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Friday, May 14, 2010

Bernanke calls visit to Navy Yard 'inspiring'

You’re more likely to see Ben S. Bernanke testifying before a congressional panel than shaking hands with pipe fitters and welders at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

But that’s just where the Federal Reserve chairman was Thursday morning.

Bernanke, like so many schoolchildren and tourists before him, went on a field trip to Philadelphia. But instead of visiting the Liberty Bell or Independence Hall, the United States’ banker-in-chief toured Tasty Baking Co.’s production lines and stood amid the steel hulks of Aker Philadelphia Shipyard.

It was a journey “from cakes to cargo ships,” said Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia president Charles Plosser.

The line is often thin between economics and politics, and it seemed more than a coincidence that Bernanke was on a listening tour in big-city Philadelphia on the same day President Obama was in smaller Buffalo, N.Y., talking about the economy.

But Bernanke made no speeches and took no questions from the reporters who tagged along on a tour designed to show how the 1,200-acre Navy Yard has changed in the decade since the military turned it over to the city.

Later, following a lunch at the Hyatt Regency at Penn’s Landing, Bernanke described his visit as an “inspiring morning for me” as he saw an urban area “being reborn with new businesses and new jobs.”

Bernanke had his own questions for the chief executives and rank-and-file workers he met at each of the three stops. I can’t remember former Fed maestro Alan Greenspan ever talking about building product tankers with four tradesmen in hard hats plastered with stickers.

However, under a bright blue sky, Bernanke, clad in gray suit and yellow tie, listened as apprentice Brian Hudson described his training as part of Aker’s three-year apprentice program. Hudson is one of 1,200 people employed at the shipyard that Aker revived with the help of more than $400 million in federal, state and local subsidies about a decade ago.

Gary Gaydosh, president of the Philadelphia Metal Trades Council, said many people had doubted the shipyard would ever approach the major employer it once was. “We’re getting back there,” he said.

The path the tour took showed the new and old as a van carrying Bernanke and a bus filled with journalists and staff from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. passed old buildings rehabbed by Urban Outfitters Inc., the quirky retail chain that has expanded greatly since moving into the Navy Yard five years ago. Urban Outfitters now has 1,200 workers there.

John Grady, executive vice president of PIDC, which has been overseeing the Navy Yard’s redevelopment, noted the contrast between Aker and Urban Outfitters, which are just blocks from one another. “If the shipyard worker is the traditional worker,” he said, “with Urban Outfitters, you have the fashion designer with multiple piercings and who brings the dog to work.”

The last stop was Building 100, a former Marine Corps barracks that is now home to the Ben Franklin Technology Center of Southeastern Pennsylvania. President and CEO RoseAnn Rosenthal described how the state-funded organization has been trying to build a “power valley” of energy-sector firms in partnership with the nearby Navy’s Ship Systems Engineering Station.

Lothar Budike Jr. , CEO of Light-Pod Inc., a technology start-up, gave an “elevator pitch” to Bernanke and Plosser. The company has been developing new light fixtures that incorporate light-emitting diode technology to replace current lighting systems on Navy ships.

Light-Pod’s technology, which Budike said generates twice the light while using half the energy, would also have commercial application.

Bernanke asked Budike about his background, and the mechanical engineer said he’d worked for the Navy on two aircraft carrier projects after graduating from Drexel University. “I always worked down here at the Navy Yard,” he said.

He still does, although as Bernanke came to see for himself, it’s a very different place now.

 
Posted by Mike Armstrong @ 8:13 AM  Permalink | File Under: Economic Development | | Manufacturing | | Technology | 6 comments
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 8:33 AM, 05/14/2010
    Well, it is important to point out that the Aker ship building facility is important for a reason that is not quite mentioned amid the employment figures. The technology transfer in state of the art manufacturing processes was worth the risk to fund the operation. American ship building was dead, gone with the wind. Except for military ships, commercial shipping was a memory. We still do not manufacturer the passenger liners that make their money off of American tourists, we do not know how. But Aker reversed that deindustrialization trend for the nation as far as commercial cargo shipping goes and that is probably the most important aspect of the Philadelphia Naval Yard's redevelopment story. It has taken a while, but our city does something that many other cities no longer can claim, we make things here, the big heavy industrial products that make a nation an industrial giant, instead of paper hedge fund tiger.
    — Fernando08
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:56 AM, 05/14/2010
    The Navy Yard is indeed inspiring. Let's use it as a template for the old Budd site and give Nicetown a nice little boost. For it being so close to Wayne Junction and the Roosevelt Extension, it could easily thrive in a variety of ways.
    — NickFromGermantown
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 8:41 PM, 05/14/2010
    The only reason that Aker is there is because of the huge initial subsidies that were given to them and the huge tax breaks they got & continue to get. If you removed even 50% of those, they wouldn't be able to compete with Taiwanese, South Korean, or even Eastern European shipmakers.
    — MG77
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 2:36 PM, 05/15/2010
    Light-pod = snake oil http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/401739.pdf
    — blue and gold
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:50 AM, 05/20/2010
    Fernando8 comments are based on facts and truth. I respectfully challenge MG77 to do some more homework. There are no tax breaks for Aker and the yard is the most competitive commercial ship builder in the Jones Act market. In addition the yard does not even compete in the international market with Europe and Asia.
    — turkeybird55


6 comments
About Mike Armstrong
Mike Armstrong, a business editor and writer for nearly two decades, is the Inquirer's business columnist and PhillyInc blog editor. Contact Mike via e-mail or at 215-854-2980
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