Mayor Bloomberg’s prepared remarks are below:

Thank you, Bill.  Good morning.

The last time we were together, December 12th of this past year, I presented our Administration’s vision for a new Lower Manhattan...for overlaying the world’s greatest financial district with a diverse and vibrant 21st century commercial and residential neighborhood.

Make no mistake about my commitment to ensuring that Lower Manhattan remains the financial center of the world.

And it’s encouraging that major firms such as Cadwalader, HIP, and Oppenheimer have signed long-term leases, affirming their commitment.

But our vision for Lower Manhattan is only one part of a larger challenge -- that of creating jobs and opportunity for all New Yorkers, in all five boroughs.

And because ABNY has always played a vital role in moving our city forward, there could be no more appropriate place to outline our strategy for meeting that challenge than here at a traditional ABNY breakfast.

In 1971, when ABNY was founded by Lew Rudin and others, the end of the “go-go” Sixties had left New York’s economy reeling.

Twenty Fortune 500 companies had fled the City, or were getting ready to leave.

Most of us in this room remember the crisis that followed.  Crime soared.  Garbage piled up. Block after block of apartment houses abandoned, or destroyed.  The city’s infrastructure moved dangerously close to collapse.  Strapped for cash, New York stopped investing in its future, and worse, stopped believing in itself.  And our city’s economic competitiveness suffered for decades as a result.

Today, facing another fiscal crisis, I’m here to tell you, I have not –- and I will not -- let New York make that mistake again!

Let’s start when I came into office.  Inauguration Day, January 1st, 2002 was one of the most exhilarating days of my life.

But, there was no doubt – as a city, we were still in mourning.

Smoke still rising from Ground Zero, only a few blocks away from City Hall, New York braced for a major exodus of people and businesses from the Big Apple.  Even though we had allies, including leaders like President Bush, Governor Pataki, and Senators Schumer and Clinton, the “smart money” was that we would be swamped by our budget problems -- and that the gains the city had made during the 90s would become history.

Well, we’ve proved the so-called “smart money” wrong.  Despite the recession, we’ve put the City’s financial house in order, by making difficult, sometimes agonizing, decisions.

New Yorkers were asked to make some very real sacrifices – and, though it certainly wasn’t easy, we did.  We cut City spending by $3.3 billion.  We taxed ourselves by a similar amount.  And we showed the politicians that we understand there’s a cost to having great services. 

Even though we may complain a little occasionally, we New Yorkers in the end have the intellect, courage and confidence to stand up and do what’s right for our children and grandchildren.

City agencies have learned to do more with less, and, by any objective measure, they have succeeded brilliantly.

We’re not out of the woods yet:  We need to find productivity enhancements from our great municipal workforce, or they won’t have the pay raises we want them to have.

We still have a $2 billion deficit for Fiscal Year 2005, that to close, will require further additional, and sometimes painful, belt-tightening.  We still have too high a tax burden – one we want to reduce.

But, we’ve not only managed to keep the city afloat.  We’ve made New York safer; We’re running New York smarter; And we’re also making New York economically stronger.

Why the improvement in the face of adversity?  Disclosure, prudence, focus!

From Day One -- despite the two worst back-to-back fiscal years in the city’s history -- our Administration has been honest with everyone about our true economic situation.

We have insisted on the responsible fiscal policy of paying as we go for the services the public wants, despite the political fallout.  And we’ve been resolute in increasing the pace of investment in the future of New York. 

Today, I want to focus on the investment component.  We’ve pursued a bold and comprehensive strategy.  And it’s producing results -- spurring growth - and, most importantly, creating jobs for all New Yorkers.  And that’s so essential.

Political leaders from right and left, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, have correctly called jobs the most effective social policy.  Whatever your political affiliation, that’s something we can definitely agree on – because we all recognize the fundamental importance of work.

A job – a rewarding and fulfilling job – bolsters a person’s sense of self-worth and confidence about the future.  It puts families on sound footings.  And it helps create what the late Senator Robert Kennedy called “communities of security, achievement and dignity.”

Can anything be more important?

Our goal then -- is to create the conditions that will generate a job for every single New Yorker who wants to work.

And our strategy for achieving that goal has three principal elements you should know about:

1) making New York a more livable city
2) making New York a more business-friendly city
3) diversifying our city’s economy.
 
Let me address each of those briefly in turn, and then show you some exciting examples of the jobs and economic growth that this strategy is producing right now.

First.  What goes into making New York a more livable city?

• It’s seeing that people who live and work here can walk the streets without fear.
• It’s ensuring that there are good schools for their children.
• It’s creating decent housing they can afford.
• And it’s providing the kinds of parks and cultural opportunities that only New York can offer.

