For Evan Weiss, the new CEO of the N.J. Economic Development Authority, one of the most important conversations about economic development starts with a surprisingly basic question — one that, he argues, too often goes unexamined.
“Zoom out for one second,” he began during a recent wide-ranging discussion with BINJE. “Economic development, as a concept, what does it even mean? What are we doing?”
Weiss’ answer is not about trying to overpower the market or replace it with government planning. Instead, it’s about acknowledging what private capital does naturally — and recognizing where it doesn’t go without help.
“To me, the idea is that the free market would do one thing,” Weiss said. “The free market in the 1980s said we’re just going to build office parks everywhere we possibly can. And what that meant is that in the 1980s and 90s, you need to try to get some office park construction to happen somewhere else, because that’s where the economy is.”
Weiss, speaking recently during a recent wide-ranging conversation with BINJE, said economic development policy exists precisely because the market tends to cluster investment in predictable ways. Left entirely on its own, capital follows the safest, fastest returns — often bypassing older cities, legacy infrastructure and communities that require more patience or creative structuring.
That’s where the EDA, in his view, comes in.
How can it help bring more investment to places the market is missing — places that once anchored the state’s economy but, over time, lost ground as investment shifted elsewhere?
“We’re trying to get more in Newark, or Paterson and Trenton; we’re trying to do more in Camden and Atlantic City,” he said. “The goal is to meet objectives about places that are not getting what they should in the free market.
“And in New Jersey, and most states, that story has been that cities are not getting the same level of investment that they used to. I care a lot about that. The governor cares a lot about that.”
Weiss is quick to reject the idea that New Jersey’s cities can be treated as a single category with interchangeable solutions. They each face different market dynamics — and effective policy has to adjust to those realities.
“The tools, for example, in a Trenton versus an Atlantic City versus a Newark, some are a common denominator,” he said. “But some are very different in terms of what you’d want to do there.”
That difference shows up clearly in how EDA approaches specific sites and redevelopment opportunities. Weiss pointed to Camden as a real-time example of how the authority is working city-by-city rather than relying solely on statewide formulas.
“I was (recently) in Camden, because EDA is working with the city on repositioning the prison site there — former state prison facility — that we’re trying to figure out what’s the highest and best use right on the Delaware River, right in the waterfront,” he said.
Weiss noted that development in many cities has changed in recent years, adding residential real estate.
Even with that, he said the issue is not whether there is enough market demand, but whether enough product is actually being built to meet it.
Weiss describes a two-track strategy for EDA: combining large, statewide programs that set broad incentives with hands-on, highly local engagement that responds to specific market gaps.
Big tools, such as Aspire grants, still matter. But equally important, Weiss said, is the unglamorous work of showing up, site by site, city by city, and asking how policy can redirect — not replace — the market where it would otherwise pass by.
It all goes back to what he feels is the purpose of economic development: Channeling what the free market is doing to policy initiatives so it’s a win-win for cities.
