Hauppauge Industrial Park

Challenges facing the Island require new thinking about its industries and firms. After all, it is the individual companies that employ people, respond to policy incentives, and turn Long Island’s assets of workforce, transportation, and education into direct economic outputs. Firms and industries tie together the various aspects of local economic development, and the key to Long Island’s next wave of economic growth is to create conditions and ecosystems where competitive firms and industries can enter, cluster, and prosper. The Hauppauge Industrial Park (the Park) is the largest concentration of firms on Long Island and thus offers an exceptional opportunity for adopting an industry-focused approach to regional economic revitalization. Where 1,350 companies employ approximately 55,000 people, the Park produces an impressive total sales volume of $13 billion. More importantly, the Park has been a magnet for the tradable economy (58% of jobs in the Park are in the exporting sectors), and it is a place where the region’s most strategic industries begin to cluster, such as pharmaceuticals, distribution, IT, equipment, and food.

Recognizing the region’s need for stronger tradable economy and the existing clustering of such industries right in Hauppauge, this report studies how the Hauppauge Industrial Park can further capture economic opportunities of the region and maximize its impact to become a key player in Long Island’s overall economic development.

Drawing on extensive research of the Park’s current conditions, in-depth analysis of Long Island’s economic landscape, and an examination of best practices in other U.S. economic hubs, this report crafts a vision for the Park within its regional context, lays out the Park’s strengths and weaknesses, and recommends a strategic plan with a series of implementable actions distributed across short-, medium-, and long-term time horizons.

The recommended strategies taken together are intended to form a comprehensive suite of economic development projects that include zoning and regulatory updates, public realm improvement, changes in the Park’s management and operations, and development of business facilities and amenities. Understanding the crucial role of cross-sectoral dialogue in economic development, this report also provides a framework for multiple public and private stakeholders inside and outside the Park to come together, collaborate, and share responsibilities in carrying out the proposed tasks.

A key objective of the Hauppauge Industrial Park should be to become the regional economic hub that fosters the greatest growth of competitive tradable industries; the Park can do so by providing the necessary facilities, amenities, talent pool, and knowledge infrastructure for further firm clustering and agglomeration, and marketing and branding the Park as the Island’s premier hub for growing businesses. As a regional economic hub, the Park would no longer be a ​“lone wolf” on Long Island: the framework recommended in this report would help the Park’s stakeholders to integrate the Park’s resources into the Island’s larger economic and social system, as well as to channel in the region’s various assets to help businesses grow in Hauppauge. As an existing economic anchor aspiring to become the region’s key player, the Hauppauge Industrial Park is the new opportunity for Long Island-wide economic development.