(upbeat music) - We're now joined my good friend Jim Kirkos, who is President and CEO of the Meadowlands Regional Chamber and also a trustee of the Caucus Educational Corporation, our not-for-profit parent company.

Hey, Jim.

How you doing, buddy?

- Hey, it's good to be with you today.

I'm doing great.

Thanks for having me.

- You got it.

Talk to us.

Before we do the Convention Center, the Meadowlands Convention Center, give me a minute on why the World Cup, FIFA World Cup, you've been talking about this with us for five years now.

Why is it a big deal?

All the challenges... By the way, check out our panel discussion on all the transportation challenges and other issues, the cost, who's paying, all that.

That's on a previous program we did.

Why are you bullish on this?

- Listen, it is the greatest game in the world, and three billion people are gonna watch the World Cup final.

And despite all the challenges, it's great for New Jersey.

I think, overall, New Jersey benefits top to bottom throughout the entire state.

You know, while I'm a champion of the Meadowlands, that's my job, I think this is really good for New Jersey as a whole.

You know, today they talked a little bit about in the news about four countries having their base camps here in New Jersey.

We got nine different countries playing games during the group round games and maybe as many as 15 different countries visiting us.

It's an amazing thing and we should embrace it.

- What's the Flag Cities 2026 initiative, the fan festivals?

- Flag Cities is local fan festivals that we conceptualized three years ago, making sure that we could bring fan festivals into local communities so that local businesses had an opportunity to do some business, local residents have an opportunity to touch and feel the World Cup, especially for those that are not gonna have tickets to the game, and, more importantly, to create a there there in New Jersey so that domestic and international travelers, those that do come here, have something else to do here in New Jersey, and we want to keep 'em on this side of the Hudson River.

- Talk to us, we've been talking about the Meadowlands Convention Center for a while now.

What is it?

What's its cost?

And where are we in the process, Jim?

- Okay, so let me take you back just quickly.

We started out a bunch of years ago, you know I've been talking about this for lots of years, but we started out, and it didn't really become real until we hired an entity out of Chicago called Hunden Strategies to do a market analysis and an economic impact.

And when they completed that, it showed that a convention center, multi-use, youth and amateur sports, meetings and conventions type facility, replacing the arena at the Meadowland Sports Complex could generate $30 billion a year over a 30-year period.

There isn't a project anywhere in New Jersey that can generate $30 billion.

So we went to the Murphy administration and said, "Hey, you need to take a look at this.

We think this is worthy of further investigation."

And through the efforts of Paul Sarlo, Senator Sarlo from District 36, he helped us get a half a million dollars from the legislature to start as seed money.

And then Governor Murphy provided us with $2 million to do a full scoping assessment, which is the next level of feasibility study.

It's basically a demonstration project to take it to the next level and bring it to the next governor, which is now Governor Sherrill, and present them with the real facts that says, "Here's what it would cost to build, here's what it would look like, here's the impact it would have, and let's think about whether this is the right thing to do and move forward."

- Where is Governor Sherrill on this?

- Well, so her administration has been warm to the idea, but she still needs to see all the facts, and she hasn't seen those facts.

In her defense, we haven't presented it with her.

We hope to do that by the end of June.

And listen, she's gonna be really occupied with World Cup, so it's likely to take place after World Cup, but by the time the end of the summer's here, we will have briefed all those in the Sherrill administration about the full impact of what this amazing facility could do.

- Let's try this, Jim.

I bring this up with you virtually every interview we have.

Talk to us about the transportation slash traffic challenges potentially connected to a convention center and how they would be dealt with.

- So one of the criteria for giving us the money, the $2 million in the scoping assessment, Diane Scaccetti, who was the Governor's chief of staff and a former DOT commissioner, she had said, "Listen, you know, we really need to do a full transportation master plan for the complex."

'Cause over the years, that hadn't been done.

Each individual stakeholder, American Dream, the racetrack, the stadium, they did their own transportation plan for their own project, but there hasn't been one done for the complex.

We're doing that.

We're in the final stages of that right now.

We hired a fabulous traffic engineering firm to do that and we're gonna present a whole series of recommendations on egress and ingress to the complex and some other items there that will have a real long-lasting impact, both with the convention center and without a convention center.

- You're one of our media partners.

We talk about this a lot in terms of getting information out, how challenging it is, finding your audience and getting information to those folks, particularly in such a digitally-focused universe we're living in.

What are the most significant developments at the Chamber, particularly as it relates to communicating with your members?

- Now, listen, I think the interesting thing is people want tidbits of information and you've gotta feed them regularly, right?

And so that's what we're doing.

We've established Meadowlands Media as an outgrowth of the Chamber as a means of communicating regional and community-related events.

We have "Meadowlands Magazine."

But when it comes to the communication side, you have to show, there's gotta be mechanisms and digital mechanism, internet-based, web-based, for you to be able to communicate all that's there.

People want, they wanna read and understand at their own time and their own leisure, right?

And people will find time.

- Put you on the spot here.

- Yep.

- We're doing a series called Start Strong NJ.

The organization Start Strong NJ is all about childcare.

Connect for us, your members, the ability of your members to hire people, disproportionately women, men as well, but at the same time, deal with childcare issues.

My question is, how important is childcare to your members, Jim?

- Not only childcare, Steve.

I think since the pandemic, I mean, family care is really important, and I've seen more and more companies and more and more small, especially small and mid-sized companies, adopting policies in their organization that were typically just for large companies relative to flexibility, some remote work, and just making sure that people have the ability to take care of their children, take care of their family, because that's what keeps employees loyal and keeps them strong to their mission of their, and the job that they do.

- Jim Kirkos, President and CEO of the Meadowlands Chamber, and their website has been up.

Check out Meadowlands Media as well, our media partners.

Jim, we wish you all the best and let's have a great FIFA World Cup.

Tickets are tough to afford, but there are all kinds of ways you can connect to it, and let's make sure everyone is safe and gets to where they need to go.

Jim, thank you, my friend.

- Always good to be with you, Steve.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That's Jim Kirkos.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by NJ Transit.

United Airlines.

PSEG Foundation.

Kean University.

Newark Board of Education.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Fund for New Jersey.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

And by New Jersey Sharing Network.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

- (Narrator) Visitors traveling to New Jersey for the FIFA World Cup can use New Jersey Transit Services statewide.

Train bus, light rail, and paratransit services connect riders to Newark Liberty International Airport MetLife Stadium, New York City, and communities throughout New Jersey.

New Jersey Transit Safe Passage Initiative raises awareness about the signs of human trafficking and encourages reporting suspicious activity.

Travel information, schedules, and safe passage resources are available at njtransit.com.