Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Celebrates More Than $400 Million Investment in the State’s Capital City

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul celebrated the FY26 Enacted Budget investments in Albany’s downtown by launching the Championing Albany’s Potential (CAP) Initiative, a more than $400 million, collaborative, State-led effort to revitalize Albany’s downtown core. This includes $200 million in funding to plan and implement projects that reinvigorate commercial corridors, strengthen small businesses, promote housing growth, and revitalize underutilized real estate and open spaces. The CAP initiative also includes up to $150 million to transform cultural experiences in and around Albany’s Downtown such as the State Museum, up to $40 million to advance plans to reconnect communities divided by Interstate 787 and $1.5 million for public safety enhancements.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Thank you. Great announcer; is he from some game show somewhere? Well done, well done. It is so great to be here. This is a place I have visited more often than I'm going to admit. After watching something at Capital Repertory Theater or stopping by the Irish Museum and hearing one of my — I think it's called the Capital Region's first-ever, all female Gaelic band Triskele; anybody see them? Okay, I have to discover your own local talent here, but they're really funny, and they're great and I've actually had them over to the residence to entertain — so came over here for drinks afterward is my point.

I want to thank Christian, his family for welcoming us here, and I'm here because I believe in Albany. I believe in this city. I love it here, I love it. I am enthralled with its history. I'm enamored of its people and now I'm inspired by its great potential. I have so much faith in Albany and its people that in this year's Budget I proposed to spend $400 million to reinvigorate our downtown.

Actually then-Assemblymember, Pat Fahy, said it was the “best Christmas present ever.” So I want to thank her and all the local officials for believing in this. So my friends, we fought, we envisioned, we won, and we got it done, and many of you who played a role in this once-in-a-generational opportunity — and I want to thank each and everyone.

And I want to acknowledge my leadership team — they look a little battled and bruised. They probably are the people that would really like to be done with the Budget March 31, even more than me, but they have fought hard, they've worked so hard, and I want to thank Karen Persichilli Keogh, the Secretary to the Governor for being such a great champion of this city.

It didn't hurt that the Budget Director is from here, so I didn't have to twist his arm too hard to get this money; I think he might even have gone a little higher — hey, there's always next year, Blake. Let's see if we have any money left after the feds are done with us. Hope Knight, thank you for your leadership and driving economic change and development, especially in downtowns; and Jeanette Moy, the Commissioner of OGS who basically owns more property than God — I want to thank her for all she does as well; and Marie Therese Dominguez, our Commissioner of DOT, making sure these roads are looking good and she's very excited about 787 — she'll get it done, she'll get it done.

Our County Executive Dan McCoy, who's so optimistic and positive about what we can do together, the county, the state, the city working together. And, of course, someone who's been a friend of mine long before I was Governor, before I was Lieutenant Governor, our great Mayor, Kathy Sheehan — and this is always going to be part of your legacy, your story. All our local officials, members of the REDC, our business owners — especially those who never gave up on the city, even when some counted it down and out because we never did — and all of our friends in labor who can't wait to get the shovels in the ground.

So I want to say this, thank you; strong labor.

I'll give you a little insight into how this came about. I invited George Hearst over for breakfast at the Governor's residence. Everybody said, “You got to get to know George; get him to like you. Maybe they'll write really nice stories about you in the TU.” Still working on that part, George. Maybe they're better than they would've been, I don't know.

But then we said, you know what? Let's do something really unique. Let's bring together the thought leaders, the movers and shakers, people who love this community to their core and have them over for an evening of conversation and ideas at the Governor's residence. So he had me at “hello” on that one; that was a great idea. We made it happen just this past December, I think, and then in my Budget just a couple weeks later, we got to yes. And so I want to thank him for his vision for this community, his family's depth of caring about this community — it's always been there, and for all they do at Hearst Publications, I want to thank him as well.

Let's give him a round of applause.

This has been my home for over a decade. You can sometimes catch me chatting it up with everybody who works at the Pearl Street Diner early in the morning — they know exactly what I want when I walk in the door. Sometimes they have cider at Nine Pin because I just love the story of the mom and her son — he got out of school and was a chemistry major, and, I mean, my kids didn't do that. Anyhow, I could have used something useful, like either someone who owns a winery, a brewer, or a distillery, or a cidery, or a plumber or mechanic — I didn't need another lawyer in the family, but that's another story; I'll take it up at the family dinners.

Sometimes I'm just cheering my beloved Buffalo Bills as many of you at McGeary's and, for the record, the most popular thing I did for this community was to get the law changed when the Bills were playing — remember, over in London? And we had to have the bars be able to open at 9 a.m. so we could start drinking early on a Sunday.

