CHANGES AT THE D&C
The local Gannett operation may be bolstering penetration by
adding new publications every few months, but that doesn’t seem to be steering
readers back to its core product.
The most recent circulation figures are out and the Democrat
and Chronicle followed the national trend, circulating 214,908 papers on
Sundays compared to 222,627 a year ago — a drop of about 3.5 percent. For
weekdays, the slide was slightly less pronounced: 156,128 in September of this
year compared to 161,314 in September of 2005 (down 3.2 percent).
But steering readers back to the daily paper may not be what
21st-century media companies want, anyway. Here’s how D&C spokesperson Tom
O’Connor spins the declining figures: “Our strategy focuses on growing our
audience,” he says. “We’ve done just that.”
And according to O’Connor, that growth can happen “across
any platform,” not necessarily with the daily newspaper, just so long as it
keeps happening. In this case, “any platform” might mean Insider, Rochester
Magazine, or the company’s websites.
It’s against this backdrop that the Newspaper Guild of
Rochester’s 14-year contract battle may be winding to a conclusion, though not
the one the editorial staff had hoped for.
According to union officials, Gannett’s negotiators have
handed its newsroom union a contract offer they say is their “firm, final, and
best.”
O’Connor’s only comment was to read a prepared statement:
“We have negotiated in good faith and presented a firm,
final, and best contract offer to the Guild last week,” he said. “Beyond that,
we don’t comment out of respect for our employees.”
The Guild trashed the offer in an e-mail to Rochester
media, saying it “guts protections for hourly workers.” For example, it changes
overtime from being figured on a daily basis to weekly. And the offer does not
include a 401(k) plan, which other local Gannett employees have and which has
been a major sticking point.
“It’s disappointing that Gannett has chosen to push contract
talks to the brink of impasse,” Local 17 President Steve Orr said in a
statement. “The Guild continues to believe that a fair and equitable contract
agreement can be reached, but only if the company shows a willingness to
negotiate honestly. Despite a steady exodus of journalists from the newspaper,
many of whom have not been replaced, the company does not seem interested in
providing a contract that encourages workers to stay.”
Still, the union is planning to hold a vote on the offer
after conducting meetings with its members to discuss the plan. If the union
votes down the plan, Gannett could declare an impasse and impose it
unilaterally. That’s something union members fear may be in the offing, since
the company described the offer as final. The union may still have some
options, however, even if the company takes that route. It could try to
convince the National Labor Relations Board that the company wasn’t negotiating
in good faith before it declared an impasse. But that’s tough to prove.
The company’s sudden eagerness to settle the issue may work
against them, says Guild Secretary Gary Craig.
“It was almost an artificial deadline,” he says of Gannett’s
goal to reach a resolution by year’s end, “which doesn’t imply good faith
bargaining.”
Privately, Guild members say they wonder why the company
chose to play the impasse card now, after 14 years without a contract and after
six months of more productive talks that included a federal mediator.
“We were making headway on a number of issues right before
they pulled the plug,” says Craig. “It’s a mystery.”
— Krestia DeGeorge
HOSPITAL PLANS NEW GARAGE
Plans to build a five-story parking garage on the west side
of South Avenue between Manor
Parkway and Linden Street
have raised eyebrows and hackles among some neighbors.
The would-be owner of the garage is nearby HighlandHospital. Currently, says Highland
spokesperson John Turner, about 220 employees park their
cars at a lot at the former RochesterPsychiatricCenter
and are shuttled to the hospital. But redevelopment of the PsychCenter will eventually force Highland
to stop using the lot, with as little as a month’s notice. To prepare for that,
the hospital purchased an option on the South Avenue
property and has started planning a new, 400-car garage. The additional
capacity will also take 75 to 100 hospital employees’ vehicles off the streets
around the hospital. And it will free up extra room for patients in the hospital’s
existing garage, says Turner.
Not everybody is happy about it. A group, calling itself
SAVE — South Avenue Visionary Efforts — published an unsigned letter to the
editor of the Wedge newspaper predicting that the project’s impact will be
“deleterious.”
Also opposing the hospital’s plan: the area’s neighborhood
organization, the South Wedge Planning Committee. In an October 13 letter to City
Zoning Director Art Ientelucci, SWPC Executive
Director Dan Buyer spelled out the group’s concerns.
For starters, there’s traffic. The ramp’s entrance will be
on a short stretch of South Avenue
between two traffic lights. In his letter, Buyer says that’s a recipe for
disaster, “creating the potential for traffic jams and car accidents.” There
are also an elementary school (School 12) and a nursery (the Rochester ChildFirst Network) in the immediate vicinity. The vehicle
and foot traffic twice a day from the children and their parents would create a
safety nightmare, Buyer writes.
