Channel 8 is reporting that Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren has asked Governor Andrew Cuomo for $100 million for a performing arts center downtown.
Warren has long insisted that any new performing arts center should be downtown. The Rochester Broadway Theatre League has been looking for a new home, but is currently attached to the Medley Centre project in Irondequoit. That project seems stuck in permanent limbo, however, which may leave an opening for the city.
Former mayor Tom Richards was reluctant to get involved with the RBTL theater. He was convinced that it would run a deficit, and said the city was not in a financial position to support a performing arts center.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2014.
Strange request, but, powerful! If I understand the Mayor’s point of view, there are two points that are important…first, she wants the PAC downtown, that one is obvious. Second, she is taking advantage of the gridlock at Medley Centre.
What is not so obvious is why the gridlock exists. Let me propose a reason. Assemblyman Morelle represents the geography of Medley. Might it be that his calls for an investigation of the EZ status is actually him trying to kill the project to the benefit of Wilmorite…a huge political contributor and his son’s employer?
Last night, in a bar in Irondequoit (not proposing that is a good place for fact gathering) a patron proposed that the agenda was just that. He pointed out that the entire Irondequoit board and supervisor are Morelle folks and, suddenly, it appears they are trying to kill the mall.
Is that possible, or worse, true? I hope that this is not a coordinated effort to kill Medley to the benefit of a company that stiffed the city for a lot of tax money at Sibley! And, by the way, Assemblyman Morelle was silent about that. Perhaps City should investigate this series of events.
Hey, Buffalo is getting ONE BILLION DOLLARS from NYS taxpayers. That computes to $50 million as Rochester’s contribution.
High taxes, and then large giveaways is such a silly game and very destructive to our economy.
Cuomo turned down Mayor Warren’s request for the $100 million but gave her $6 million for “anti-poverty efforts”. Does anyone know specifically what “anti-poverty efforts” are and exactly how this money will be spent? I didn’t think so. As usual there is no information anywhere about this.
I thought that Rochester was facing a $28 million budget deficit. So the $6 million won’t be used to lower this to $22 million? Is there some law that governments must always spend more than they have. I guess it’s great for the big banks.
Help for the poor? That’s just some politician talking.