They’ve
obviously done their homework. The three major Democratic candidates for Rochester mayor have
consulted the polls, and they agree on what you seem to be telling them are the
big issues: crime, education, and economic development.

Find
a solution for all three, and they’ll get elected. And, maybe, save the city
from its slow decline.

But
it really starts with the money. All the police tactics in the world won’t
stanch Rochester’s alarming
homicide rate as long as so many city neighborhoods are barely functioning amid
desperate poverty. Each of Rochester’s city
schools could land a spot on Newsweek’s top-100 list, but see if that matters to the kids whose buses drop them at the
corner of Norton and North Clinton or Conkey and
Avenue A, B, C, D, or E after the bell rings.

So
money’s one place we’re starting our election coverage. We’ve talked to all
sorts of people who have a connection — professionally, personally, or both
— to the city’s economy and its development efforts. Some were reluctant to
go on the record because of affiliations with City Hall and local
economic-development arms. Among those willing to be named:
corporate-relocation consultant Gene DePrez; outgoing Mayor Bill Johnson; Heidi
Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation, and
Kent Gardner, director of economic analysis at the Center for Governmental
Research.

Their
candor — and the brutal honesty of our undisclosed sources — helped us
assemble the following list of harsh economic truths the next mayor must be
ready to address. We’ll have the candidates’ discussion of these dilemmas in a
future issue.

•
Murder Inc.: “There are whole sections of the city that average business people
would not feel comfortable walking around in broad daylight,” says a source.
“As a city resident, I understand that there’s a delicate balance to strike.
But we have deeply stressed sections of the city we can’t ignore. You can’t
divorce economic development from quality of life, safety, education, and
poverty.”

•
Pony up: The Rochester market doesn’t hold much sex appeal for developers. With
most developments in the city’s recent history, public money had to be the
first in the pot. And here’s one fun fact: The only completely unsubsidized
large-scale project built in Rochester during the
Johnson administration is the Wal-Mart (of all things) on Hudson
Avenue. “All they wanted was our
cooperation,” says Johnson. “That’s rare.”

•
Uniquely ROCCity: Brownfields
and crime (violent and property) are almost exclusively city problems. It’s
hard to assemble a development project in the city that doesn’t come with a
raft of environmental concerns. “For most businesses,” says one of our sources,
“the path of least resistance is the suburbs.”

•
Made for what? There’ve been plenty
of attempts at sexy marketing campaigns to attract new business and industry to
Greater Rochester. The latest slogan: “Rochester: Made for Living.” But several
of our sources insist that marketing Rochester’s “quality of life” is a losing
strategy. Says corporate-relocation expert and former Rochesterian Gene DePrez:

“I
get piles of materials every day, and every community has nice golf courses and
sailboats. But quality of life is elusive. People have different standards. Any
city’s marketing campaign has to be more business-oriented and more substantive
than that. And it has to speak to your uniqueness. What kind of research and
development are going on there? What are the university offerings? What’s the
intellectual capital? Then, maybe, you get into quality of life.”

The
Made for Living website (www.rochestermadeforliving.com) does mention theregion’s
business and educational opportunities, but all of that gets buried by pictures
of happy kids eating ice cream, cats lounging on porches, and categories called
“kicking back” and “living well.”

•
Bushwhacked: Forget about state funding to help spur economic development. New
York’s government is buried in its own financial mess. And the federal programs
the city has turned to in the past — Community Development Block Grants,
affordable housing grants, etc. — are under attack by the Bush administration.
How have the feds helped us before? CDBG money was used downtown for the Hyatt
Hotel and the Bausch & Lomb building. And $12 million in federal funds
helped with the Port of Rochester development.
Given those limitations to subsidizing economic development, says Mayor
Johnson, “If I were coming into office today, I’d be scratching my head.”

•
GRE with envy: The same people who criticize “Made for Living” do say that the
formation of Greater Rochester Enterprise two years ago was a crucial step
forward. But it should have happened more like 15 years ago. Before GRE, the
city, the county, and the Chamber of Commerce were all working independently to
attract businesses, developments, and people to the area. There is still
competition among the city and its suburbs, but GRE provides clients with some
initial one-stop shopping. And it keeps the area unified in its E-D goals.

Other
cities started similar initiatives long before Rochester, however, and
we’re still playing catch-up. Makes you wonder what all those cities are up to
now.

•
Return to Smugtown: Rochester’s never
bottomed out like Buffalo. Despite
downsizing by our major employers, we’ve not been crippled yet. Maybe our
ability to cope kept us from looking beyond our borders sooner for examples of
progressive E-D initiatives.

“The
next mayor has to see the future,” says RDDC’s Heidi Zimmer-Meyer. “We’ve been
a complacent community. We’ve been relatively healthy for several generations.
But the facts are changing. We’re competing with China and Germany. The world
has changed. Our own innate protections have changed. We’re a town of small
companies.”

Says
DePrez: “Rochestershould be an outstanding place.”

•
That sinking feeling: If we can’t keep downtown’s commercial property at a
premium, the entire city will feel the pain. At its height, downtown produced
40 percent of the property-tax base for the entire city of Rochester. Go figure.

•
Friends in higher places: MonroeCounty could screw
the city if it wanted. Because it has a larger budget, favorable incentive
programs (COMIDA, Empire Zones), and, mainly, better land, Monroe County holds
the upper hand in any economic-development relationship it shares with the
city. Rochester’s next mayor
has to convince suburban residents — and their elected representatives —
that concentrated poverty and a dwindling tax base in the city hurt everyone in
the county.

•
First responder: The hallmark of any decent economic-development department is
its ability to respond to the needs of businesses quickly and seamlessly.
Several sources say the city’s economic development department needs
strengthening, and that it needs to change its approach to development. Says
one: “The 2010 [the city’s long-range plan] process is a beginning. But we have
to go way beyond that.”

Other
sources criticize the Rochester E-D department’s tendency to regulate. “It’s
been more about code enforcement than anything else,” says one source. “If you
have that regulatory mindset to economic development, it doesn’t help. You have
to facilitate more than you regulate. You need a department that can represent
business to the rest of the bureaucracy and knock down walls. Rochester’s department
right now can think of lots of reasons not to do something.”

•
Big Yellow: Kodak’s downsizing presents major problems, but also some
opportunities. “Kodak demonstrates a willingness to rehab its sites,” says
CGR’s Kent Gardner. “The city ought to work closely with them to figure out
which sites have the most promise” for future development.

•
Get a job: When community leaders talk about attracting new business to Rochester, they talk
about businesses that require skilled workers. What about the large number of
Rochesterians who have no skills and less-than-adequate education? “What you do
is make them more skilled,” says Kent Gardner. “It doesn’t make sense to look
for industries that hire unskilled workers. “They’ll come in, and then they’ll
be gone in five years.” The solution: “You start with the RochesterSchool
District, BOCES, MCC,” Gardner says.
“Education is the best anti-poverty program we have.”

“There
is no solution other than addressing the job readiness of these individuals,” Gardner says. “That
is a huge task, and not one that is going to be easily accomplished.”

•
Youth of today: Attracting and retaining the under-35 demographic has perplexed
Rochester and its
leaders for years. Young people value ethnic diversity and authenticity. Rochester has many
ethnic neighborhoods packed with ethnic retail and restaurants. The problem:
Most of this stuff is in neighborhoods the average young person with disposable
income would be warned to avoid; and certainly not encouraged to explore.

•
Stop the bleeding: People are flowing out of the eastern US in droves. Even
Midwestern populations are declining as folks head further west. “We still
haven’t found a way in the east to market our strengths and reverse those
population trends,” Johnson says.

This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2005.