Roch-a-Cha Rant: June 2007

Monday, June 25, 2007

100th Post Considers City's Competing Priorities

It took about a year and a half to get to this, the 100th post of the infamous Roch-a-Cha Rant. Although it often strays quite a bit from its original intent, I'd like to think that I have succeeded in generating useful discussion amongst my target audience. If you haven't noticed yet, I added a hit counter back in mid-May and have already exceeded 1,000 site visits since then, including 25 international visitors. I have no idea what that means in the blogosphere, but it's impressive to me. Thanks for taking the time to listen to me bitch and moan and occasionally come up with good ideas. Whether you agree with me or not, it's good to know you care. But enough of that, on to the good stuff...

This past Saturday, Downtown Rochester played host to one of the fastest-growing cycling events in North America, the Saturn Rochester Twilight Criterium. In only its fourth year, the event attracted an estimated 35,000 visitors to the streets of Rochester. The event provided an economic shot-in-the-arm for those restaurants that are lucky enough to be located along the course. I doubt Simply Crepes or He's have ever been busier. It is truly electric to watch some of the best cyclists in the world fly by you at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. Actually, it can be quite dizzying for spectators so it's best to have a few beers during the race to keep you on the level. Good thing the JW Dundee's beer tent was dispensing pints of fresh-brewed hometown goodness. Too bad that beer tent isn't open year-round.

The Crit has become one of the premiere events on the North American cycling calendar. We should be proud of our ability to host one of the top LPGA events in terms of both attendance and purse on the same weekend and still bring out record breaking crowds for this event as well. As Australian female pro Jessie MacLean said, "This is the best race I've been to, I've never raced in front of a crowd like this." That is a sentiment shared by all cyclists and it is a testament to the people of our city as well as to the potential of this city to be a vibrant and energetic place. As a note, Aussies won both the men's and women's races, with Australian Olympian Hilton Clarke winning the men's pro race for the second year in a row. I'm thinking an Australian-themed bar might do pretty well down there, at least for one weekend.

As great as this race is, it faces an uncertain future. If conceptual plans were brought to fruition, the finish line on the very street this race uses would be no more. Last year I voiced my support for the Broad Street Canal concept. In theory, this project would remove Broad Street from South Avenue all the way to Brown Street and restore the original alignment of the Erie Canal. This remains a great concept, and I applaud the gentlemen behind it, but it clearly has its shortcomings. The Criterium may be internationally televised next year, attracting thousands more spectators, and it is likely that it will be expanded in the near future to a full weekend of festivities. Is there any way that this race could co-exist with a canal on Broad Street? Sure, but the race would be significantly altered and would definitely lose the exhilarating turn at Irving Place that is the signature of the course.

Maybe a compromise can be reached that incorporates the history of the Erie Canal's original path in an interpretive manner. Perhaps a narrow channel of some sort could run along Broad Street mimicking the former Canal's path and tying into my proposal for a Canal-themed public square on what is now a surface parking lot bounded by Plymouth, Broad, Main, and Washington. Interpretive signage and kiosks could be placed along the entire length of the historic alignment, with pictures and stories to help guide the way. I recognize that this goes against my earlier sentiments, and I hate to contradict myself, but that is what planners and economic development types do; we look at the pros and cons, we examine feasibility, cost effectiveness, and impacts, and we make recommendations that sometimes go against our initial thoughts. I still feel that the Canal proposal deserves to be fully studied and I would certainly not be against its development should it be proven feasible. But there is something about this Criterium that leads me to believe it can become a signature event for our city and its revival. Is it wise for us to pass on such a sure thing?

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Bring Back the Yellow Bus!

Unsupervised kids make dumb decisions. This is not a surprise. When hundreds of unsupervised kids crowd together, they have the potential to make a lot of dumb decisions. This is the case with teens all over the world. They're easily influenced, they're emotional, they're confused; in other words, teens should not go unsupervised. Especially on school days. But that has been the case for the past twelve years for hundreds, if not thousands, of Rochester City School students on a daily basis.

The City School District contracts with the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority through its Regional Transit Service subsidiary to provide transportation to and from school for large numbers of students throughout the City of Rochester. The District purchases bus passes for its students to use on any RTS bus at any time of day, although the passes are intended to be used only for accessing their respective school. Most of these students must come to Main Street in Downtown Rochester every day to transfer buses. This is where the trouble comes in.

For one thing, this is a recipe for truancy. Think of the temptations these kids must face every day not only on the bus, but while waiting for the bus in the middle of downtown. It is a miracle that most of them actually make it to school. Given all of the challenges that kids being brought up in tough inner city neighborhoods face, why are we making it even more difficult for them by forcing them to deal with our ineffective public transportation system? The answer, of course, is to save money; which is apparently much more important than anything else.

