Categories for Featured

May 24

2022

East Side residents “exhausted” by inequities

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Boarded-up buildings. Vacant lots. Gun violence. Lack of economic investment and jobs. A single grocery store where residents can buy quality food at affordable prices.  These are issues East Side residents have dealt with for years.  In the wake of the mass shooting that claimed 10 lives at the community’s lone supermarket — the Tops store on Jefferson Avenue — residents who spoke with Investigative Post last week said they’re hopeful some good can come from the tragedy. Hopeful, but not optimistic. Several residents said they’ve heard the rhetoric about real change coming to the East Side before. They’re still[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 11

2022

Yet another failing Niagara Falls project

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A lot of big ideas have been floated for revitalizing the City of Niagara Falls and most of them have ended the same way: in disappointment.  Residents are still waiting for Niagara Falls Redevelopment — a company owned by New York City real estate developer Howard Milstein — to do something with the 140 acres it acquired downtown as part of a 1997 Master Redevelopment Agreement with the city.  The most-recent effort to renovate and reopen the Hotel Niagara, an iconic 1920s-era building on Rainbow Boulevard that has been vacant for more than a decade, stalled last year amid financing[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 27

2022

School violence not limited to McKinley

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District officials have taken steps to address violence in Buffalo schools since a February  shooting and stabbing at McKinley High School left a student hospitalized. Violence in and around schools isn’t limited to fights between students. There have been reports in the news of students attacking their teachers and administrators. Parents have been involved, too, administrators told Investigative Post, attacking school staff, including security guards.   An Investigative Post analysis of four years of 911 data found calls to Buffalo school locations have increased by nearly 20 percent since the 2018-19 school year, the last full year before the pandemic.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 19

2022

The Roswell-Russia connection

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For more than a decade, Roswell Park Cancer Institute has been doing business with a leading Russian oligarch with long-standing ties to Vladimir Putin. The annual reports of the charitable foundation that raises money for Roswell tell part of the story: The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has been a leading individual donor to the foundation, giving in excess of $1 million in four of the past five years. But Abramovich’s charity isn’t the problem.  Rather, at issue are Roswell’s relationships with for-profit companies whose investors include Abramovich and a Russian business partner, both sanctioned since the outbreak of the war[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Mar 28

2022

Taxpayer hit on Bills stadium tops $1 billion

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The fear: A new Bills stadium would cost taxpayers $1 billion. The reality: It’s going to cost even more. The deal announced Monday commits the state to spending $600 million upfront to help cover construction costs. Erie County would put up an additional $250 million. But the subsidies don’t stop there. The state is also on the hook for $100 million over 15 years to cover stadium maintenance and repairs. The county and the state authority created to oversee the stadium would be obligated to kick in $180 million over the 30-year lease for capital improvements. Most, if not all of[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Mar 16

2022

Bills stadium plans are an outlier

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Most modern NFL stadiums operate as year-round destinations. Their development includes shops, restaurants, bars and the like, or they are built in proximity to existing entertainment venues.  While the offerings vary, the goal is the same: provide reasons for people to visit beyond 10 football games a year.  The Bills are demanding a $1.4 billion, 62,000-seat, open-air stadium in Orchard Park. Those plans make no mention of ancillary development common at most other stadiums. What’s more, Town of Orchard Park officials told Investigative Post the team has not spoken to them about any related development. The apparent lack of ancillary[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Mar 3

2022

Cash severance pay tops $300,000

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Buffalo schools, and the taxpayers who fund the district, are paying Kriner Cash more than $300,000 to go away. Cash resigned under pressure as superintendent Wednesday night. He’s been criticized of late for his frequent absences from the district, his handling of numerous issues related to the pandemic and a spike in violence in city schools, including a shooting and stabbing at McKinley High School on Feb. 9. Those issues led to increased tensions with a growing number of School Board members and a dare he issued to the board on Feb. 16 to fire him if they were unhappy[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Feb 28

2022

State historically not a big funder of stadiums

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Many fans and politicians are expecting, even counting on, the state to put up most of the money the Buffalo Bills want from the public to help finance construction of a new stadium.   The state has played no such role, however, in the construction or renovation of major league stadiums and arenas in the recent past.  The Bills have proposed a $1.4 billion, 60,000 seat stadium in Orchard Park and published reports have suggested the team’s owners want public financing to cover the “vast majority” of the cost.  “That’s certainly a step beyond anything else that’s been going on in[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post