GreaterBuffaloBlog

Proposed Bass Pro/Benderson adds up to over $130,000,000. Here's proof.

There is a lot of blather, froth, disinformation, wishful thinking, and a willing suspension of disbelief among local politicians and the small but powerful coterie that constitutes Buffalo's real estate/industrial complex about the supposed benefits of destroying the historic site of the Canal District and its future potential for a shopping center anchored by a Bass Pro. Let the truth set you free. Read the entire "Pre Development Agreement" (hype for the more prosaic Memorandum of Understanding; this is the second such MOU signed by Bass Pro and the Erie Canal Harbor Corporation). It is a fascinating look at the classic spoils system updated to the 21st century.

Click on the link below to download this second MOU between the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ECHDC - a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation, ESDC), big box category killer Bass Pro, and Benderson Development.  The dream of the Canal District becoming a real neighborhood again, embodied in the "People's Plan" of 2004 and being built now, would be forever dashed. The People's Plan, subject of a post below, can be downloaded there.

Download bass_probenderson_pda.pdf

Buffalo Must Not Sacrifice Its Rich Inheritance in Canal District

By Roy Mann, Senior Principal of The RiverStudio, author of the Erie Canal Heritage Waterfront Feasibility Study and Plan of 2000. This article appeared in slightly different form in The Buffalo News.

Big cities make big mistakes; great cities make few of them. That’s why they’re great – and stay that way.

The Bass Pro development plan is a grave error, based apparently on a conviction that sales tax revenue and the prestige of a national sports goods store will more than compensate for the loss of the treasures of the historic waterfront. Visions of public enjoyment of a transformed Central Wharf have been painted in rosy swatches. Intentions of homage to the city’s significant historic past have been warmly recited.

The problem is that the Bass Pro building and parking ramp will deaden the area, rather than enliven it. Retail stores close typically at 9:00 in the evening. Their storefronts and sides, particularly with big-box entities – where ground level street-edge floor areas are too valuable for the company to lease out to restaurants and such that cater to street pedestrian traffic – turn lifeless and discourage pedestrian circulation and interest. Parking structures, visible from and adjacent to the street, are even more detrimental. Not only are people disinterested in reaching restaurants, entertainment venues, and other evening offerings overshadowed by such realities, investors shy away from opening public-dependent businesses in their vicinities. Evening entertainment – which begins to live and breath at nine – has little chance at thriving.

Streetside pedestrian activity is not of real value to a sports goods store, where customers’ cars and trucks, essential in the carrying away of purchases, govern store planning.

One question that might have been asked: Could Buffalo achieve a comparable total sales tax revenue for the Canal District’s 12 acres by implementing the 2000 Erie Canal Heritage Waterfront Plan? Without running the numbers for this alternative, there is no way of knowing whether the Bass Pro plan is the best for Buffalo – in economic terms alone.

Contrary to Erie County Executive Joel Giambra’s statement on March 30 that the Bass Pro program “is very similar to the design standards that Roy Mann articulated in his (2000) plan,” the new design echoes the past only in a pale cosmetic sense. No one passing a big-box store with façade gestures to the 19th century will understand that the structure is a legacy of Buffalo’s storied past. The vastly more important potential of historic replication or simulation, with contemporary, economically profitable uses housed in buildings externally expressive of the structures of the old Canal District will have been wiped off the chalkboard. The foundations of those lost buildings have recently been exposed with the tantalizing promise of replication – or simulation, a promise that now seems about to be buried yet once again.

