Tag: economic development

Feb 23

2016

Buffalo trade unions lagging in diversity

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  Construction in Buffalo is booming. SolarCity. Children’s Hospital. The University at Buffalo Medical School. Taxpayer-funded projects like these are employing thousands of union construction workers. But the boom has resurrected concerns that the unions have made little progress over the past decade in diversifying their membership. While minorities make up 17 percent of Erie County’s workforce and more than half of the city’s population, they account for only 11 percent of unionized construction workers, according to the most recent figures available. What’s more, there’s been virtually no change in the racial makeup of the building trades over the past[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Jan 14

2016

Buffalo’s ailing inner-city

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Buffalo is not immune to the social problems that have produced conflict in Ferguson, Baltimore and other urban centers, two prominent African American leaders said Wednesday at a luncheon hosted by Investigative Post. “Can there be a Ferguson or a Baltimore in Buffalo? Absolutely,” said Rev. Darius Pridgen, pastor of True Bethel Baptist Church and president of the Buffalo Common Council. Dr. Henry L. Taylor, a professor and founding director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo, called for the creation of a development fund for the East Side whose participants would include government, business, nonprofits[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Dec 7

2015

Buffalo’s East Side awaiting a rebound

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While Buffalo is recovering, there is plenty of room for improvement, especially on the city’s East Side. That was the consensus of a panel discussion moderated last week by Jim Heaney of Investigative Post, who shared his impressions with Steve Brown on the weekly edition of Investigative Post. Panelists said the East Side lacks organizations with the capacity to manage redevelopment initiatives. The relocation of African American residents away from development hotspots was cited as another problem.  

Posted 9 years ago

Dec 2

2015

Buffalo’s incomplete, inequitable rebound

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Has Buffalo really gotten its mojo back? That was the question posed by Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney during a panel discussion Tuesday at Allen Street Hardware attended by an overflow crowd of 80 people. The panelists were Newell Nussbaumer, editorial director of Buffalo Rising, Rocco Termini, president of Signature Development, and Henry Taylor, professor and founding director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo. They did agree that the Queen City has made strides, but most of its work still lies ahead, and not everybody is sharing in the recovery. Much of the night’s discussion[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Nov 30

2015

Outrages & Insights: Diversity at SolarCity

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There’s a problem with the pipeline that is feeding workers to the SolarCity project at Riverbend, Jim Heaney told Steve Brown on Sunday’s installment of Outrages & Insights. Heaney, referring to a story last week reported by Charlotte Keith, noted that African Americans accounted for only 5.7 percent of the construction workers employed at the SolarCity site during the quarter that ended in September. That contrasts with a city population that is 38 percent black. The project is nevertheless meeting its goal of employing a workforce that is at least 15 percent minority.

Posted 9 years ago

Nov 25

2015

Of job growth and mojo

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Not to rain on the parade, but despite talk from politicians about Buffalo’s resurgence, job growth in Erie and Niagara counties continues to lag behind the nation and state. Sounds like this might make for a good discussion.

Posted 9 years ago

Nov 24

2015

Diversity, but few jobs for African Americans

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Diversity hiring goals set for the construction of the SolarCity plant in South Buffalo have not translated into a lot of jobs for African-American workers. While African Americans make up an increasing share of the project’s workforce, they accounted for only 5.7 percent of those on the job for the quarter ending this September, an Investigative Post analysis found. That’s in a city that’s almost 40 percent African-American and a county with a workforce that’s 11 percent black, according to the state Department of Labor. The project is nevertheless meeting its minority workforce goal of 15 percent, largely through the[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Oct 30

2015

SolarCity: Mayday! Mayday!

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I have called Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s investment in SolarCity a high-risk, high-reward undertaking. The project took on an added air of risk Thursday, in light of not one, not two, but three pieces of bad news. For starters, the company disclosed it posted a net loss of $234 million in the third quarter. That’s the biggest quarterly loss in the history of the company and brings the year-to-date losses to a staggering $537 million. That puts SolarCity on track to lose more than $700 million for 2015, compared with net losses of $375 million in 2014, $152 million in 2013[...]

Posted 10 years ago
Investigative Post