Rochester Mayor Tom Richards said today that county
Republicans are using COMIDA as a weapon to get their way on a deal
involving the future location of Monroe Community College. But County Executive
Maggie Brooks said that Richards is mistaken and that COMIDA is just doing its
due diligence by potentially delaying a vote on a tax-abatement deal for the
buyer of the Sibley building.
City Council has approved a $5 million deal to sell the
Sibley building to the Sibley Redevelopment Limited Partnership, an entity to
be formed by Boston-based Winn Development. Winn plans to invest up to $150
million over 10 years to renovate the building for retail, offices, and
housing. But the agreement includes the COMIDA deal, Richards said at a press
conference this afternoon, and if the COMIDA abatement isn’t approved this
month, the whole deal could be in jeopardy.
At the core of Richard’s assertion is a difference of
opinion on where MCC’s downtown campus should be. City officials want it to
stay at the Sibley building to help with the revitalization of downtown. But
the MCC board wants to move the college out to Kodak’s State Street campus, and
County Executive Brooks has said that she supports the board’s decision.
The County Legislature, which is dominated by Republicans,
will vote on bonding to move MCC to Kodak in December. The problem? They need a
couple of Democratic votes and right now, it doesn’t appear they’re likely to
get them. Richards said the COMIDA trick is meant to pressure Dems to go along
with the bonding.
“The city can’t sit still for that,” Richards said. “We can’t
have our economic development agenda held hostage” because of the importance of
the Sibley deal, and because of the message it would send to other developers —
that politics can jeopardize their investments.
Richards said he got wind of the Republicans’ strategy about
a month ago and asked Brooks about it. She looked into it, he said, and told
him “it’s going to be OK.”
So when Richards got word that COMIDA might delay a vote “for
further study,” he said, he tried to call Brooks — twice in a week — but she
didn’t return his messages.
At her own press conference this afternoon, Brooks said she
supports the redevelopment of the Sibley building and that COMIDA is doing its
due diligence on an application it received only two weeks ago.
“The IDA application will go through the normal process,” she
said. “That’s what they do. They have to measure the benchmarks, the
milestones, the job requirements. All of that is part of their review process
and sometimes that does take longer than two weeks.”
She denied that the COMIDA action has anything to do with
MCC, and said that the mayor may have “made some false assumptions.”
Brooks said she “doesn’t know it to be true” that the Sibley
deal won’t be on COMIDA’s October agenda, and that representatives for Winn and
COMIDA are meeting tomorrow.
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2012.
“At the core of Richard’s assertion is a difference of opinion on where MCC’s downtown campus should be. City officials want it to stay at the Sibley building to help with the revitalization of downtown.”
“City officials” (i.e. folks employed by the mayor) are obviously going to fall in line. Never mind the fact that the Kodak complex provides: Ample room for all kinds of expansion; Plenty of surface parking (easier for security to patrol than a parking garage and likely a big reason suburban kids refuse to go to Damon); An opportunity to OWN rather than RENT (from an out-of-state landlord no less) and; A much better return on investment for the taxpayers.
I’m of the opinion that downtown will not suffer from MCC moving less than one mile from it’s current location… In fact, I believe it (along with the High Falls neighborhood – which is finally seeing some positive momentum) would benefit! Put your real estate cap on for a moment and ask yourself which buildings (Kodak or Damon) would be more difficult to find an interested tenant or developer for were they completely empty… (I say Kodak). Let the private sector (Winn) worry about Sibley.
We have MCC students and faculty WANTING to move into the increasingly-vacant Kodak complex, yet Mr. Richards (who apparently knows something no one else knows about revitalizing decaying downtowns and running college campuses) claims to know what’s best… best for Winn perhaps.
How exactly does anyone (other than Winn) benefit should Democrats in the County Legislature force MCC to remain in the Sibley Building against their wishes? If we truly want a first-class downtown college campus, Kodak is the clear choice IMO.