Born and Raised in Bingo

I ran into into the Business Journal News Network’s president, Marny Nesher, at the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce’s 54th Annual Meeting and Dinner in mid-May.

“Welcome to Binghamton,” I razzed her with a smile, knowing full well she doesn’t get down to the Southern Tier that often from the home office in Syracuse. I can give that razzing because I get it all the time when I’m in Northeast Pennsylvania. We all tend to be a little protective of our turfs and our peeps. 

“Well, what’s your next guest viewpoint going to be on,” Marny jousted back. “Maybe something on Binghamton’s revitalization? Or is it transformation? ‘Trans-for-mation’.” She repeated the word phonetically to tease me about it. It got me thinking. 

So, as Dr. Seuss might say, I thunk. And I thunk. I thunk a big hunk. I thunk some junk. I thunk with spunk. Then I thunk, what if I write about where I was born and raised and how it’s changed and grown a great big heart. It’s not Whoville. It’s Binghamton. Sometimes called Bingo. 

Sidebar: Hey, did you know Wee Willie Keeler played for the Binghamton Bingos minor-league baseball team in the 1880s before he became a Hall of Fame hitter, playing for the New York Highlanders, predecessors of one New York Yankees ball club? Wee Willie’s claim to fame was the phrase: “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.” Good advice for players of baseball and practitioners of business.

What’s in a name?

Bingo, the Parlor City, Valley of Opportunity, Triple Cities, Southern Tier, Greater Binghamton, Burg of the Bing (a friend coined that one; I don’t think it’s going to last like Bingo has). We Binghamtonians have seen the nicknames come and go. 

And the slogans too: “Carousel Capital,” “Let the fun shine in.” “Look what’s up in downtown Binghamton.” “Home to Innovation.” “The Good Life.” As long as there are wordsmiths, slogans will come and slogans will go. Heck, I’ve written some of them. 

Three decades of business in Binghamton

As you’ve surely guessed by now, I was born and raised in Binghamton. Well, Johnson City actually (Go Wildcats!). I’ve lived and worked here all my life, along with my dear wife (an “import” from Italy at the tender age of two, whose tailor father immigrated to Binghamton to start his own business) and our two adult children — one in Rochester and one who lives here with her husband. They both work in Binghamton as well. (Hmm, I guess I am proud to consider myself a net importer, a Binghamton economy builder!)

Ah, economics bring us back to the T word: Transformation. I don’t know if Binghamton is transforming. I know it’s changing. But towns always change. Everything changes, right? It’s either growing or it’s dying. Is Binghamton evolving? Revitalizing? Becoming more of a college town? Adapting? Yes, I’d say all those words fit. 

I’ve worked in downtown Binghamton for 30 years. Called two different buildings my work home in those three decades. In 1988, the Press Building housed lawyers, the Broome County Industrial Development Agency, Fred Riger Advertising Agency, and a bunch of other professional type offices. Today that edifice, Binghamton’s second tallest, is a high-end Binghamton University student-housing complex called the Printing House, filled to the rafters with college students. And it’s just one of a plethora, perhaps soon an oversaturation, of housing options for students downtown.

In 1988, there were more business suits and leather shoes and fewer shorts and flip-flops. For lunch, we had the Argo, the Ritz, Rolando’s, or McDonalds. 

By 1998, Riger had moved down the street to the Centre Plaza building. 

The mix was more of the same I’d say, with a few loft apartments for students now popping up, mostly business, professional and governmental type jobs, and some light manufacturing and retail stores such as Boscov’s and Berger’s ski shop. For a bagel and coffee, Java Joe’s on State Street was the go-to cool space. 

But by 2008, when Binghamton University had firmly planted its downtown-campus flag in the ground with the Downtown Center, and when 20 Hawley (formerly not-so-lovingly referred to as the black staple) became an upscale student village located down the street from the BU Downtown Center and across the street from the Arena, the change — the revitalization, the new energy, the flip-flops — became more noticeable every day. Here’s a new coffee shop. There’s a new restaurant. Today, it’s easier to order a locally brewed craft beer downtown than a Budweiser. These are good things.

In mid-2018, to grab a coffee downtown I might wait in line with a nicely diverse blend of students and professionals at the Strange Brew on Washington Street. I heard on Bridge Run Sunday, there was a two-hour wait next door at Craft, where craft beer and sliders are served by hipsters with large beards. Love it.

Dress code a leading indicator

Today’s executives in any downtown are wont to follow the Mark Zuckerberg t-shirt and jeans model, while the freshly minted School of Management grads looking for their first real job are more likely to be the ones in pinstripe power suits. Sure as dandelions, every May I see the young bucks and does pounding the pavement on Court Street in their wingtips and stilettos. 

But it’s all good in the neighborhood. The students have helped fill our empty storefronts and lofts and populate bars and restaurants throughout the city. And, of course, they handsomely line the pockets of salivating downtown landlords. Supply and demand is always at play. It’s the ebb, it’s the flow, it’s transformation, I suppose. 

The sights and sounds downtown make for a lively mix these days. And it’s about to go viral, across the river to Johnson City. JC is gearing up to welcome the Binghamton University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and a new nursing school to my old stomping grounds on the south side of the village. It’s about time. The decrepit old Endicott Johnson buildings that still dot my hometown are being bought, sold, and revitalized. There’s talk of making one a regional beer distribution hub. Who woulda thunk that? And would George Johnson approve of his old army-boot factory being reborn as a beer warehouse? Doesn’t matter. Time marches on and waits for no one. Even in the Southern Tier.

It’s change. Pure and simple. We adapt. We evolve. We are destroyed. We are recreated.                       

Steve Johnson is managing partner of Riger Marketing Communications. Contact him at sdjohnson@riger.com