We got it done. I'm really proud of that. But I walk the streets and I feel the energy. I feel a city that's just so poised for greatness because that's part of our DNA here, and I want to harness that. I see the sold out crowds at MVP Arena. I went and watched college basketball there with my little granddaughter so I could let her see what these really tall women could do — yeah, they’re a lot bigger than your grandma. Just all people came for basketball, the line stretched around the Palace Theater. Is that not a gorgeous facility? I've been to theaters all over New York. That beats a lot of buildings on Broadway. This has more charm and more history.

You go to Washington Park with the tulip fest. This is just; these are events that bind the community together; shared experiences, memories for your children, part of our story here. But while I see all this, I also have to recognize a different reality in certain parts of our downtown.

There are some boarded up storefronts, some bleak, rather empty, streets, and some places where crime is very much top of mind and a concern. For decades, a place like downtown Albany the region was just trying to jumpstart change. They wanted something so desperately to happen, but they lost so much of the population in the later part of the 20th century. All of Upstate did. If you want an expert on urban and suburban decline in Upstate New York during the 60s, and 70s, and 80s, and 90s, I'm the person who can tell that story from personal experience.

I have no family left in the State; they all left for jobs. They wanted to stay — big Irish-Catholic family. I'm always having to go down for somebody's birthday, wedding, baptism, daughter's bridal shower. They don't live here. And it pains me because they should all be here.

And it wasn't anybody's fault — businesses left, manufacturing left, but now we're starting to feel the opportunities. Look at the University at Albany, look at UAlbany. Havidán Rodríguez is here, what a champion for driving change here. That is a catalyst for bringing so many young, smart people here.

But then, just when you think you're getting back, the pandemic comes and slams us. And it was a devastating blow to small businesses. But even that — with so many workers, government workers who were working remotely because they could not go into their offices, we had to protect everyone — that just was hard to come back from.

And then you get inflation right afterward. Everything's going up. Harder for our small retail and businesses to make it. And then, why don't we just throw some tariffs on top of that while we're at it? Life has been hard. No fault of anybody's, and I recognize that, but it does not dampen the enthusiasm of the people in this room. So I know we have a shared belief that Albany can and will achieve new heights, and I'm very bullish on this community.

And we know the history. This is the heart of our Capitol. It's the oldest chartered city in America and it's a place where laws are written, policies are driven, that the rest of the nation pays attention to because we are New York. Movements start in our state and spread to the rest of the nation. We're still that place. That's not our past history, that is us today as we meet the challenges that are coming out of Washington and everything else that's happening. Because we're tough New Yorkers, and the nation looks to us. And that's why I am so committed to making this capital, the capital of the great State of New York, the very best it can be. Very best.

I'll also say, when I first became Lieutenant Governor and basically took up residency here in the Capitol Region — hotel, but was still home — everybody was talking about. “How come Buffalo got the ‘Buffalo billion?’ Remember the envy? Yeah. I heard a lot about it. You can walk around, do a little smack talking yourselves, because since I've been Governor, I didn't deliver a billion dollars for this area. I didn't do two or three. I have delivered $4 billion of improvements — funding for major projects that people before could have done, and they just ignored: Replacing the Livingston Avenue Bridge, getting that done, reimagining 787 because why not? Why don't we open up that gorgeous river to people to recreate and live and to just embrace it?

Look at the communities all across New York that did not capitalize on having a wonderful waterfront. They've got this little spit of a river in San Antonio and they got all this River Walk. I’ve got the Hudson River, right? I’ve got the Hudson River.

As we continue to attract the smartest people here, we're going to make the Wadsworth (Center) worthy of the rest of this community and say we are going to have the best, the world's finest resident scientists there.

And we're looking for bold proposals for Liberty Park, one of our downtown's largest development site. That is a gift. You know how many communities would love to have this fresh start? Place where you can say, “We can build a whole new future here.” So I'm proud that we're all working so hard to capitalize on this.

And as I mentioned, on the outskirts of our community, a national semiconductor resurgence and all kinds of programs that I can barely pronounce that he's doing over there. All I know is I just gave you a billion dollars from something that sounds like lithography-something. What is that again? It's a big word. But big words, big dollars. What the heck? That's how I bring highly paid individuals here, right?

And you know what else we need to do? We need to give them housing. It's very cool for someone, whether you're a young person starting out or an empty nester, to me that moved to my downtown. The suburbs were nice for raising kids, I wanted to be where the energy was. I didn't want to feel so old. I wanted to be with the young people and just feel the energy. That's why we need a walkable city with more housing.