The bigger issue though, as I alluded to earlier, is piling many hundreds of teens from all over the city onto the sidewalks of Main Street. This is a recipe for delinquency. WHAM-TV called it "chaos," WROC-TV said it was a "brawl," and RNEWS described it as a "melee." "It" was the most recent instance of students fighting on Main Street in broad daylight while waiting to make their transfers. Disturbances such as this happen more often than the District, the Police, or RGRTA would like to admit. The fights, drug use, and other disturbances that are cultivated by cramming so many kids from all over the city into one downtown block have destroyed any hopes of a "renaissance" at Main & Clinton. Most businesses within earshot of the Liberty Pole have packed up and left, those that remain are struggling; the current situation is the main reason why so many downtown workers feel unsafe (real or perceived).

Can you remember what Downtown Rochester was like in 1994, the year before this program began? Although it was the year that McCurdy's and B. Forman closed their anchor department stores at Midtown Plaza, the Main & Clinton area was still full of smaller shops catering to workers and city residents. The Sibley Building had been renovated by Wilmorite and was home to an active retail environment with national chains such as Champs Sports and Lerner New York fronting Liberty Pole Plaza. Twelve years later and Midtown is hanging on by a thread. It is still home to a number of stores but few area residents think of it as a viable place to shop. The Sibley Building is nearly empty, with artwork filling the windows that face out on Liberty Pole Plaza. There is no doubt that the ill-conceived school transportation program either hastened the decline of Main & Clinton, or was the last nail in its coffin.

A City School education was also much different in 1994 than today. The schools were more diverse, they were less impoverished, and the kids were performing better. While we don't know to what extent this transportation program has contributed to truancy and delinquency, logic indicates that forcing impressionable youth to ride city buses with adults every morning and transfer in the middle of a busy downtown area with thousands of complete strangers is liable to tempt even the strongest of young minds to forget about school. Suburban kids with their big yellow buses aren't forced to do this, why should our kids?

Then there is the legal issue. Laidlaw Transportation Services, the folks that run the big yellow buses, have been suing RGRTA for years claiming unfair competition. Their argument is that RGRTA is heavily subsidized by State and Federal transit funds and therefore should not be allowed to compete with the private sector for service provision contracts. It stands to reason that there is absolutely no way any private firm could match what RGRTA charges for their services. This past January, FTA sided with Laidlaw and issued a "cease and desist" order against RGRTA. It remains to be seen what will come of this order; it is currently being appealed. If all goes well, the yellow buses of Laidlaw will replace the red, white, and blue ones of RTS next school year.

Furthermore, if we want to ensure the success of Renaissance Square, the largest construction project in our city's history, we cannot allow this transportation program to continue. Even if a police substation is built into Renaissance Square, and I surely hope one is, the few officers assigned to it would be hard-pressed to control a disturbance involving hundreds of kids in such tight confined quarters. I continue to fully support Renaissance Square and think it will have a profoundly positive impact on the attractiveness of our Center City. However, this program has the unique potential to render that impact dead on arrival before the ground is even broken.

Although this service is saving the District millions of dollars annually, it remains a losing deal for nearly everyone involved. The City is losing substantial amounts of property tax dollars at the Sibley Building (thanks Wilmorite!) and sales tax receipts throughout the Main & Clinton area. The kids who are forced to use this service are losing out by not being given a worry-free trip to school and back. The people of Rochester are losing out on what has the potential to be a thriving urban core. All of these issues have the potential to be at least partially addressed by stopping this program. We cannot afford any more ironic "chaos," "brawls," or "melees" at our Liberty Pole.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Rochester's Economic Limbo: How Low Can We Go?

In a recent post, I noted that for most of the past half-Century, the Rochester area has been the jewel of Upstate New York. Jobs, population, and income growth consistently outpaced our upstate neighbors and that smugness that we are so well known for became firmly entrenched in our collective psyche. Guided by Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and other super-sized manufacturers, our elected officials and economic types went about their merry lives with little care for the future. We were a region of Alfred E. Neumans, responding with "What, me worry?" every time a local firm moved out of the area (e.g., Stromberg-Carlson/General Dynamics, Champion, French's, etc.) taking pieces of our former vitality with them.

