company. yeah. it s a great point. there were a lot of things that had to come together. we believe that we are going to be the number one green electronics company in the world by 2018. and you can t do that if you don t have great mass transportation. you can t have a thousand people driving to work. in addition to that we wanted to build a sustainable state-of-the-art building. and then the governor and the mayor showed us that we could do all of that right in new jersey. and i think the topping point, i didn t want to move out of state. i didn t want to lose a thousand employees. so i think it was really a win-win-win all around. mr. mayor, take us inside the pitch. because we know that you probably could have saved some money by going elsewhere. you said this wasn t a bottom line decision by panasonic. what did you say to convince them? i think joe knows the biggest challenge we have in newark is people have a perception of our city that stopped 20, 30, 40 years ago. you rea
yeah. he visited illinois. we had 3200 national guard from our state in afghanistan. wow. right then. so let me ask you on something that illinois is doing. you guys are actually moving forward with high speed rail. there s been a debate for 25 years in florida about getting high speed rail. but you guys are actually moving forward and you ve had a line so if chicago cub fans want to go see the cardinals, or vice versa, that line is going to be completed when? 2014. we re the first in the nation to break ground for high speed rail. chicago to st. louis. it goes all through our state. and the trains go 110 miles an hour. yeah. we d like to go 220 on another line. we re looking at chicago to champaign and then maybe to st. louis from there. then 220 miles an hour is because of new track? yeah. new track and also we re building rail cars. we had a company come from wisconsin to illinois because wisconsin kind of gave up on high speed rail. this company nippon shiro is
honestly this is a company that lives its values and made a decision where to go not just on the bottom line but where they could best manifest who they say they are. it s an extraordinary leader here who is the first american leader of the company that s leading up the north american division. why do you guys decide not to move out of state? why did you decide what were the other options? the first option was the west coast. that s where our other competitors have moved over the last few years out of new jersey. and we have facilities, the other ones we looked at, of course, new york, right here in the city, and georgia and illinois we had facilities. but we have a very passionate mayor and a very persuasive governor and they have great teams and they did a great job of convincing us of the benefits of staying in new jersey. so what put newark, new jersey over the top in terms of i get the team work and i get that they re convincing personalities but ultimately, it s got
rosenblum you ve had on this show was actually working with walgreens for these wellness centers. yes. and he s a good friend. it s important. they re in a lot of communities where as the governor said, half the places where these first food places are places where people have limited access to fresh food. it s a forward thinking company on a number of levels. it is. howard, i was just thinking because our friend hal had talked about these wellness centers and walgreens. i started thinking with the technology that we have and now where you can have video conferencing really cheaply on the internet wouldn t it be wonderful if there were stores like walgreens where people can come in and get it s happening already. walmart. wellness checks. here is the big and flu shots. you ve got to change the way we pay for medicine because right now illness gets rewarded not wellness. right. financial incentives have everything to do with people s behavior. it s not enough