New mixed-use apartments on Clinton Square. It's happening. It's happening. And powered by our DRI grants. That’s a great, great program. We’re continuing to invest in that.

And now let's talk about that. $400 million. All right, so Blake, is this $4.4 billion then by the time I'm done? That's even better bragging rights than you thought when you walked in the door. So let's break it down. Half of the money, $200 million, goes toward downtown development projects right here.We'll bring downtown neighborhoods, desolate blocks back to life, the shuttered storefronts, abandoned buildings. We team up with people in business and transform projects that'll just make sure people want to be here. Statement projects that are talked about elsewhere, not run-of-the-mill, because we're unique — this is Albany.

No one has our history; no one has our future. That's what I'm talking about — the boldness, the ambition. We all have that, we just need it unleashed and a little bit of money — $400 million can do just that. So here's what we're doing. We're going to bring people together, experts, expert guidance from a planning firm we just brought on board, and they've done fabulous work. They have a great record of revitalizing Queens, and Long Island City and the Manhattan Garment District, so they know what they're doing — and we're also committing $150 million to bolster our cultural institutions around the city, places like the museum and places that give Albany its rich identity.

So I want to make sure that we continue to draw tours here to our museums, our art galleries, our theater, and what I love about this project in Albany — we can handle the scale. We're not talking about New York City. We're not talking about an area that's just so big that you do this. You barely notice the difference. These will be high impact projects that as soon as they're done, people come back if they've not been here in a long time, and it'll say, “Aha, it is different. They were right,” and that's what I'm looking for, those bold statements of ambition and I'm real excited. That's exactly what we're planning to deliver on.

I say, “Let's get it done.” We also have to capitalize on the proximity to the Hudson River. As I go boating on that river, I know every nook and cranny of that river even hit the bottom once since there's some places where there is a little shale — took six months to get repaired, but that's okay. So we're also committing $40 million for the next phase of 787 redevelopment. I want to connect people and businesses to the water, just like Henry Hudson probably would've expected we would've figured out by now, right?

All these years later, because people know that people congregate near water; water is healing, water is calming, water's a place you can throw down a blanket and have a picnic with your kids and look at the birds and just, it just creates those family memories that I'm so looking for.

So it's going to be precious. And also, we mentioned some of the neighborhoods that people are anxious about crime. We have leaned hard into dealing with crime all across the state. I've said it a hundred times. Public safety is my number one priority, and Albany PD works so hard, and our state police are helping support them, and our county sheriffs are supporting them all working together; and as Governor, I've already invested $47 million in Albany to help drive down crime.

We're making real progress, Mayor knows this — shootings are down 7 percent from last year, the lowest point since the start of the pandemic. When people were not talking about crime so much, so lean into that.

But we still have more to do. That's why my plan includes an additional $1 million directly for Albany PD so they can get the technology and the innovation, the equipment they need. $500,000 for the Sheriff's Office — make sure they have the resources to have what they need. Paying for overtime shifts, enhanced nighttime patrols.

You want to have a nightlife, you got to feel safe; people need to see police officers and again, as I mentioned, the upgraded police technology. I have seen this work so successfully. We get modernized technology. Those criminals don't have a chance and we're coming after them. I'm coming after them because no matter what we build here, if we don't have that foundation of a sense of safety, and it doesn't matter, they still won't come.

So that has to occur now as we're imagining our future here. So as I wrap up my friends, you have many more speakers to hear from — this is a defining moment. Can we meet the challenge that I have laid down? Can we come together? And I've been involved in so many community re-imagining projects, including 31 years ago when I first became a town board member, and we had to work on our update of the master plan. And I'll tell you, it got contentious because everybody has their own idea. I am asking you at the outset — don't squander this opportunity. The money is there now. Right now you have a Governor, an Upstate Governor — haven't had one in a hundred years. I'm here because I know how important this is. I want to get this done.

So come to the meetings because this is going to be driven by the community and the leaders in this room come with a spirit of openness and collaboration. And don't let petty differences drive such a wedge that all of a sudden people say that was another one for the books that we just put on the shelf — that happened for my entire life in Buffalo.

The shelves filled with ideas that were stopped by different advocacy groups or this lawsuit, or that lawsuit. So much stuff doesn't get done because of obstructionism — stand guard against that; if it's coming, you make it go away; you fight hard against it. Use our media resources, use our voices, use our public officials to stand up and say, “We have a chance.” Family, and team, and friends: let's not blow it, let's get it done. This is our moment. Thank you very much, everybody.