By the 1980s, the Rochester area had, for all intents and purposes, stopped growing. Sure, we weren't shrinking like the other Rust Belt metropolises that surrounded us, but when compared with the nation as a whole, we were dead. Our venerable Big Three had passed their peak and were on a decline that would practically bring this region to its knees. But our smugness remained. It reached the point where the typical response to questions regarding our economy were met with, "at least we're better than Buffalo." Fast forward 20 years and very little has changed; except that we are doing worse than most of our Upstate friends and neighbors. Sadly, I think we've reached the point where we can no longer say, "at least we're better than Buffalo."

This morning I opened the virtual pages of the online news world and in the Buffalo News, I found a rendering of another physical manifestation of Buffalo's increasingly revitalized economy. The former Thaddeus J. Dulski Federal Office Building, an empty 15-story, 470,000 square foot office building built in 1971 that once housed some 2,000 government workers, will be completely redeveloped into a mix of Class A office space, luxury condominiums, and upscale hotel space. Uniland and Acquest, the project's developers, purchased the building at auction for $6.1 million; they now plan to invest at least $60 million into its sleek future.

Below: Dulski Today

Below: Dulski Tomorrow

This is not the only high-profile addition to the new Buffalo. A 10-story Federal Courthouse designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox is under construction next to their classic City Hall. A UK-based developer is redeveloping the historic Statler Towers into a mix of office, hotel, and residential space and is moving ahead with plans to build Upstate New York's new tallest building, the 40-story, 600-foot tall Buffalo City Tower, on a nearby lot. Further north of downtown, Uniland has unveiled plans for a 23-story luxury condo tower at Gates Circle. Bass Pro Shops has signed on to be the lead anchor in a major mixed-use development adjacent to HSBC Arena tentatively known as CanalSide. A high-rise condo building is going up along the waterfront and the local Blue Cross/Blue Shield is finishing up their new headquarters downtown as well.

Below: New Buffalo Courthouse

Below: Buffalo City Tower
Below: Gates Circle Condos

But let's get back to the Dulski Building and how it relates to Rochester. You see, we have a similar situation here in Rochester, except there are no developers coming to our rescue. The nearly-empty, long-deteriorating eyesore that is the Midtown Tower is begging for this sort of investment. Built in 1962 (and renovated in 1980), the 17-story 240,000 square foot tower stands as a monument to our city's collapse. A recent report issued by the City of Rochester indicated that the building should be rehabilitated and the common sentiment is that it should take on a form similar to what is taking place at Buffalo's Dulski Building. The current New York City-based owners of the Midtown Plaza complex want out, but the City of Rochester passed on the chance to purchase it. No local developers have stepped forward either, meaning that this property will likely move on to the next out-of-town management firm looking to make a quick buck at our expense. Does anyone have Uniland's phone number? They have a relatively sizeable presence in the Rochester area already; maybe they'd be interested.

If I'm not mistaken, a few years ago excellent local architect Bud DeWolff developed a concept design for a new Midtown Tower very similar to the Dulski. It would be re-skinned in glass and reborn as office and/or residential space with a hotel on top. Although this vision has gone nowhere, it should not be considered a pipe dream. There is a need for a new hotel in Downtown Rochester, either one that is focused on leisure travelers rather than business travelers or one that is dedicated to extended stays (i.e., all suites). There is a fast-growing office tenant downtown that is in need of additional space as well. CGI Communications may need to leave its Granite Building headquarters soon, not only because of Renaissance Square, but because they're simply running out of room there. Combine these two, and boom, you've got yourself a viable project.

But alas, there is no project. And there is no tangible sense of revitalization in Rochester. Our leaders claim to be committed to reversing the exodus of our young people, but despite countless reminders that young people prefer vibrant urban places, the only development we have around here are Wal-Marts and Targets on the fringes of suburbia. There is not a single construction crane mixed into our downtown skyline. Is this how our local elected officials and appointed economic development officials should earn their paycheck? It's easy to point out that the Buffalo area is still losing people and possesses far from a booming economy. But it is a good sign when deep-pocketed developers are willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into your city. Will Smugtown get its act together or will we simply move on to saying, "at least we're better than Elmira."

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Violent Crime, In Perspective

Violent crime in the City of Rochester is way too high. This is common knowledge, even to nutty liberals like myself. The crime rate is viewed as one of the main reasons people decide to move from the City to the suburbs or other "safer" cities. It is also cited as one of the chief reasons many residents of the surrounding suburbs and rural areas choose not to patronize the City's restaurants or cultural destinations. I acknowledge the issue and do not disagree that we must find a way to reduce crime in our fair city. That being said, this logic is somewhat dubious. While the recently-released preliminary 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Report backs up the claim that Rochester is indeed a relatively "unsafe" city, an analysis of the data shows that we are far from the least safe city in America. Beyond that, many fast-growing, supposedly desirable cities have violent crime and/or murder rates higher than ours.