The old Canal District’s assets – Commercial Slip and its Bowstring Bridge, the traces of Prime Slip, Central Wharf, Prime Street, Hanover Street, and the Lackawanna’s railroad bed are not simply an aggregation of artifacts of interest to local preservationists. They are an American legacy, the focal point of mid- and late-19th century national growth, when the Erie Canal tied into the Great Lakes and two million hardy pioneers took the first leg of a journey that moved through prairie schooners to the saga of the nation’s entire western development. This is an adventure, if told in a Canal District that wears a convincing historic mantle – not false veneer, that will draw historic sightseers, tourists, weekenders, leisure-timers, diners, and shoppers from considerably farther than a simple two-hour driving radius. In our 2000 studies, we recognized the potential of a revitalized Erie Canal heritage waterfront to draw robust numbers of visitors from Cleveland, Toronto, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York City – and beyond. Support for downtown Buffalo’s dining, entertainment, retail, and hospitality sectors would be substantial.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was signed into law after urban renewal bulldozed vast posterities in America’s cities in the post-war years – Buffalo among many others. Boston, rather than tear down its three decrepit Quincy Market buildings in the ‘60’s, elected to restore their exteriors and bring new retail and restaurant life to their interiors. The project’s chief proponent was, interestingly, a private developer, the first of a new wave of investors who grasped the great potential of historic areas to restore public confidence in older downtowns while meeting entrepreneurial aspirations. He was James Rouse and the Quincy Market conversion, named Faneuil Hall Marketplace, has taken its place in history as one of the most successful enterprises in the annals of American urban redevelopment.

Buffalo cannot restore the buildings of the old Canal District, razed to the ground in the 1900’s. Replication and simulation of the District’s structures at its peak are possible, however, and compatible both with historic site preservation and with the kind of dramatic economic transformation that a James Rouse might dream.

For Buffalo to sacrifice its inheritance, this legacy with a promising future based on a prodigious past, would be an unfathomable and costly mistake.

"People's Plan" for Buffalo's Canal District Wins International Award

The Final Master Plan for the Erie Canal Harbor Project, the "People's Plan" resulting from the input of dozens of civic organizations and hundreds of individuals at a series of public meetings and comment periods, itself the result of a lawsuit that sought meaningful public input, has won the prestigous Planning Honor Award from the international Waterfront Center at its 19th Annual “Excellence on the Waterfront” program competition. The Master Plan is available for viewing and download in an earlier post.

Ironically, a new ESD subsidiary, The Empire State Development Corporation (ECHDC) has repudiated the "People's Plan" and is seeking a clawback, taking over the site both philosphically and financially. We are back to the site as a mere cookie-cutter shopping destination to benefit established community powers.

Here is an excerpt from the Empire State Development Corporations press release issued at the time the award was issued. :

“This award is something all of New York State can be proud of.  The Erie Canal Harbor Project has been recognized for its exciting vision for the future of Western New York as well for its outstanding design,” Empire State Development Chairman Charles A. Gargano said.  “Receiving the “Planning Honor Award” confirms what we have long known:  Governor Pataki’s leadership is moving New York State towards a better and brighter future by embarking on projects that will make our state an even greater place to live, work and visit.”

The project was submitted for consideration by Peter Flynn of Flynn Battaglia Architects PC, and Thomas Blanchard, Director of Research & Planning for the Western New York office of Empire State Development Corporation, and was selected from a field of 74 entries from across the world.  With the Planning Honor Award, the Erie Canal Harbor Project joins other category award winning projects and communities like the Wuxi Li Lakefront Design in the Jiangsu Province in China, the Walsh Bay Project in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and the Silvertown Quays Master Plan in London.

In praising the harbor project, the Waterfront Center referred to the extensive and thorough public participation process and the manner in which the project enlivens the site as the terminus of one of the great engineering feats in the history of the United States – tying together the interior of the country to the east coast.  The plan was also applauded for its overall vision and for creating a year round central feature that will be a source of pride for the city and a place to learn about the canal’s heritage.  In conclusion, the Waterfront Center report announcing the award stated that when implemented, the plan would have a “catalytic effect on animating downtown Buffalo”.

Project submissions were judged by a jury of professional planners, designers, city officials and community, business and development representatives with extensive experience in urban waterfront projects.  Criteria used to evaluate the entries consisted of: 1.) Sensitivity to water; 2.) Quality and harmony of design; 3.) Civic contribution; 4.) Environmental contribution; and 5.) Educational contribution.

The Waterfront Center is an international non-profit, public interest educational organization that assists waterfront communities in making the wisest long term use of their urban waterfront resources.