I’m happy to report that -- building on the accomplishments of my three predecessors, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani -- we’ve made extraordinary progress in meeting all these goals.

We’ve continued to keep New York the safest big city in the nation.  Crime is down 6% so far this year and roughly 10% for the last two years.

Thanks to the help of Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, we’ve achieved mayoral control of the school system.  And that’s permitting us to completely reform public education in our city.

Using “prime the pump” public investment in communities from Park Slope to Morrisiana, our “New Housing Marketplace” program is the most ambitious affordable housing initiative in 15 years.

In a few weeks, we’ll present our first progress report -- but let me tell you now that we’re on course to meet our citywide goal of 65,000 newly built, or rehabilitated, units of affordable housing by 2008 -- near the end of my second term.

We’re also making the city more attractive and vibrant – a place people want to live, and businesses want to locate.

From Washington Heights to Staten Island’s Homeport to the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, we’re reclaiming the City’s 578 miles of waterfront -- opening it up for recreation, housing, and appropriate commercial uses.

We’re using a broad range of imaginative rezonings to foster new business districts and recreate entire neighborhoods.  For example, walk the East River waterfront today in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

Most of what you see is abandoned wharves and warehouses -- standing idly opposite the most dramatic skyline in the world.   The rezoning of that area will eventually yield an elegant waterside promenade, new parks, and new apartments and townhouses.

Similar stories are being written all over the city.  Within five years, the first portions of a new 2,200-acre park at Staten Island’s Fresh Kills will be open.

When it’s finished, it’ll be the biggest new city park in more than a hundred years.  And the expected investment of close to a quarter-billion dollars in parks in the Bronx, will create an incredible green legacy for that borough.

In every borough, though -- our cultural life defines New York.  And that’s why we’re investing City capital dollars to triple the space of the Hall of Science in Queens, and to realize the marvelous new design for the century-old Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

Next fall, we anticipate the opening of two major cultural facilities, the Museum of Modern Art and Jazz at Lincoln Center, generating jobs as well as visitors from every part of the world.  And the recently opened Louie Armstrong House in Corona will also be a magnet for jazz fans.

All of these projects will undoubtedly make New York a more livable city.  The second element of our strategy is to make New York more business-friendly.

Businesses need an environment that gives them the tools to be competitive in an ever more competitive world.  That means providing space that meets their needs -- and a modern infrastructure that enables them to be successful -- in a city that views businesses as partners rather than as adversaries.

Last December we announced our $10 billion vision for Lower Manhattan.

Ten months later, in partnership with the Governor, and using funds provided by the Bush Administration and the Congressional delegation led by our Senators and Congressmen Rangel and Sweeney, every single element of that plan is moving forward.

From pocket parks to airport access.  From new neighborhoods to tax incentives that encourage commercial development.  And most importantly, with a bold and powerful plan for the World Trade Center site, We will ensure that Lower Manhattan is the first 21st Century Downtown (not to mention the only one with a store named “Century 21”).

Our Administration’s Lower Manhattan redevelopment plan is matched by our efforts to expand and enhance business districts in other parts of Manhattan, and in every borough.

That includes redeveloping the Hudson Yards area on Manhattan’s Far West Side.  By making a targeted set of investments -- extending the #7 line, expanding our woefully inadequate convention center, and creating acres of new parkland and greater access to the waterfront -- we’re beginning a process that will create nearly 100,000 new jobs in construction, tourism and new businesses, large and small.

You should know that -- today, the Javits Center ranks only 18th in the nation among major exhibition halls.  Cleveland and Louisville are ahead of us.  Houston is bigger.  Las Vegas has two convention centers that are larger. Even Rosemont, Illinois.  Rosemont,Illinois?! has more space.

And we will fall even further down that list if we don’t act now.  We’re not going to let that happen.

And in other parts of the city we’re also moving forward with an ambitious plan to create five million square feet of new office space in Downtown Brooklyn.

In Long Island City, we’re actively courting developers so companies will join Met Life and CitiCorp in a new central business district in Queens.

And in Flushing, we're about to present a plan to ease traffic congestion, establish new connections to the waterfront, and strengthen neighborhood businesses.

That’s just the beginning of what we mean by improving the business climate. It goes beyond specific programs.

In fact, it defines our Administration’s entire attitude toward business.

Just after I was elected, I brought together all of the economic development agencies -- Housing, Planning, Parks, Cultural Affairs, EDC, Small Business Services and Consumer Affairs -- to craft our economic development strategy.

I included a unique approach by government:  insisting we actually interview business and community leaders -- our “customers” --  to understand their most pressing concerns.

This was an essential first step in making the City more accessible to business.

Another example: I had EDC reorganized so that the companies that call New York home would feel that it served them.

Want some concrete examples?   Well, take what happened after the blackout.