Amongst 245 cities with populations higher than 100,000, Rochester's violent crime rate ranks 27th (this particular statistic is not calculated for nine cities, including Chicago and Minneapolis, so that ranking may not be entirely accurate). Many of the usual suspects are "above" us on that list, such as Flint, St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis, and Oakland. However, a number of tourist-friendly and booming cities also have violent crime rates that exceed ours. These include such wonderful places as Orlando, Baltimore, Atlanta, Nashville, and Boston. On the flip side, and not surprisingly, the safest cities (those with the lowest violent crime rates) are mostly large affluent suburbs such as Irvine CA, Amherst NY, Cary NC, and Gilbert AZ. The following lists show the 25 most violent and 25 least violent large cities in America in 2006.

25 Most Violent Cities (per 100,000)

Flint, MI
St. Louis, MO
Detroit, MI
Memphis, TN
Orlando, FL
Oakland, CA
Miami Gardens, FL
Little Rock, AR
Baltimore, MD
Philadelphia, PA
Atlanta, GA
Cleveland, OH
Nashville, TN
Miami, FL
Springfield, MA
St. Petersburg, FL
Stockton, CA
Washington, DC
Kansas City, MO
Buffalo, NY
Baton Rouge, LA
Birmingham, AL
Boston, MA
Milwaukee, WI
Pompano Beach, FL

25 Least Violent Cities (per 100,000)

Irvine, CA
Amherst Town, NY
Cary, NC
Gilbert, AZ
Sunnyvale, CA
Provo, UT
Thousand Oaks, CA
Bellevue, WA
Simi Valley, CA
Santa Clara, CA
Centennial, CO
Arvada, CO
Glendale, CA
Carrollton, TX
Overland Park, KS
Sterling Heights, MI
Norman, OK
Huntington Beach, CA
Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Scottsdale, AZ
Corona, CA
Orange, CA
Peoria, AZ
Coral Springs, FL
Richardson, TX

While similar to the violent crime rate, the murder rates for the full list of 254 cities with more than 100,000 in population does shift. Rochester, the great marksmen that we are, moves up a few notches to #22. America's most murderous big cities include all the familiar places with some fun exceptions. There were nine large places in the USA that did not register a single murder last year, including two "real" cities (i.e., not suburbs): Ann Arbor MI and Fort Collins CO. The following are lists of the Top 25 Most Murderous and Least Murderous cities in the USA.

25 Most Murderous Cities (per 100,000)

Gary, IN
Detroit, MI
Flint, MI
Birmingham, AL
Baltimore, MD
Richmond, CA
Richmond, VA
New Orleans, LA
Newark, NJ
St. Louis, MO
Oakland, CA
Kansas City, KS
Inglewood, CA
Little Rock, AR
Washington, DC
Cincinnati, OH
Philadelphia, PA
Baton Rouge, LA
Buffalo, NY
Kansas City, MO
Dayton, OH
Rochester, NY
San Bernardino, CA
Atlanta, GA
Orlando, FL

25 Least Murderous Cities (per 100,000)

Ann Arbor, MI
Arvada, CO (tied for #1)
Cary, NC (tied for #1)
Centennial, CO (tied for #1)
Fort Collins, CO (tied for #1)
Naperville, IL (tied for #1)
Overland Park, KS (tied for #1)
Thousand Oaks, CA (tied for #1)
Woodbridge Township, NJ (tied for #1)
Pembroke Pines, FL
Corona, CA
Torrance, CA
Orange, CA
Sunnyvale, CA
Burbank, CA
Ventura, CA (tied for #15)
Edison Township, NJ
Glendale, CA (tied for #17)
Huntington Beach, CA
Garland, TX
Peoria, AZ
Fullerton, CA
Irving, TX
Coral Springs, FL
Plano, TX

I only bring this up to a.) acknowledge that Rochester does have a very serious problem with violent crime and that it must be addressed if we are to ever truly revitalize our city; and, b.) to point out the hypocrisy of the area residents who say they will not enter the City of Rochester because it is so violent but have no problem taking their families to Baltimore or Orlando for vacation. And yes, Orlando's crime problem does reach into the Magic Kingdom.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Build Now-NY, But Not Here

The Rochester area's economy seems to be slowly but surely getting back on track after a God-awful first half of the decade. For the first time in Lord knows how long, Rochester has been trailing its Upstate neighbors in job growth. I don't mean just Albany, Ithaca, and Syracuse; I mean Binghamton, Buffalo, and Utica too! The only area performing worse than Rochester recently has been Elmira; but that city has been on the fast track to Ghost-towndom for most of the past century (note: i mean no offense to the good people of Elmira and Chemung County, only to those in charge of their sinking ship). The troubles of Upstate NY are well-documented and I have ranted on them before. But sometimes, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Or rather, our local elected officials and their appointed bureaucrats.

