Corporate America Tries to Abandon NYC

Well, their spin people will probably try to gloss over it, but during the Seventies a lot of America's biggest corporations were starting to give up on New York and other major cities, especially in the North. The 'burbs and the New South (home of cheaper labor and "business-friendly" politicians were where the future lay for Corporate USA. (This was before "Outsourcing.")

In 1979 I took a course about the future of NYC at a major business school in town (OK, Columbia, but no, I am not an MBA). One of our assigned readings was entitled The Exodus of Corporate Headquarters from New York City, and I don't think I need to say much about the content. We all could see what was happening. Every morning while walking my dog I would see a van pick up an assortment of young executives and head towards New Jersey. Why were they leaving? The usual answers were given: crime (although how many people got mugged in the Central Business District?), high taxes, a crumbling infrastructure and a poorly-prepared workforce. But I suspect after a few big companies started leaving the cities, others just blindly followed, the way they have done with every other great corporate fad (Who remembers Management by Objectives?) One thing I did learn taking a few courses in an "Ivy League" business school was that corporate types are no more rational and objective than the rest of us. Perhaps we like to think they are, the same way we like to think that way about military leaders.

Now, did any of those multi-million dollar companies feel any responsibilities towards cities like NYC, where they got their starts, sold much of their products and conducted most of their negotiations? Not according to another book I read, The Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. Aside from small, largely token efforts, this book held, there was little that big corporations could, or should, do for the big cities, which were destined to become crumbling slums connected by "sanitized corridors" to the suburbs. Yes, some companies did invest in our town, mostly those like Brooklyn Union Gas who were physically tied to this location by their infrastructure.

Fortunately, our professors did not think so bleakly as the text authors. They realized what individuals all over the city had known for years, that the city was on the upswing.