As phone service was restored, Andy Alper and the staff at EDC called more than 500 of our leading businesses just to see if there was anything they could do to help. (Perhaps some of you were on the receiving end of those calls.)

Meanwhile, on that Friday, with power still out., there was Katherine Oliver -- the Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting -- sitting at a makeshift desk – out on the sidewalk in front of her building – issuing permits so film production could continue all around town.

At the very same moment our Department of Small Business Services, led by Commissioner Rob Walsh, was also reaching out -- to the city’s 45 Business Improvement Districts in just the same way.

They also spoke to more than 300 small business owners, helping them find ways to recoup losses from the blackout.

In fact, our Administration puts a tremendous focus on encouraging small business growth.  You might say -- and please pardon the pun -- we’ve got a clear eye for the small guy.  There are dozens of other examples I could give you, not just during a blackout, but on every single day. 

The Administration’s concentrating on small business because -- in health care, construction, food service and other fields -- that’s where the jobs are and that’s where our future is.

We’ve made it easier to form BIDs all across the city -- because BIDs have demonstrated their ability to improve conditions for neighborhood businesses.  To provide information and support to new and growing businesses, we’re opening one-stop Business Solution Centers around the city.

We’re streamlining the process that for too long has kept minority - and women-owned businesses from bidding for, and winning, City contracts.

And our merger of the Department of Employment with the Department of Small Business Services has put our job training programs in the one agency that works with the small businesses that are in turn creating most of the new jobs.

The final element of our economic development/job creation strategy is: to diversify our city’s economy.  We are just too dependent on Manhattan and increasingly dependent on financial services.

That’s got to change.  New York has tremendous strengths in many other industries: tourism, higher education, communications, the life sciences and culture.

We’re working to reinforce those assets, to create a broad range of jobs for a diversity of New Yorkers.
How?

Let me introduce you to some of our neighbors who are making -- and filling -- new jobs in growing industries in New York’s communities.  They will show our economic development strategy at work.

I’m going to take you, right now, on a five-borough tour that will take a New York minute -- maybe two or three, by the clock. It even includes some New Yorkers who are here with us today.

Let’s start in Brooklyn.  We’re creating thousands of jobs in the critical movie and TV production industry, reviving the long-neglected Brooklyn Navy Yard.  How?

With $28 million in City infrastructure improvements -- built by people like construction worker Quincy Ivory Jones -- that will encourage private investment in a $150 million state-of-the-art studio.

On Staten Island, Charleston is getting a beautiful new park, senior citizen housing, and a retail center that will keep $100 million in annual sales -- and the 600 permanent jobs that go with them -- from fleeing across the Arthur Kill to New Jersey.

That means jobs for people like Mary Ellen Burtner.  Why?

Because we’ve broken a 2 decade-old logjam on how to use a 120-acre tract of City-owned land on the South Shore.

In Upper Manhattan, we’re turning dilapidated piers on Harlem’s Hudson shore into a dramatic new waterfront park through a partnership with local residents, the State, and local elected officials.

That’s helping to trigger a billion-dollar, neighborhood-sensitive investment in adjacent Manhattanville by Columbia University.

And that will, in turn, generate more than 5,000 jobs for the community and the city -- jobs that people like entrepreneur Savonna McClain will create.

We’re also working to create jobs in Jamaica, Queens.

We’re committing $15 million to lure the Long Island Rail Road and Jet Blue Airways to the community.  And to get the project moving, we’re also using some of the $50 million in capital funds the Port Authority has committed to Queens as part of our new airport lease agreement.

New York is one of the few major cities that doesn’t have an office hub near its airport.

But with AirTrain service coming down the track next month, we will change that.  That will create jobs for people like architect Robert Gaskin.

Have we forgot the Bronx?  Of course not!

We’re going ahead with the $85 million Hunts Point Fish Market project that’s adding 600 well-paying jobs for New Yorkers like Michael Driansky, and making the South Bronx the premier food distribution center in the world.

We’ve also formed a community task force to ensure that the food markets live in harmony with the neighborhood and waterfront that surround it.

You should know, it would have been easy during a fiscal crisis to delay, or cancel, this project. But that’s not our way.

Together, these projects are creating thousands of good jobs for our citizens, jobs that offer benefits and career ladders, jobs that help strengthen neighborhoods, jobs that foster self-sufficiency and dignity, and jobs that provide safe and nurturing homes for our city’s children.

Five projects.  Five boroughs.  Five industries.  And representing the future of New York, five different, hard-working New Yorkers with ambition, aspirations and drive.All part of one strategy with one goal: Thousands of new jobs in one city.

And they’re just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, later today, I’m going to the Hub, in the Bronx. There, I’ll be joining Related Companies CEO, Steve Ross.

