Investigative Post

Economic development officials in Niagara County have approved nearly $500,000 in tax breaks for a Buffalo developer seeking a total of $2.6 million in public subsidies to open a small event center and a brewery and restaurant in a “highly distressed” area of Niagara Falls.  The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency’s board of directors voted […]

Generating business growth in downtown Niagara Falls has proven to be a challenge for years. A state agency charged with job creation has adopted a unique approach, even by Western New York standards. The state-run USA Niagara Development Corp. gave Buffalo-based T.M. Montante Development four properties valued at nearly $1 million in the city’s Third […]

Updated at 2:15 p.m. At least 84, and perhaps as many as 175 employees assigned to downtown office space paid for with $55 million in Buffalo Billion funds have been told they’re losing their jobs. The funding was used to recruit IBM to establish a high-tech hub at Key Center that would employ 500 software […]

Efforts to develop a large industrial park in Genesee County using tens of millions of dollars from New York State’s Buffalo Billion program are facing a new challenge — a lawsuit filed by the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. In a lawsuit filed Friday in state Supreme Court in Genesee County, the Nation is challenging the findings […]

After several days of delay, the Cuomo administration has released an annual employment report filed by Tesla under the terms of the $950 million public investment in the company’s solar panel production facility in South Buffalo. Empire State Development Corp., which had denied several requests for a copy of the document from Investigative Post, responded […]

The Cuomo administration is refusing to release a new report on the number of people employed at the Tesla plant built with $950 million in taxpayer funds in South Buffalo.  The Empire State Development Corp. says the report, due by May 31, was submitted, but the agency has refused to release it to Investigative Post.  […]

Douglas Jemal is not your prototypical, button-down developer.  He prefers jeans, cowboy boots and baseball caps and isn’t shy about using salty language. Years ago, he taught a pet parrot — a bird he named “Eagle” — to say the mother of all bad words, the one that starts with an F and rhymes with […]

Douglas Jemal may be an unconventional developer in some ways, but he also engages in a practice common to many in the real estate business: giving money, sometimes lots of it, to politicians in position to support his projects. Jemal is unusual in another way: He’s the recipient of a presidential pardon. His political contributions […]