Tag: economic development

Oct 26

2015

iPost provides “a strong dose of reality”

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The current issue of Buffalo Spree includes a plug for a “New York News” segment taped over the summer by WMHT, the PBS station for Albany and the Capitol Region, which includes comments by Jim Heaney and Charlotte Keith of Investigative Post. The story deals with progress developing Buffalo’s waterfront and the lack of progress revitalizing the Central Terminal. Spree reported that Matt Ryan, the program’s managing editor, “interviews the usual rash-rash suspects – local politicians and other boosters – but he speaks to more cautiously optimistic types like Investigative Post’s Jim Heaney.” “Overall, it is a positive segment, but[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Oct 9

2015

Protestors want more diversity at Riverbend

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Protesters from local community groups gathered outside the SolarCity construction site in South Buffalo to call for a return to the 25 percent minority workforce goal originally floated for the project. As Investigative Post reported last week, that goal was agreed to when the city sold the land for the factory to the state, and publicly announced in two press releases. But a more recent agreement between developer LPCiminelli and the construction unions established instead a goal of 15 percent. State officials now say the higher goal was purely “aspirational” and that the revised goals are being met. Erie County[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Oct 5

2015

State says lower Riverbend goal being met

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The state released figures Monday related to the employment of minority construction workers at the SolarCity plant that they had previously refused to disclose. The release follows a report last week by Investigative Post that showed it was unclear whether the project’s diversity hiring goals were being met. Those figures show that minorities have done 16.2 percent of work on the site from the start of construction in May 2014 through July this year, based on the number of hours worked. Investigative Post had earlier reported that minorities made up 6 percent of the workforce from the start of construction through[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Sep 30

2015

Minority workers get short shrift at Riverbend

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Buffalo’s African-American community is starving for jobs, while the ongoing construction of the SolarCity plant in South Buffalo is employing hundreds upon hundreds of construction workers. Yet state officials agreed to cut the project’s diversity hiring goal – included on state contracts to ensure minorities get a fair share of work – from 25 to 15 percent. [continuing-coverage]That’s lower than on other high-profile publicly funded projects, such as the Buffalo schools reconstruction program and the University at Buffalo Medical School. It’s also significantly lower than the 25 percent minority workforce goal that was stipulated in the sales agreement that transferred[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Sep 21

2015

New York’s sleeping watchdogs

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U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara took on the role of investigating the Buffalo Billion after none of the watchdogs in state government would. I did a story last December that detailed the questionable circumstances surrounding the awarding of development contracts to LPCiminelli and McGuire Development and the lack of transparency involving the Buffalo Billion program. I made inquiries in January with the offices of both Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to ask if either of them intended to follow up. I found no takers. Bharara’s office, meanwhile, took note and began issuing subpoenas over the summer, as detailed Friday[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Sep 17

2015

Contamination a challenge on Outer Harbor

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The state’s leaner and greener plan for the Outer Harbor still has some obstacles to overcome, chief among them the contamination of 60 acres adjacent to properties targeted for residential and commercial development. As Investigative Post reported in March, about 40 percent of the soil samples taken on the parcel detected contamination levels that made it unsafe for use as a park. The standards would be even stricter for using the property for residential purposes. If that’s not bad enough, one acre in the parcel is a partly remediated Superfund with a restriction against residential development. Officials concede it’s going to[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Aug 26

2015

Labor groups protest hotel subsidies

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Around 100 people from local labor groups gathered Wednesday morning to protest the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency’s awarding of tax breaks to hotels. They say low-cost hotels like the Budget Inn on Niagara Falls Boulevard, where the protest was held, should not receive subsidies because they don’t create good-paying jobs. The protest was organized by the Coalition for Economic Justice. Investigative Post reported on the subsidies in January, documenting how the IDA’s indiscriminate granting of tax breaks to hotels defied the recommendations of a 2011 study commissioned by the state. That study found that the city had already had a “glut” of lower-end hotel[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 28

2015

State relents on Buffalo Billion records

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I interrupt the state’s incessant stonewalling of my efforts to use public records to track the Buffalo Billion program to report some progress. Cuomo administration officials, for more than a year, refused to release documents related to the selection of LPCiminelli to develop SolarCity’s sprawling plant in South Buffalo. The SUNY Research Foundation and the Fort Schuyler Management Corp. went to great lengths to thwart my efforts to obtain records under the state Freedom of Information Law, as I documented in December. Alain Kaloyeros and his associates at Fort Schuyler wouldn’t budge when the state Committee on Open Government issued[...]

Posted 10 years ago
Investigative Post