We’re going to sign an agreement to build a new, 140,000-square-foot retail and commercial center on a desolate City-owned site.  And we’ll consolidate the Bronx operations of the City’s Department of Finance in new office space there.

But keep in mind, this five-borough tour was just a snapshot of the projects and investments we are making throughout the city.  Already, the City’s capital plan has $1.5 billion dedicated to economic development projects over the next 10 years for parks and waterfront development.

• for cultural institutions and neighborhood projects
• for creating and enhancing central business districts
• and for turning blighted City properties into community assets.

These investments will produce tens of thousands of jobs for our fellow New Yorkers.

But we will need to spend more.  OK, but what's the most salient question about this investment -- and indeed our entire five-borough economic development program?

Can we afford it?  The answer is yes. For one thing, we’re redirecting funds that would have been spent in other ways.  We’re using $630 million that was going to subsidize a new building for the New York Stock Exchange, something currently not at the top of anyone’s priority list.

We’ve essentially ended corporate welfare as we know it, by no longer paying companies -- who wouldn’t have left anyway -- to stay in our great city.

And as to borrowing for capital projects, the master capital program we’re proposing is well within the City’s bonding capacity, and its ability to meet debt service.  And it represents only a small portion of the city’s overall capital spending for items ranging from bridges to public schools.  In fact, the city plans more than $6 billion in capital spending in the current fiscal year alone.

So as to coming up with the needed monies, this is an investment we can afford to make.  In fact -- for reasons that go to our very character and destiny as a city – this is an investment we can’t afford not to make.

As New Yorkers, we have an obligation to take actions now that will secure our city’s special destiny.

This is an extraordinary city, and the reason we can really claim it to be “the world’s second home.”

And what distinguishes us from every other place is that we have always been – and always will be - the City of Opportunity.

From the outset, New York City has practically defined the restless, creative and dynamic spirit of American free enterprise -- the spirit that has been the greatest engine of job production in history.

Don’t forget, Robert Fulton, the son of penniless Irish immigrants, invented the steamboat here.  Samuel Morse, a modestly successful painter, revolutionized communications with the telegraph.

This is where the nation’s first African-American owned newspaper was published.  And where small-scale entrepreneurs gave birth to Sweet 'n' Low, and Steinway Pianos, and dozens of other companies and products we and other Americans use and enjoy every day.

And what about these four guys?  They were the total workforce of a company with one office, one coffee pot and not much of anything else.  (If you haven’t guessed, I’m the one with the Styrofoam coffee cup... and a little bit more hair than I do now.)

That photo was taken in 1982, after I’d had the pleasure of being fired from my Wall Street job.

So my colleagues and I decided to go out on our own, and take a gamble on an idea about computerizing financial services data.  It paid off beyond our wildest dreams.

The faces in this photo are like those you’d see in many a fledgling business – or storefront – every day in this city.  They don’t look like adventurers.

But that’s what makes New York City so special -- an attitude that anyone can try, and anyone can succeed.  There are so many different dreams -- and dreamers -- out there.

Maybe it’s an immigrant in Flatbush who plans to start her own catering service.  Or an electrician in Maspeth who wants to be an independent contractor.  Or a City College student with his own wild idea about what’s going to be the next big thing.

They deserve the same chance I had -- that we’ve all had.

And they deserve a City government as bold and visionary as they are.

One that understands the need to dream big and build big, even when time are hard -- especially when times are hard. Whether it’s creating Central Park 150 years ago, constructing our remarkable subway system at the turn of the last century, or digging a third water tunnel, investing in our schools, or rebuilding Lower Manhattan. These are investments we can’t afford not to make for another critical reason -- and I want to close my remarks this morning by addressing it.

We all know that our city is still recovering from the recession.

It’s left many of our fellow New Yorkers without jobs, and, too many of them, with waning hopes.

But we are facing this moment of truth much differently from the one that spawned ABNY’s creation.

Thirty years ago, a fiscal crisis devastated this city.  And what followed was a decade of lost faith and confidence in our future.

Now, compare that with two years ago. A treacherous, cowardly attack brought our city to its knees.  But we did not lose faith.

We did not lose confidence.  We did just the opposite.

We got to our feet.  We wept for our heroes. And then we proudly rededicated ourselves to making this city the greatest on Earth—and creating a job for every single person who wants to work hard.

We’ve never lost faith.

And, after what New Yorkers have shown the world, and each other, I believe we never will.

Today, we are, indeed, a better New York.

The despairing days are gone, and we’re not going to let them come back.  Ever.

We are acting now, to bring jobs, and hope, to communities throughout our city.

And we will keep doing that, so that a hundred years from now, New Yorkers will look back on us and say they passed on to us a city that was better, far better, than they found it.

In this City of Opportunity.  We will not fail.