The former chief operating officer for investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Andrew Alper, was recruited by a deputy mayor, Daniel Doctoroff, to be president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation. The New York Sun’s City Hall bureau chief, , sat down with Mr. Alper to discuss his work – including problems with a project his agency is overseeing to refurbish the ferry terminals at Whitehall and Staten Island – and ways he’d like to see New York transformed.

Q: Do you have specific examples of companies you have lured, and how many jobs you have created? The impression is that companies are leaving the city to escape the high taxes.

A: We have created roughly 50,000 jobs in the city in the private sector this year. We’ve been successful very clearly with Virgin America. Sir Richard Branson is trying to start up a low-cost start-up airline. It was reported accurately that we have been knocked out of the process because they viewed New York as too expensive. I asked for a courtesy meeting with Virgin USA to talk about their decision and to learn … what … we could have done better. In the course of that we began to talk about Virgin and what their brand is and how they need to grow their business, and through that discussion we turned it around.

We said, you’re a hip brand and Boston is a very nice town, small. Dulles, near Washington, it is not the Virgin image. San Francisco is nice, but Virgin wants to be in Times Square for the Virgin image. We talked about New York’s advantage, and the media world here, and even though we were more expensive they could grow their business more quickly here. Initially that is 300 or 400 jobs over the next year or so, and then it will rise to 700 within 10 years or so. It is somewhat ironic that you have two low-cost airlines, Virgin America and Jet Blue, with headquarters in New York. Jet Blue has been very successful so we’re hopeful Virgin will be equally successful and well surpass these job numbers.

The sense is that New York’s high tax rates are driving companies elsewhere – how do you deal with that?

Companies are coming in, not going out. We’ve had an increase in jobs, at a greater rate than the rest of the country. The city is thriving. You look at hotel occupancy this year over last year, and it is up 9% or 10%, and room rates are up 10%…. Restaurants are full. The city itself is very vibrant.

Everyone would like to have lower taxes. The trick for us is to maintain New York’s attraction. What makes New York special is that it is a magnet for people: for talent, for immigrants. The city has to be maintained as a safe city, as a clean city, as a city that educates children. That’s above all else. I’m sure if we can cut taxes and maintain a safe, clean, well-educated city, we will do that. At the end of the day, it is to make sure New York is a magnet for people.

How does an investment banker end up in city government?

I came somewhat reluctantly, but I haven’t looked back since. What the mayor asked me to do is change the relationship between the private sector and city government in New York. It is somewhat ironic that the self-proclaimed business capital of the world hasn’t had much of a relationship between the public and private sector. … The mayor and Dan asked me to take what I had learned in two decades on Wall Street in terms of client-relationship building and apply that to city government. What’s been missing is that there has been a bit of a New York arrogance about the relationship between the public and private sector. It is basic blocking and tackling. Taking that customer-service approach and applying it to the business of government in a very competitive business, it is yielding dividends.

We are in an intensely competitive business, every city and state in the country is trying to attract jobs and grow their economies. We are also a high-cost producer, so we know we have to find competitive advantage. The mayor has a three-part strategy for us to grow the economy. Make New York seem more livable, make it seem more business-friendly, and diversify the economy.

Biotech is part of diversifying the economy. When we came into office almost three years ago now, the first thing we did was to try to figure where we have competitive advantage, and McKinsey & Company did a lot of great work with us to help look for our competitive strengths, and by far the biggest disconnect between competitive strength and commercial activity was the life sciences. You look at New York, it has a great depth of academic science, roughly a dozen world-class medical institutions; we have world-renowned clinical programs; we have the world’s most genetically diverse population. … We have all the right ingredients, and yet for some historical reason we don’t have much activity.

What I was first told was the major reason was cost. And I think we have now demonstrated that really isn’t the case. The cities that have been successful, Cambridge, Mass., the San Diego area, the Bay Area, are actually as expensive if not more expensive than New York. …

Two weeks ago we announced the East River Science Park request for proposals. That is really a chance for us to create physical space and go out and market the story to the world very aggressively. The responses are due in mid- to late January, and we’ll probably select a developer in mid- to late spring.

Let’s talk about the cost overruns at Whitehall and the ferry terminal.

There is a lot that goes into that. The original cost estimates for the project were wildly optimistic, and it is a very complicated project. The time frame for the buildings should have been 48 months instead of the 36 months they had projected, and when we put the

project out to bid it was at the height of the construction boom, so that affected the cost, too. We’re about six months behind, because of a variety of factors. There have been scope changes, there was additional security required after 9/11, and there were change orders.

This was done about as efficiently as you can with a project of this magnitude. We’re going to end up with iconic buildings and a great finished product. We have not done a good job of communicating about this, and I take the responsibility for that. But I will have no apologies for how these buildings come out.

When will it all be completed?

Spring 2005.