Under any circumstance $250 million is a lot of money, but in an economically depressed region such as central New York, it would be a windfall. Most drone-testing sites have been able to secure investments of $10 million or so; $250 million would place central New York at the front of the pack, Brinker said.

If central New York wins the contract, Brinker said, NASA has pledged to build a facility in the region to test the reliability of various drones.

NUAIR argues that investing money to make central New York a drone-testing hub could help resuscitate a region sorely in need of a turnaround. The city of Syracuse had an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent in September, and the city has some of the worst urban poverty in the country.

For decades, the job news here has been about factories closing and jobs being lost. Winning more money to expand the drone industry could reverse that, Brinker told me.

“We want to plant our flag for the future, to say, if you want to develop a UAS, if you want to test your UAS for commercial purposes, you have to come to Central New York. This is where that's happening,” he said. “It's like the Silicon Valley for startups, right? That's what we're trying to build here.”

Many of the anti-drone protesters agree that the region needs jobs. But they argue that the jobs created by the expanding drone industry won’t help Syracuse, where only one-fourth of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher. The jobs will be for engineers and for computer scientists who will be imported from elsewhere.

“It’s not going to produce jobs for a Syracusan. It’s all high-tech engineer jobs, and for that you need a high-tech education,” said Dave Kashmer, a protester and U.S. Navy veteran.

Activists would like to see more privacy regulations before drones are embraced anywhere. They argue that they money spent on growing the drone industry could be used on infrastructure or renewable energy or other things that also bring jobs.

“Of course you can sell anything if it’s going to bring jobs and money, and this is an area that's really depressed,” Ann Tiffany, another protester, told me. “I do think there are good uses for drones, but using them for commercial purposes can morph into privacy issues and surveillance. It’s very hard to legislate and control drones.”

Tiffany was the driving force behind a resolution passed in Syracuse in 2013 prohibiting police or other city agencies from using drones until privacy regulations were put in place. It was the fifth city in the country to pass this type of legislation.

But the resolution doesn’t stop the military or private companies from testing drones in the region, something that became obvious to residents when operators lost control of a small military drone in July that had launched from Lockheed’s Owego facility. And in November 2013, a MQ-9 Reaper drone suffered a software error and crashed into Lake Ontario after taking off from a base in Fort Drum, further upstate.