The Bass Pro Museum Scam

Unreported in the mainstream media is the fact that the public is going to be on the hook for $14.8 million to build a museum for Bass Pro in the Canal District as part of the Bass Pro/Benderson $130,000,000 subsidy package. The giveaway is being orchestrated by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ECHDC, but it might as well be LOOTers, Leaders Of Our Town). One may recall that one of the chief benefits being hyped by Buffalo officials years ago regarding Bass Pro - a predatory retailer whose business model depends on public subsidy - was that the store would be so huge it would include a Great Lakes museum, for free.

Well, read the fine print. The "Pre Development Agreement" offered up by ECHDC (available for download in an earlier posting) includes a requirement that the museum be publicly financed. This so-called museum would be staffed not by professionals, but by Bass Pro employees. It is to be, in effect, a sales environment. The cost to the public also has an ongoing,  open-ended component: the public must make up any operating deficit the museum incurs. There are no ceilings or safeguards against abuse in the agreement. In other words, Bass Pro could not charge for admission, call all employment and utilities as operating expenses, deduct net profits of museum-generated sales, and stick the public with an annual bill. There is nothing stopping Bass Pro from hiring 20 people at $100,000 annually and claiming a $2,000,000 annual deficit on salaries alone.

It turns out this museum scam is not unique to Buffalo. It is a scam both Bass Pro and Cabela's, another hunting-and-fishing predatory retailer, have carried out in other towns and cities. In "Not Very Sporting: Outdoor Sporting Goods Retail Subsidy Scam" in the Sept/Oct 2006 Multi-National Monitor (http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2006/092006/leroy-sports.html), Greg LeRoy outlines Bass Pro's approach. Here's an excerpt:

Central to the business plans of Cabela’s and Bass Pro is their need to keep shoppers in the stores for a long time — to help some customers justify a long drive, no doubt — but mainly to maximize the size of their purchases. And a key to their success in keeping people in the stores for a long time is the creation of a pseudo-“museum” experience. The trouble is, these ersatz “museums” sprinkled throughout the stores are often built at the expense of taxpayers — and sometimes they are even owned by local governments!

The idea of a public “museum” existing as scattered fragments inside a big-box store violates the definition of a museum held by groups such as the Association of American Museums. Its definition calls for “a legally organized nonprofit organization or government entity” with “a formally stated and approved mission,” “paid professional staff,” and a “program of documentation, care and use of collections and/or objects.” It also contradicts the Association’s ethical guidelines for when a museum seeks support from business. Those guidelines call for “content control and integrity,” “avoidance of conflict of interest,” and a written, publicly accessible policy on business support.

Cabela’s and Bass Pro use a variety of legal gambits to structure these deals. In some cases, economic development subsidies are dedicated specifically to building the “museums.” For example, a tax increment financing package in Hooksett, New Hampshire included $4 million (out of $18 million total) for four “museum wings” at the corners of a new Cabela’s store. And Glendale Arizona’s $16.7 million package for Bass Pro included $10 million for the “museum,” aquarium and Conservation Mountain, [a display of stuffed animals].

Hazelwood, Missouri jacked up its tax on hotel guests — so that combined state and local taxes now exceed 18 percent — to help generate $5.82 million for a city-owned “museum” within a Cabela’s. One irate taxpayer wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “It is ironic that Hazelwood is paying Cabela’s $5 million to build a nature museum in a mall that was built on 500 acres of green space and about 50 acres of wetland. Before long, there won’t be any place left to use the stuff Cabela’s sells. Maybe we can take our new tent and cooler and go camping in the nature ‘museum.’”

In some cases, the company uses a state’s condominium law (enabling two entities to own pieces of the same property) to deed the “museum” part of the store over the local government. Since it is publicly owned, the “museum” part of the property is normally exempt from property taxes. This is reportedly the plan in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, where local officials approved a $23.5 million package for a Cabela’s, 15 percent of which is to be declared a tax-exempt “museum.”

