Categories for Featured

Dec 16

2012

Q&A: Howard Zemsky

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Howard Zemsky is one of the most influential people in Western New York. And certainly one of its busiest. He’s perhaps best known for his revitalization of the Larkin Building and the surrounding area into one of the hottest – and coolest –  commercial, residential and retail districts in the region. It’s only one of several of his business ventures, including Taurus Capital Partners. Zemsky, 53, has emerged as a key community leader and political player in recent years. Most significantly, he is co-chairman of the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council, which is guiding Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s initiative to spend $1[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 10

2012

Antoine Thompson? Really?

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Antoine Thompson couldn’t find a job when voters fired him from his state Senate job two years ago. So, of course, Mayor Byron Brown has now hired Thompson to help the county’s 37,900 unemployed find jobs. Yeah, right. This is about as blatant – and shameless – as patronage hiring gets. First consider that Thompson and Brown have been joined at the hip, politically speaking, for most of their careers, dating back to their days together in Grassroots, the political club that helped spawn both of their careers. Thompson worked as a legislative aide to Brown when he served on[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 6

2012

First $1B beneficiary awash in red ink

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The biotech company the state plans to spend $50 million on to lure to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus has lost $112 million the past three years and hasn’t posted an annual profit since 2008. And that’s just the beginning of the financial difficulties confronting Albany Molecular Research, according to a probe by Investigative Post. The company has laid off at least 80 employees since 2010 and shuttered one of its foreign facilities, with plans to close a second operation near Seattle. The Albany-based company’s stock price, meanwhile, sunk from  $61.66 in 2001 to $2.26 in December 2011, although the stock[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 5

2012

Good plan off to bad start

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There’s a lot to like about the blueprint for spending $1 billion in state aid to revitalize the Western New York economy that was released Tuesday. I’d feel better about the plan’s prospects, however, if Gov. Andrew Cuomo hadn’t used its release to announce a heavily subsidized deal to bring 250 jobs here that smacks of the business-as-usual, smokestack-chasing approach that has failed us in the past. Let me get my skepticism out of the way up front. The state has agreed to spend $50 million on a biomedical facility and equipment to accommodate an expansion of Albany Molecular Research to[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 2

2012

Q&A: Matt Enstice of the downtown medical campus

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Matt Enstice is chief operating officer of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. He’s been involved with the project since its inception 10 years ago and has used an unassuming, innovative management style to lead the effort to transform 120 acres on the northern edge of downtown into a world class medical campus. A native of Western New York, Enstice earned an undergraduate degree in English from Hobart College and a master of business administration from Canisius College. He left Buffalo after school to work in the entertainment industry and spent five years in the 1990s working at Saturday Night Live[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Nov 25

2012

Q&A: Stephanie Simeon

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Stephanie Simeon is executive director of Heart of the City Neighborhoods, a non-profit housing development corporation serving Buffalo’s Lower West Side. Simeon, 31, is a native of Brooklyn who moved to Buffalo to attend the University at Buffalo, where she earned an undergraduate degree in social science and master’s degree in urban planning. She serves on the board of the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women. Last year she was selected by Business First as one of the region’s top 40 young people under 40. Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney interviewed Simeon on Nov. 20. A 4 minute, 45[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Nov 19

2012

UB pulls plug on Shale Institute

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The dark cloud is dissipating over the University at Buffalo and its short-lived Shale Resources and Society Institute. UB President Satish K. Tripathi announced Monday he has closed the institute. The decision comes seven months after the institute released a controversial study that claimed instances of pollution related to the process of natural gas drilling called hydrofracking declined 60 percent from 2008 to August 2011 because of regulation in Pennsylvania. As a result, the Marcellus industry cut incidences of environmental violations by more than half in three years, the study claimed. Artvoice exposed the institute before the university ever announced its existence, raising questions[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Nov 15

2012

DEC idling on enforcement

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Diesel fumes permeate the air near the gate to the Peace Bridge Duty Free store as nearby trucks idle in traffic and parking lots. The idling trucks are a sore spot for residents of the West Side that borders the bridge and its plaza on the American side. Diesel fumes contribute to air pollution believed to be partly responsible for health problems – including asthma rates nearly four times higher than the national average – among residents on the city’s lower West Side, according to Dr. Jamson S. Lwebuga-Mukasa, a leading researcher of air quality in the neighborhood. The World Health[...]

Posted 12 years ago
Investigative Post