamaica to a newly repaired office building adjacent to Ground Zero. As New Yorkers prepared to mark the third anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, spokeswoman Jennifer Morris portrayed the job relocation as part of Governor George Pataki’s commitment to reinvigorate Lower Manhattan.

State employees currently based out of Gertz Plaza, unionized members of the Public Employees Federation, portrayed the job relocation as far more substantial and suggested that as many as 300 state workers from both DOH and the Division of Disability Determination would eventually be transferred to Lower Manhattan.

“We’ve been told by the Office of General Services and our management that we should start packing,” said Alan Schulkin, a DOH auditor based out of Gertz Plaza. He indicated that the job shift would empty two whole floors of the large downtown Jamaica office building.

Schulkin, who has worked in Jamaica since state jobs first came there in 1985, noted that the original policy to locate state offices in the neighborhood was part of an effort to improve an impoverished district.

“To me, it is sort of ridiculous,” Schulkin said. “Our impact in Lower Manhattan will be tiny, but our presence in Jamaica has a tremendous effect on the community here.”
Economic experts in downtown Jamaica agreed. Sam Samuels, a spokesperson for the Greater Jamaica Development Association, called the relocation “a major loss to the local economy.”

“Many of the offices around here don’t employ as many people as that,” Samuels said of the hundreds of state workers, who he suggested also end up eating at local restaurants and shopping at local retailers. “That’s what the real value of having jobs in the community is. They contribute to the economy.”

To former borough president Claire Schulman, the loss of state jobs marks a major reversal of a growth policy she fought hard to introduce.

“Every job in Jamaica is important,” she said. “The city, the state and the federal government have invested a lot of energy in Downtown Jamaica because it is important. It stabilizes the borough and it brings up that area.”

“To take jobs from one part of the city to help another part of the city is not the right thing to do,” Schulman added. “There are plenty of things happening in Manhattan that you don’t need to take from Queens.”

Representatives from Governor Pataki’s office did not answer questions about the new job relocation policy in time for publication.

In July, however, when Pataki first announced that hundreds of state employees would relocate to Lower Manhattan, he celebrated the decision as important to rebuilding after Sept. 11. “Our efforts will return this area to the vibrant cultural and financial hub it once was,” he said at the time.

That statement sounded similar in its tone of confidence to what Pataki said six months earlier during his State of the State address, in which he pledged “to build on the success of our AirTrain project and develop a new job hub at Jamaica station.”

“Every community in our state has great potential for economic growth,” Pataki said in that speech.

When asked about the anticipated impact of the relocated jobs on the Jamaica economy, a spokesperson for Empire State Development pointed back to the growth fostered by the new AirTrain, a high-speed rail link to JFK Airport with a major stop in Jamaica, as proof of the state’s commitment.

“There is clearly an effort to bring development and jobs into Jamaica Center using as a lynchpin the AirTrain and the fact that it is a pivotal location,” said Empire spokesperson Ron Jury. There was not yet any indication, Jury admitted, of how many jobs the new rail link has created.