At Tuesday’s news conference, Steel sought to convey an understanding of the job he’ll take on beginning in August. “We’re going to work hard to strengthen the city’s traditional strong industries” while attracting new ones, he said.

He acknowledged that the task would be made that much more challenging by the budget constraints facing the city in fiscal 2011 and, especially, 2012. “Finding the ways to work smarter under these circumstances has to be the key,” said Steel.

Bloomberg pointed out that Lieber’s successor “has big shoes to fill.” During his 29-month tenure as the city’s development czar, Lieber, who’s joining Island Capital Group’s affiliated companies Anubis Advisors and C-III Capital Partners, spearheaded the city’s plans to remediate and redevelop a 62-acre swath of Willets Point in Queens and revitalize the Coney Island district in Brooklyn. He also led the initiative to put Governor’s Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park under city control, and took the lead on the Bloomberg administration’s 2009 efforts to break the stalemate between Silverstein Properties Inc. and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over redevelopment at the World Trade Center site.

In a statement when Lieber announced his resignation last month, the mayor noted that Lieber also implemented “new, creative initiatives to spur entrepreneurship.” These included the creation of low-cost incubator office space in several locations, such as the Hive@55 created by the Alliance for Downtown New York and Rudin Managemernt; targeted business training to New Yorkers looking to start companies or join start-ups; and a fund to help start-ups bridge the gap between seed funding and venture capital.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Bloomberg said he was confident that Steel would bring to his new post “the spirit of innovation” familiar from his days in the financial services sector, where he worked for 28 years at Goldman Sachs before coming to Wachovia. Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, Steel’s impending appointment was cheered by Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, who told the New York Times, “He understands the challenges, particularly those facing the financial services industry.” Wylde was unavailable for further comment Tuesday.