Johnson City is among upstate New York’s most recent and creative efforts: the transformation of a century-old former shoe factory into the new home of Binghamton University’s Decker School of Nursing.
At the height of its production, the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company produced some 52 million shoes annually and employed more than 20,000 people at its facilities across Endicott, Johnson City and Binghamton. Now, the company’s long-vacant shoe and carton factory will house the nursing school, as part of the university’s Health Science and Technology Innovation Park and new School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The project is a major component of the Southern Tier Soaring revitalization plan, an ambitious next chapter in the area’s emerging healthcare economy and one that will have a lasting impact on the region.
In 2016, Governor Cuomo announced the $105 million investment that will relocate and expand Binghamton’s well-regarded nursing school. During a site dedication ceremony last fall with Binghamton President Harvey Stenger, Governor Cuomo noted that Southern Tier Soaring is helping in the area’s transition to an innovation economy.
“Shoes moved out. Who moves in?” he asked. The region’s blueprint for generating economic growth, including adaptive reuse, is answering that question, reopening the former shoe factory "as a nursing school teaching a new generation and creating synergy with the pharmacy school and hospitals.”
These are just three of the many revitalization and restoration efforts within the region that are helping the Southern Tier soar to new heights.