Turner disagrees. A Bergmann traffic study commissioned by
the hospital shows that the area can handle the traffic, he says. And few
employees will be entering or exiting the garage when the school or the nursery
lets out. As to concerns about criminal activity at the garage during evenings
and weekends, when it would be mostly vacant, Turner responds that it’ll be
monitored by surveillance cameras. And he adds: “I’ll tell you, we’ve got a
pretty good security department.”
But there’s another set of concerns that have little or
nothing to do with issues of safety. Call them neighborhood-character concerns.
The hospital plans a five-story parking garage in an area where the next tallest
thing will be the modest tower of a Greek Orthodox church. In addition to being
“too tall and out of scale with the neighborhood,” Buyer writes, the building
will block the view of its neighbors and will “devalue their homes.”
“The 24-hour security lighting from the ramp will also be a
nuisance,” he writes.
Finally, he charges, “The proposed building does not fit the character of South Avenue.”
South Avenue is undergoing something of a renaissance these days, with retail,
commercial, and entertainment businesses popping up a few blocks to the north.
A parking garage, especially one of this size, could interrupt the streetscape
style that groups like SWPC have worked hard to nurture in that area.
Turner doesn’t
directly address those questions, but he says the hospital has revisited the
design in response to neighbors’ displeasure with the initial plans.
Still, it’s tough to
see what could be subject to change. To put 400 cars (a number the hospital
says is a firm one) on the property’s footprint would require five stories. And
putting some of those levels below ground would be expensive.
Despite all that,
Turner remains optimistic that Highland and its neighbors can reach a satisfactory
agreement.
“This process is
just starting out,” he says. “We think we can certainly develop that site to
look better than it does now.”
— Krestia DeGeorge
THE PORT TAKES SHAPE
A year and change later, plans for the Port
of Rochester are final. Or at least
as final as a master plan can be.
Last week VaroujanHagopian of Botson’s Sasaki and
Associates unveiled the last of a series of plans his firm has drawn up for the
city since last September. Those plans are still subject to a state
environmental quality review, the mayor’s tweaking, and City Council’s
approval. But they represent the more or less final product of a year’s worth
of planning.
So what made the cut? For starters, many of the public’s more
grandiose ideas — an aquarium, islands in LakeOntario — didn’t. Early on,
Sasaki’s planners decided that the port area’s greatest potential is as a
largely residential enclave — a “harbor village” —- rather than a national,
or international, attraction.
The final design reflects that decision. It shows a compact
grid of narrow streets framed by townhouses and apartment buildings in the 30
acres between the GeneseeRiver,
Lake Avenue, and OntarioBeachPark.
Exposed corners sport retail space (up to 80,000 square feet of it, depending
on what developers choose to do.) There’s a village green and a 100-slip
marina. The plan keeps the ferry terminal building, which is proposed as the
home of a Great LakesResearchCenter operated by SUNY Brockport.
The final plan is actually two plans, a move meant to give
the city some flexibility, explained Hagopian. The
main difference between the two options is the density of residential units.
Plan A incorporates 395 housing units, Plan B about 700. The larger number of
units wouldn’t change the project’s footprint; individual buildings would be
built higher. Hagopian estimates that Plan A would
require $33.7 million in additional public infrastructure and $92.4 million in
private investment. For Plan B: $34.1 million public and $145.7 million private.
The biggest change from previous versions of the plan was to
not build a parking garage across from the RogerRobachCommunity
Center. Instead, some of that parking space was
placed underground, beneath the village green and one of the residential
blocks. The changes were made in response to neighbors’ objections to the
proposed garage at public hearings.
The underground parking coupled with on-street parking will provide
a total of 970 spaces. That doesn’t include parking for the apartments, which
will be incorporated into the buildings in this plan. That’s less there parking
than is available on the surface lot now, but the Sasaki’s planners say that it
will be adequate. Besides, adds Hagopian, “The
highest and best use of this land is not surface parking.”
So what now? By the time the plan goes through the two to
three-month environmental-review process and is vetted by the mayor’s staff, says
city Economic Development Director Julio Vasquez, it could be five months before
it lands before City Council. Plenty — or nothing — could change along the
way.
“None of this is cast in stone,” Vasquez reminded reporters
at a preview last week. After the environmental review and the mayor and
council’s input, the project will need to be built by a private developer.
“We’ve had a few developers that have shown interest,” said
Vasquez.
But City Hall seems satisfied with Sasaki’s work. “I’m not
sure that we will change much because we believe that it’s a really good plan,”
Vasquez said.
— Krestia DeGeorge
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2006.
