There have been many jokes over the years about the tendency of New Yorkers to retire to Florida. The average age of New Yorkers relocating to Florida has most likely decreased during the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles having identified 33,500 New Yorkers moving to Florida in the ten months prior to July 2021. Articles about businesses moving from New York to Florida and people who made the move individually frequent news publications. However, while Florida dominates the New Yorker-migration headlines, other states are looking for a piece of the pie as well. For example, see Ohio’s attempt to entice New York City businesses to relocate to The Buckeye State:
I photographed this Ohio advertisement to New York City businesses in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook on September 16, 2021.
Ad Cleverness
“Your business is going places the BQE can’t take you” is a clever pitch in light of the current state of the eye-sore that is the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Mr. Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress trade group, accurately referred to the BQE as “the most ridiculous, disgusting eyesore” in his call to tear the entire thing down and start over. I expressed similar sentiments about the aesthetic value of the BQE in my article on the Summit Street Bridge, which crosses over the gash it created on Hicks Street.
Ad Strategy
Ohio chose an interesting place for its ad on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook. Van Brunt itself features small restaurants, bars, convenience stores, and a few other important places frequented by locals. The main commercial highlight of Red Hook is an Ikea a few blocks away from the ad. At first, it seemed to me to be an odd place to make Ohio’s case to New York businesses.
However, there may be logic behind Ohio’s chosen location. While I am not familiar with the ins and outs of businesses in Red Hook other than street-facing establishments, there are a number of workshops and whatnot in old factory and dock buildings in the area. Moreover, there is a large amount of construction work in Red Hook generally. Perhaps Ohio has a strategy.