sbrof - To answer your question, it wasn't promoting sprawl because IDA offers weren't what made National Fuel want to leave downtown. They wanted a suburban setting and narrowed their choice to Amherst and two sites around Erie PA (which offered generous incentives, which Amherst matched or came close to evidently).

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2003/02/24/story2.html?page=1

... Because the company has some 200,000 customers in northwestern Pennsylvania to go along with an estimated 150,000 acres of land controlled by an affiliated timber and forest management subsidiary, Erie, Pa., became a very real competitor for National Fuel's headquarters.

In fact two Erie office parks were among the finalists. They remain on the company's short list should the deal between National Fuel and Tops fall apart. For a region that has seen a high number of corporate defections in recent decades, losing National Fuel was being viewed in many quarters as an almost fatal blow to economic development efforts, not to mention the already fragile community psyche.

...National Fuel's corporate headquarters represents more than just the 500 or so workers who are employed in the building. It is the company's largest publicly traded entity with revenues of $2.1 billion. Once National Fuel leaves the 18-story, 180,000-square-foot Tishman Building, it will pose another economic development challenge for Buffalo.

Buffalo options were considered, but they didn't meet the company's needs for a suburban, campus-like setting. ... "It's unfortunate that National Fuel couldn't find an urban site to their liking, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of firms out there that wouldn't want a prestigious address in downtown Buffalo," Kucharski said.

First off, Urban Guy, what it the technical definition of sprawl? Let's get that out in the open. What's sprawl in Buffalo vs. say Atlanta and when is sprawl "bad" and when is sprawl "good"? Anything in Buffalo that steals from the city and take to the suburbs isn't sprawl, it's migration anyway. However, your argument that it was an acceptable solution is lacking in any real substance. First off, Phil Ackerman, president/CEO of National Fuel wasn't moving anywhere, him and his wife in very involved locally and they never intended to leave. He used the Erie, PA idea as leverage, like every other company in WNY. Threaten to move to ensure dollars are given to ensure you stay. It's the oldest trick in the economic development book.

The bottomline in WNY is, it's the most fragmented region in terms of governance in the county. I believe Pittsburgh was the most but they're started to regionalize, get this now, hold yourselves, to make them more competitive, efficency and cost-effective. Craziness I know.

But here, we continue to allow politicians to fight over their fiefdoms and remain parochial but I see that mentality is pervasive among people like Urban Guy. We have 7 different schools districts covering Cheektowaga alone. That means 7 superintenddents, 7 assistants, etc. Talk about millions and million in watse in those 7 districts alone.

Every little municipality has it's own police force... Kenmore, Akron, City of Tonawanda (at least it's a standalone entity).... stupid. The areas with major growth, like Clarence and Grand Island for example, hace subsidized police coverage by all Erie County and NYS taxpayers who cover their EC Sheriff and NYS Tropper patrols.

So where is the equity for the inner city residents who remain and pay more and more in Buffalo and now subsidize those that left to Clarence and Grand Island?

This place will NEVER get better, ever, so long as this continual fragmentation and fighting over who does what remains. 7 IDAs is an f'in joke.

ok UrbanGuy, what are the main differences between them all. Isn't their point to attrach and grow businesses for their own respective areas. Doesn't that often lead them to draw businesses from one area of the region to the other because they offer tax breaks. When Amherst's IDA gave National Fuel money to move from downtown to Amherst how is that not promoting and leading to sprawl? Sure you can say they had an Erie Pa location on the 'table' but it seems pretty obvious that was nothing more than pandering to the fear of loosing them which put them at a bidding war between the local IDA's at the time to keep them.

I think we should consolidate all of these "Development Corporations". Sprawl is bad enough without there being sprawl in the entities with the ability to fight sprawl. Sheesh.

Although some companies don't mind the city (HealthNow, etc.), some insist on a burb (National Fuel, Geico, CitiCorp, etc.). The choice then is whether local and state govt should offer to those some financial incentives similar to what they can receive in other states and in some cases to help make up for lower business costs elsewhere. No matter what incentives were offered to National Fuel, Geico, or CitiCorp I doubt they'd have agreed to locate in the city of Buffalo.

MJ saying "the offer should not be the same for anywhere in erie county", that sounds like a take-it-or-leave-it apporach which would lose some businesses the area might otherwise attract or keep. I'm not a fan of corporate welfare so if it's stopped and Buffalo's shrinkage gets even worse, that's life and I wouldn't complain. But for those people who insist that Buffalo's economy is "rising", I don't see how you'd advocate not making a strong effort to attract and keep companies like that even they demand a suburban site.

MJ, sbrof, thinker - What's the bottom line for you guys? Would you have been willing to see this area lose out on National Fuel, Geico, or CitiCorp by telling them it's a city site or no incentives? Saying we should have one county-wide govt is ducking the question. That won't happen any time soon. All things as they are now, are you saying those kids of incentives for suburban businesses should be stopped?

I think the issue is that the offer should not be the same for anywhere in erie county. That was the point of the Empire Zones before they started whoring them out to any location.

It should be set-up so that the best incentives are given to companies to locate in areas where the infrastructure is established and underused. Or where lower wage factory type work is near those that would apply for those jobs. Not out somewhere where those salaries would have to be wasted on junker cars and gas to get to them.

If Erie County was a sole municipal gov't it wouldn't really matter where the company located. It would all go to the same tax base, we would all still win, and we would all be choosing our use/disuse of our infrastructure. But instead we remain fragmented, a company goes to a new little fiefdom, another loses the tax base, subsidies are given to the old locality where the bleeding quickens, old infrastrucutre goes underused, new/expanded infrastructure is built and everyone acts like none of the overall problems are theirs or in their control. It's easy to see why this area still slides. Its like adding onto one side of your house while the far end rots and burns and wondering why the overall value never increases and everything keeps getting more expensive to maintain.

Health now somehow figured out how to fit in the city. most of the east side is empty, there are brownfields everywhere. how do we expect to strengthen our core and reduce our infrastructure burden when we give away the farm for the prime land which will end requiring upgraded/new infrastructure all at a higher cost to us?

7 IDAs is effn stupid

When commute distance is a factor in home choices locating in Amherst is a reason to build that new house in Wheatfield of Lancaster (actually sprawling areas). Increasing demand for highways and exurban infrastructure. Them being located in downtown meant that many of the employees I would assume lived in the first ring burbs, Hamburg, Amherst, Tonawanda. New employees to this business will be behind the first wave of development that takes over the next layer farmland. While most probably won't consider the city or even many first ring suburbs as an option because they are too far from work...

Also you have to consider where in Amherst they moved to. They are just under 1 mile from Clarence. Not exactly Eggerstville, Snyder or even close to the city proper. They are contributing as much to sprawl as anyone else. The office park they are in I would guess was a farm under 10 years ago. Just because they didn't do the conversion doesn't mean they are somehow free from impacting sprawl. Everything in connected.

Makes you wonder what kind of real economic development Buffalo can achieve within the city limits if and when the city decides to take the Seneca Casino Revenue off budget and put it into an entrepreneurial business development fund.

If Buffalos Brownfields get re-industrialized/re-commercialized then ONE HAS TO WONDER WHAT GOOD WOULD IT DO FOR LACKAWANNA AND KENMORE TO REMAIN INDEPENDENT FROM BUFFALO (there are huge swaths of brownfields and industrial sites that would benefit from a casino financed redevelopment fund)?