In two recent cases, state legislators voted to amend state laws specially for the chains. The South Carolina state legislature overrode a vehement veto from Governor Mark Sanford, amending its tourism promotion act by extending subsidies to as many as four “extraordinary retail establishments” if they include “an aquarium or natural history exhibit or museum.” Governor Sanford was so incensed by the proposal, enacted for Cabela’s, that he mailed letters denouncing it to three dozen locally owned outdoor sporting goods retailers in the state, and he wrote legislators that it was a troubling precedent because the state had never before subsidized retail investment.

And in Ohio, the state legislature enacted a special “impact” retail subsidy for a proposed Bass Pro store in Rossford, though not by name. Instead, the law grants a lavish sales-tax rebate to a retailer that, among other things, dedicates at least 10 percent of its facility to “educational and exhibit activities.”

On top of the sales-tax rebate, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) committed $1 million for the construction of an “outdoor education center” at the store. The money is to come from hunting and fishing license fees and from federal excise tax rebates.

A DNR spokeswoman notes that Ohio state law forbids the funds from subsidizing any retail operations, but “outdoor education” is another thing.

“They [Bass Pro] teach everything from nature interpretation to angling skills and hunting safety,” she says. Bass Pro says it will invite school groups and scout troops for field trips.

Buffalo Going after Shrinking Hunting and Fishing Market

There's Smart Growth, then there's Dumb Non-Growth. The Bass Pro/Benderson imbroglio in and around Buffalo's Canal District, composed of a $130,000,000 in upfront handouts for, among other things, a character-destroying big box Bass Pro proposed for what is planned to be a waterfront open space.

There is a long and sorry history of chuckleheaded projects in Buffalo and across the nation concocted by desperate politicians, greedy real estate developers, compliant bureaucrats and sharky consultants posing as "development" experts. Throw in cheering boosters in the mainstream media, and you get counter-productive, counter-intuitive projects.

The day after the March 30 meeting of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ESHDC), which featured more spin than an F5 tornado, the NY Times published an article about the decades-long decline in fishing licenses ("Fish are Biting, but the Anglers Aren't"). In other words, our various governments, the city, county, state, and nation, are picking winners in a private market that is shrinking. The losers? The public that finances these crackpot schemes, and the Mom-and-Pop hunting and fishing stores, as well as chains which do not accept subsidies.

The Times article reports that fishing licenses have declined 20% from 1990 to 2005, even as the U.S. population continued a strong upward trend. Hunting licenses, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife statistics declined almost 8% in the same period. There are about twice as many fishing licenses issued in recent years than hunting licenses.

$34.5 million in Unneeded Parking Ramps for Benderson/Bass Pro

The Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Inner Harbor Project (since renamed the Erie Canal Harbor project), issued in 1999, contains a parking inventory summary. It found 11,009 off-street parking spaces within 1,500 feet of the Canal District. Further, those closest to the Canal District had the lowest usage in a mid-day workday survey: an extremely low 17%. This is because of all the parking built for the HSBC Arena, which gets used to capacity only during concerts and hockey games. Summer weekends and evenings, the expected peak time of demand for the Canal District, finds these spaces virtually empty.

Why then does ECHDC want to build no less than 2,400 parking spaces in four parking ramps at public expense for the free use of Benderson Development and Bass Pro? One of the ramps is planned withing the Canal District itself, called by ECHDC, without irony, the "Historic Block."

Download the "People's Plan" Under Construction that Bass Pro Threatens to Derail

The Bass Pro/Benderson debacle being shilled about by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ESDC) is a gross abnegation of the public trust represented by the Final Supplemental Environmental  Impact Statement of the Erie Canal Harbor Project (signed by the Federal Transit Administration, the NFTA, and the parent of ECHDC, the Empire State Development Corporation), and its companion Master Plan. Can't remember all that? Just call it the People's Plan, because it was the result of a citizen-brought lawsuit and a judicially mandated and very inclusive public review process. Click on the link to download the master Plan that is being built right now, and click on the images to see sketches of what the Canal District could be.

Download Final_Master_Plan_Report.pdf