Categories for Analysis

Oct 18

2022

Bills stadium to be a paler shade of green

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The Buffalo Bills’ new $1.4 billion stadium won’t be as green or sustainable as it could be. That’s because the stadium will not seek LEED certification, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a globally used accreditation program from the U.S. Green Building Council that helps builders reduce their buildings’ impact on the environment via the energy they consume and how they operate. Of the six NFL stadiums built since 2010, three are LEED certified and a fourth follows LEED guidelines. But the new Bills stadium won’t be LEED[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 12

2022

NFL stadiums go green. Will Buffalo’s?

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When it rains in Seattle — which it does just about every other day — the water landing on the roof of Climate Pledge Arena is collected and used by Zambonis to make ice for the hockey team. That ice is actually smoother to skate on than municipal water used in most hockey rinks. In Atlanta, when Falcons fans buy beer or pop and recycle the can, Mercedes-Benz Stadium cashes in the aluminum and uses the money to build new houses through Habitat for Humanity. And in Minneapolis, waste generated during Vikings games is reused, recycled or composted — and[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 5

2022

Podcast: How Amazon wins tax breaks

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On today’s Investigative Podcast, reporter J. Dale Shoemaker sits down with journalist and author Alec MacGillis to talk about Amazon’s expansion in Western New York, the future of Rust Belt cities like Buffalo and MacGillis’s book, “Fulfillment: America in the Shadow of Amazon.” MacGillis’s book explores how Amazon and other large companies have transformed American cities and exacerbated wealth disparities. Cities like Seattle, for example, where Amazon is headquartered, have no shortage of high-paying jobs in tech, but are rapidly becoming unaffordable except for the very richest people. Meanwhile, cities like Buffalo and Niagara Falls have experienced steep population decline and[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 3

2022

How Amazon plays the leverage game

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Cathy Rayhill was floored when she heard Amazon wanted to build a three-million-square-foot warehouse on Grand Island. “It was completely inappropriate for our community, that was my first thought,” she said. Rayhill envisioned Amazon’s trucks wearing down the island’s two sets of bridges to the point where the town would have to close them and raise taxes to fix them. Not only could the warehouse operation put the island’s infrastructure at risk, it could harm the environment — all for 1,000 jobs that would not pay much above the minimum wage.  Rayhill and her neighbors were outraged and began organizing[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 28

2022

Raises (but no reforms) for Buffalo police

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Buffalo police just got a raise. The city got nothing — no concessions, no reforms — in exchange. That’s the upshot of more than three years of negotiations between the Brown administration and the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, whose contract expired in July 2019. When talks stalled in early 2021, the dispute put in the hands of a state arbitrator, who was empowered only to deal with pay.  Reform — the mantra of demonstrators and elected officials alike in the summer of 2020 — was sidelined. On July 19, a state arbitration panel awarded Buffalo police raises and retroactive pay worth[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 19

2022

No relief for local taxpayers on Bills stadium

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Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz likes to say the new stadium deal he and Gov. Kathy Hochul cut with the Buffalo Bills gets the county “out of the football business.” The deal, however, does not get the county out of the business of paying for a football stadium.  The county’s annual costs for the Bills current home, Highmark Stadium, have ranged from $10.7 million to $12.6 million in recent years.  Estimates provided to county lawmakers for paying off bonds to cover the county’s share of new stadium construction have come in lower, between $7.7 million and $9 million annually. The latest[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 15

2022

Big subsidies for luxury apartments

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State and local governments eagerly offering tax subsidies to a luxury, waterfront apartment project sounds like something out of a developer’s fantasy. But that’s exactly what’s happening in North Tonawanda. The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency on Wednesday unanimously approved — without debate — a $7.2 million subsidy package for a developer building 110 apartments along the Niagara River marketed as “luxurious living in elegant surroundings.” The project is a third phase of developer VisoneCo’s aims for the section of River Road just north of Tonawanda Island. The first, which is finished, features apartments, townhomes and commercial space. The second,[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 2

2022

Inside Amazon’s massive subsidy in Niagara

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Robert Taylor, a lifelong Niagara County resident, is thinking about moving south. Probably Florida. But Taylor isn’t chasing the warm weather and low property taxes that have drawn tens of thousands of other Northerners to the South. Rather, he’s running away from something.  Amazon.  The online retail giant plans to open a 3-million-square-foot warehouse less than a mile from his Packard Road home in the Town of Niagara. Amazon plans to employ 1,000 people at the warehouse and hundreds of cars and trucks will travel to and from the facility daily. The warehouse will be a “first mile” distribution center[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post