How GRE sees regional economic development

The president and CEO of Greater Rochester Enterprise describes the economic development organization as a “concierge for business.”

“In the typical Rochester fashion, we’re one phone call away from solving a problem,” Matt Hurlbutt says. “So, regardless of what (a business) needs, we make that easy.”

GRE serves nine counties in the Finger Lakes region. It offers guidance and project coordination to help area businesses grow through business expertise, talent, research and development assets, real estate, utilities, and state and local incentives.

According to its new report on the organization’s 2025 results, GRE helped develop 143 new projects through outreach, marketing, and sustained relationship building while managing a total of 281 business attraction and expansion projects. 

Some of the largest projects by dollar value in the 2025 report include the food and beverage processor HP Hood, and QED Technologies International, McAlpin Industries, and MWI Inc., manufacturers of optics polishing equipment, sheet metal, and engineered carbon, respectively.

GRE also said it has secured over $6.7 billion in new capital investments for building or updating manufacturing plants and operations centers over its 23 years of operation. During that time, those capital projects have resulted in the hiring of 24,072 and the retention of 27,291 people.

The Beacon asked Hurlbutt a few questions about the economic health of the Greater Rochester area. His answers, edited for length and clarity, are below.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Overall, what were the results of 2025 for our region? At the onset of 2025, there was a lot of attention given to the potential impact of the incoming Trump administration’s tariff policy. Did changes at the federal level noticeably affect local businesses?

MATT HURLBUTT: Well, after the policy started, there were then the adjustments made, especially in North America, with our partners, our trusted allies and industry sectors. And then as the nuances with semiconductor and agriculture and other things were negotiated, they also changed, so it’s very dependent on the company, their supply chain, and their customers.

So it’s very difficult to make a blanket statement on the impact, especially at this point of what was happening in early 2025 and really throughout 2025. Generally speaking, especially when you look at agriculture, food and beverage processing has been very strong for us, as well as our optics, photonics and imaging companies. So it’s very complicated.

Also, I think, we saw a real pickup of activity in the last quarter of 2025, even with the tariff discussions, some of the federal budgetary changes, trade negotiations, supply chain, and the shifts in markets. I do think that there are a number of opportunities for folks and they’ve decided to move ahead. I think a lot of people may have been waiting for perhaps calmer waters and they’ve decided, “You know, if we’re going to do this, we need to go because costs are a concern.” I don’t know that they’re going to come down.

So there might be concerns (about 2025 economic policy changes), but, you know, I think this plays to Rochester’s strength.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Another important economic element in 2025 was with advanced technology, such as the boom in artificial intelligence development. Was Rochester impacted by this interest in these industries?

HURLBUTT: Companies are on an innovative trend as they look to medical devices, communication, food and beverage processing, all of those elements. So it’s not just in semiconductors for technologies (used in AI) that bode well for us, (but also) in energy innovation, material science, and next-generation semiconductor supply chain.

We have so many outstanding tier 1 and tier 2 supply chain companies for semiconductors that many of our optics firms like to tell us they can’t make a chip in the United States without them. And it’s important to understand as well that photonics and laser technology and material science gets to the next generation of not just chips, but packaging.

(Packaging is the final step in semiconductor manufacturing which both protects semiconductor chips from the elements and gives the ability to connect them electrically to a terminal. Substances used in this process which relate to several industries in Rochester include die attach materials, wire bonds and flip-chip interconnects, substrates, and sealing components.)

This applies to advanced computing capabilities as well. (GRE’s work) with the University of Rochester on work on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence shows this is changing and advancing as we speak. There’s also synergy among our friends at University of Buffalo, SUNY Albany, and the state’s investment in that as well as the governor’s recent proposal on quantum computing. 

We have this very interesting business ecosystem where it’s so easy to connect, because of the outstanding people that we have in this community with our colleges and universities, but also our existing talent pool. And the fact that we draw from other universities across New York as well as other states helps us do our work in order to solve some problems, whether it be medical devices, advanced manufacturing, or energy innovation.

So when it comes to our optics, photonics, imaging, laser technology, our college (and) university system, the fact that we’re in the middle of upstate, all of that plays well for us and also why we see a lot of activity.

ROCHESTER BEACON: The 2025 GRE Results report also mentions the food and beverage industries as a key industry for growth as well. What can you point to that shows its importance to our region’s economy?

HURLBUTT: In a similar way to what we did with our friends at UR and RIT optics community, we’re involved right now with the Genesee Valley Regional Market Authority and other partners in agriculture to better understand local crop production and how that relates to food and beverage processing strengths. 

From a very simple standpoint, we’ve got Baldwin Richardson Foods here and certainly Barilla. We’ve seen the announcement at HP Hood this year in Batavia (a $25.9 million expansion project at its Genesee Valley Agri-Business Park), leveraging some of the milk strength. We see Fairlife’s investment here ($650 million to build the largest dairy processing facility in the Northeast), but also Seneca Foods and Motts. Then you get into the viticulture of our wineries, craft brewing and growing vegetables across our ecosystem. So we’ve got an outstanding growing capability. 

We’re working now to understand what is next when we talk about farming and getting from farm to table, especially with leveraging markets in New York City, Boston, and our processing capabilities to look at what’s coming next and supporting what already exists in the Grow NY program.

We’re lucky to have Wegmans here in our backyard who are very interested in working with local growers to meet market needs as they continue to grow too. So the synergy in that industry sector is very, very important to us.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Are there any industries or fields that you see as important to the region’s economic health that people aren’t as aware of?

HURLBUTT: What I think, based on what GRE sees, is the interesting synergy between life science and medical device sensing technology because we have all of those elements. We are a sweet spot for that when you look at UR, RIT, and that ability to have translational research from the medical campus, as well as our friends at Rochester Regional Health who are doing some interesting work on this too.

When we look at next-generation personalized medicine devices that leverage artificial intelligence, but also computing capability and the sensing photonics, optics technologies, I think (it) is a really interesting opportunity to solve a lot of problems not just in service to people in the health system, but also some of like those advanced medical capabilities.

The other big thing is that, when we look at the energy challenges, UR Laser Lab is doing a lot of work on fusion energy. So when we talk about energy innovation, our material science capabilities, thin roll-to-roll capabilities, the role that optics and photonics play in reducing the need for power in computing, and the integrated photonics again, laser technology is another really critical industry.

(What) some people don’t know about is the work that we’ve done with helping small companies identify new markets, which has been very important post-COVID. Small firms that are 10 to 99 employees and $1 million to $50 million in revenue. Helping them identify new markets (and) sell products and services outside the region has been a great growth program. There are some outstanding firms, some of which we’ve served a couple times, that you might not have heard of, but they’re doing some really innovative work across the world as well.

So it’s everything. It’s the big projects from Fairlife and others to some of these smaller businesses, helping them grow and reach new markets outside of the region. We’re pretty proud of that and we’ve got some great companies that are growing here locally. 

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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