Buildings could start going up at the Western New York
Science, Technology, and Advanced Manufacturing Park in rural Genesee County
within a year. But not everyone is thrilled about the park’s location.
The 1,250-acre complex will be located in the Town of
Alabama, northwest of Batavia, in an area blanketed with farms and protected
wild areas. Government and economic development officials envision the park as
a job-creating nanotech hub that’ll benefit the Rochester and Buffalo areas.
The park will be a 25-minute drive from Buffalo and a 40-minute drive from
Rochester.
“This is a transformational opportunity for the region,” said
Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle during last week’s meeting of the Finger
Lakes Regional Economic Development Council.
But members of Empire State Future, a statewide smart growth
advocacy group, say that while the jobs will benefit the region, the park’s
far-flung location is a net loss.
Group members say the park will be an example of an
inefficient location. It will mean more water lines, more power lines, and more
roads to maintain, says Evan Lowenstein, a Rochester smart-growth advocate and
Empire State Future member. The organization wants to see industrial sites located
in existing community cores, he says, which often have underused industrial
land.
“The sad truth is that we don’t have the funding to maintain
the infrastructure we already have,” Lowenstein says.
The 2014-15 state budget sets aside $33 million for the park.
Genesee County’s economic development agency will use the funds to finish
buying land for the complex, and to pay for road and utilities infrastructure,
says Mark Peterson, president and CEO of Greater Rochester Enterprise.
Peterson says the STAMP site is logical. The nanotech
companies that region officials want to attract prefer an open, undeveloped
site, he says. Officials also wanted a 1,200 acre site, he says, so the options
were limited.
Demographics are another factor. The targeted companies tend
to locate in regions with more than a million workers, Peterson says. Neither
Buffalo nor Rochester hit that mark on their own, he says, but combined, the
regions have a work force of approximately 1.4 million. And the site is easy to
get to from both cities.
The site is also within a New York Power Authority low-cost
hydropower zone, which is important because the businesses use a lot of
electricity, Peterson says.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2014.
I agree. Terrible location. How about Bergen, where there already is a new commercial park at the intersection of 90 & 490.
Repeating the fallacy that STAMP is only 40 minutes from Rochester will not make it so. As a favored project of the powers that be, STAMP is a fait accompli at this point, but at least let’s not play fast and loose with the facts. Google maps says 52.6 miles/52 minutes from Main and Clinton to Route 77 and Judge Road, which is the edge of STAMP closest to Rochester.
That’s 105 miles round trip. Generously assuming an average of 30 miles per gallon, that’s 3.5 gallons of gas per vehicle per day for round trips from Rochester. At the current price of $3.65 per gallon, that’s $12.78 per day ($63.88 per week, $3,129.88 per 49 week working year) just for gas, not counting $2.10 in daily tolls, vehicle costs, insurance, repairs, etc.
That’s one hour and 44 minutes (1.75 hours) every day spent commuting. 11% of your waking hours. 8.75 hours per week, 428.75 hours or almost 18 days per year spent commuting.
Is this the lifestyle that we want? Is this the lifestyle that is appealing to future employees? Young worker preferences suggest not. Regardless, the gross inefficiencies of up to 10,000 workers commuting long distances does not make good public policy and should not be encouraged with public funds. Doing so makes a mockery of the State’s Public Infrastructure Policy Act (PIPA), otherwise known as the Smart Growth Act. STAMP is not smart growth. It is dumb growth, of the highest order.
Since when is 40 minutes “only”? My commute is 40 minutes on a bicycle, and 10 minutes by car. People are going to be miserable driving 40 minutes every day to the middle of nowhere. Think about the winter we just had. I have co-workers who live “only” 40 minutes away in Livonia, and there were many days this winter where it took them 1.5 hours to get to our office near the airport.
Let’s take a look at why this location was chosen. A few years back when the hydro plant was applying for relicensing, Buffalo objected. It seems that the NYPA stretches an ice boom across the mouth of the Niagara River. Buffalo complained that because of the ice boom corralling ice, that it delayed spring time weather in Buffalo by about 2,3 days. They were able to extract hundreds of millions of dollars, all focused on Niagara and Erie counties ONLY before allowing the relicensing to proceed. Look at the Buffalo waterfront today . That work ($300 million) is being financed by electric consumers subsidizing it. Buffalo continues to get billions of dollars from taxpayers while Rochester gets crumbs.
Do we have anyone representing us in Albany?????
Suburban sprawl and reliance on the automobile for long distance commuting are hardly the way of the future – certainly not “A transformational opportunity” to quote Joe Morelle. The STAMP project is one example of this mindset, but NYS is also funding over $140M on the Kendrick Road/ Route 390 interchange for more single occupant vehicles going to the U of R and MCC. Some say that western NY is 10 years behind the times – the Interstate Highway Act was enacted in 1956. Most regions are now supporting existing infrastructure in urban areas – Eastman Business Park and Rochester Tech Park would be prime sites. – Paul Tankel
This bonehead idea is a classic case of why government needs to get out of the pump priming “lets spend money to ‘create’ economic activity” game. The site for this park was chosen purely for political reasons, and makes absolutely no sense since it is not close to anything. When all is said and done, this thing will be a net drain on taxpayers. That $33 million should be refunded to taxpayers, and this thing should be mothballed.
Not to mentioned, if 1000 news jobs are created (which I doubt) you will now need schools, fire, police, etc.. for over 1000 new people. I highly doubt the tax revenue generated will cover those costs. If this project was built at either Eastman Kodak site in Rochester or on a old brownfield in Buffalo, there is already all these services in place.
Thank you for covering this, Jeremy. This textbook example of location inefficiency makes the RIT campus or Xerox Webster look brilliant by comparison. The people at GCEDC in Genesee County are on a huge and undeserved ego trip and the leaders of Rochester-Monroe have allowed the tail to wag the dog. The reasons given for building STAMP in remote Alabama are all easily refuted. No available cheap land in Monroe County? BS, ever been to Ogden? No cheap power and water in Monroe County? BS, all it takes is the Governor’s signature. Chip fab plants need to be far from infrastructure that generates vibrations? Bullpucky – take a look at Intel in Hillsboro OR.
For the money we’re throwing away on STAMP, we could have assembled a fine site in Monroe County, closer to the people, the homes, the schools, the services, and the infrastructure required to support such a large venture. Even in “success”, this project will be an abject failure. It is emblematic of a community with no vision for its future.