The Build Now-NY (BNNY) program has been around for years. According to the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform: "(BNNY) is a competitive grant program that has been helping local communities grow jobs for years. The program has distributed just over $4 million to help local communities pay for professional services related to engineering studies, environmental assessments, and legal support. The impact has been phenomenal. Since 1999, over 8,750 new or retained jobs have been developed on (BNNY) sites." This is a pre-permitting program, which eases the way for developers to attract businesses to local industrial/commercial parks and sites in the state.

A subset of BNNY is the Shovel Ready Program. Again according to GORR, "Having an economic development site certified as a "Shovel Ready Site" means that the local developer has worked proactively with the State to address all major permitting issues, prior to a business expressing interest in the location. This advance work creates a site where construction can begin rapidly, once a prospective business decides to develop a facility there. By reducing the time it takes a company to begin construction of a new facility, New York State and its local partners are able to provide valuable savings to the business and job opportunities for local residents." Any economic development professional worth a damn will tell you, if you're not shovel ready, you're not competitive in today's fast-moving economy.

I'm not going to get into the semantics of BNNY or the Shovel Ready Program. I will simply sum things up by saying that this is one of the few programs available in this state that helps level the playing field between Upstate NY and our domestic and overseas competition. Given the Rochester area's recent economic struggles, one would assume that our well-paid, politically-appointed economic development gurus are doing everything in their power to ensure that our region is competitive, including having a plethora of BNNY and/or Shovel Ready sites available to prospective employers. Sadly, and not surprisingly, you would be wrong.

A quick perusal of the BNNY/Shovel Ready programs indicates that there is only one BNNY site in Monroe County, the Rochester Technology Park, and it does not have Shovel Ready certification. Beyond that, in the entire nine-county Rochester/Finger Lakes region, there are a total of 14 sites, only one of which is Shovel Ready. What's more infuriating is that, of those 14 sites, nine are located in either Genesee or Livingston counties. Is it any surprise that these two counties have been making waves in attracting employment? Is it just a coincidence that the only Shovel Ready site in the region attracted a major Barilla plant last year? This is a serious shortcoming in our economic development deck of cards and the blame can be wholly placed on our local elected officials who talk a good game, but have absolutely no concept of follow-through.

Just take a look at our friends to the west in Erie County. There are 15 sites, of which nine are Shovel Ready. You read that right; 15 sites in a county of 950,000 and only 1 site in our county of 740,000? Dare I be so bold as to suggest that having such a wide array of sites was key in Erie County landing Geico, Citibank, and other major employers in recent years? The folks out there finally have their act together while we still sit in denial thinking that we're doing just fine. Need more proof? How about the fact that there are seven BNNY/Shovel Ready sites in Onondaga County. The Syracuse area has been leading all Upstate metros for the past few years in job growth; am I crazy to suggest that this could be playing a part? Hmmm...seven sites in a county of only 460,000 people and we can't muster up two? No wonder we're barely squeaking out job gains when, given our incredible assets, we should still be the jewel of Upstate. Our leaders should be ashamed of themselves.

To be fair, my understanding from anonymous sources is that there are two BNNY/Shovel Ready sites in the works in Monroe County. I won't say where and I won't say who is putting them together (that is confidential information and I don't want to get anyone in trouble), but I will say that the sites are in rural portions of the county. As if we haven't learned anything from all these years of vitality-draining suburban sprawl, we now are going to focus our economic development efforts at further decimating our urban core. This sounds an awful lot like our genius decision to build our Center of Excellence out in Canandaigua. Are we just dumb or is there rhyme and reason to all of this?

I should point out that this pathetic situation is not all the County's fault. Why hasn't the City of Rochester done anything to create Shovel Ready sites at its industrial parks, such as 14621 or the Outer Loop? There are BNNY/Shovel Ready sites in the inner cities of Albany, Buffalo, and Syracuse; why not here? Are we waiting to hit rockbottom before doing something about it? Oh well, at least the City did the smart thing by transferring some Empire Zone acreage to Monroe County to land the CareGuide expansion. Shit, I guess they screwed that one up too. Does anyone else get the feeling that there is no pilot flying this plane?

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