Stadium sham

I have lived in Rochester
and Monroe County all of my 41
years. It is a great area, but it has some problems. I don’t believe funding
another downtown stadium is feasible or smart. Let’s spend this money where it
is more desperately needed: on our children’s education.

            Rhino fans
deserve a facility designed for their sport. Frontier Field should have been
that facility. Foresight and flexibility in the development and design of
Frontier Field could have prevented this whole problem.

            By the way,
whatever happened to PaeTec’s funds to purchase the
rights to the name of the stadium? How many millions did they give to the
Rhinos? How overextended are the Rhinos financially? The public needs
accountability before we front 90 percent of their playground. Thank you,
Assemblyman Gantt, for raising your questions.

            Let’s stop
wasting our hard-earned tax dollars. Invest them in the appropriate areas:
Develop our children’s education and skills. Maybe then they can appreciate
sports and arts. Put our tax dollars back into education, and maybe someday we
will need more than just a stadium: maybe an arts center.

            Jonathan Dubner, Charlotte

Grocery options

It is too bad that the small, neighborhood Wegmans store on Mt. Hope Avenue
is closing, leaving the university district without a grocery store. Now, two growing urban residential areas — Mt.Hope and
downtown Rochester — and a small town, Scottsville, have no place to buy food
nearby.

            In the past
five years, Wal-Mart has been opening small-format grocery-pharmacy stores in
the South and Midwest, known as Wal-Mart Neighborhood
Markets. Perhaps Neighborhood Markets be built on Mt.Hope and in Scottsville. Another
could fill the vacant McCurdy’s in Midtown, the upper floors of Sibley’s, or a
new building on one of the two Farash sites recently
donated to the county.

            The
historic buildings slated to be wrecked for the new bus terminal could also
suffice, since the first floor of Sibley’s, of course, is more appropriate for
the terminal.

            Or how
about having the owners of the HoneoyeFalls and Mendon Meadows
Marketplace groceries expand into the Scottsville and Mt.Hope sites and also find a place in
the central city?

            Why Bob and
Danny Wegman are so stubborn in wanting to close
their smaller stores here and open large, maze-like stores elsewhere is beyond
me.

            Kevin F. Yost, Middle Road, Henrietta

Double talk?

Lonsberry: “I am not a
racist.” Nixon: “I am not a crook.” Double
cross?Double denial?Or
both?

            Salvatore Parlato,
Seville
Drive, Irondequoit

Writing to City

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Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.

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guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and we ask that you include
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once every three months.

This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2003.