The N.J. Economic Development Authority introduced hundreds of new programs during the Murphy administration — and made numerous other moves in an effort to spur economic development in the state.
As he prepares to exit his role as CEO of the EDA, we asked Tim Sullivan to list his favorite hits — and a miss — during his nearly eight years on the job. Here’s what he shared:
The big hits
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Strategic Innovation Centers: The state now has 12 SICs — covering nearly all industries and sectors and doing so in all areas of the state. And though many were introduced in 2025, Sullivan said they should not be seen as a last-minute effort to claim an innovation effort, but as legacy projects that have enormous potential and staying power.
“I think the SICs are arguably one of the most impactful things this governor has done,” he said. “When you look at places like the HELIX, which is coming out of the ground in New Brunswick and where Nokia Bell Labs will relocate its headquarters, the AI Hub in Princeton, where CoreWeave and Microsoft are working the university, NJ FAST in Hoboken, where Stevens is partnering with Prudential and Plug and Play, in Camden, where Coriell is offering world-class assets to support biomedical research and innovation — the list goes on and on,” he said.
“The transformative capacity of those kinds of things can’t be understated.”
Even more: They are built to last. This is not an instance where the EDA has awarded a grant. It is an equity partner. And the investment already has been made.
“The next governor doesn’t have to spend a penny on them,” he said. “I think any critique that these are flimsy or just last-minute add-ons is way off base.”
Sustain and Serve: To be clear, the pandemic-driven program no longer is in operation. But its impact when it was, cannot be understated, Sullivan said.
Sustain and Serve, lauded around the country, is an extraordinary example of how public dollars for a public purpose can also benefit private companies.
The program worked like this: The EDA gave money to nonprofit organizations to spend on meals from local restaurants (struggling during the pandemic) to feed those who were food insecure (on the rise during the pandemic).
“I think it’s a playbook for how you can respond to challenges,” Sullivan said. “Everybody in the world was just giving money to small businesses, including us, but Sustain and Serve was a real one-plus-one-equals-three-or-four-type situation.
“We were not just funding a restaurant by giving them a check, but by buying food and giving it to people who needed it during the peak of the pandemic, when food insecurity spiked.”
Sullivan said it showed a different facet of economic development.
“Having enhanced food security is important to the economy,” he said. “It’s not just a moral thing, though it is deeply a moral thing, it’s an economic impulse.”
The concept works in other areas, too, Sullivan said.
“The same is true with childcare,” he said. “The fact that the state of New Jersey is going to end up investing $125 million or so in child-care infrastructure, from an economic development perspective, is incredibly innovative and important.
“Anyone who has a child will tell you that childcare is a major key to their life — and is perhaps the biggest factor in how they can do their job. Childcare is an economic development issue.”
The miss (for now)
Sullivan said the EDA knew its attempt to lure the Sixers to Camden was a long shot. A calculated long shot. After all, the team practices and has its corporate headquarters in Camden, and its owners (Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment) already have key properties in New Jersey (the Prudential Center and the Devils).
That’s why the state was willing to offer nearly $1 billion in tax incentives with the promise of an arena anchoring a massive mixed-use entertainment district in Camden.
“I think the Sixers’ exercise obviously didn’t end the way we hoped it was going to, but ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it,’ as they say — and I think it shined a pretty bright light on the Camden waterfront and the opportunities there,” he said.
Sullivan compared it to an effort at the start of the Murphy administration, when the state made an effort to land the then-highly coveted HQ2 of Amazon (to be clear, the effort started under the Christie administration). Newark did not get the project, but it got a lot of attention when it was named a finalist.
“The HQ2 Amazon process was really good for Newark, even though it didn’t win,” he said. “It put Newark on the map in a different kind of way, it sharpened up the pitch for why Newark is so compelling, and I think it led to a lot of opportunities that have presented themselves in the years afterwards.”
He sees the same impact on Camden, where the EDA recently released a Request for Proposals for how a developer might use the piece of prime real estate on the Camden waterfront.
“I’m optimistic that we’re going to see some really exciting things there,” he said. “You can chalk up that effort to ‘Nothing venture, nothing gained,’ but I think Camden in the state, even though we didn’t win, gained a lot.”
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