Medaille College has taken a leading role in helping the Riverside neighborhood through a partnership between the College and the Buffalo City School District, specifically Riverside High School. The partnership allows Riverside High School to offer unique programs to students, including Riverside School of Entrepreneurship, health care programs and the National Academy of Finance. One benefit of this collaboration is the formation of the Academy for Creativity and Entrepreneurship (A.C.E.). A.C.E. offers students opportunities to participate in various projects to increase their creativity, learn about entrepreneurship and learn various life skills. Furthermore, the students nurture the Buffalo community
The summer's project for participants, entitled "Environmental Entrepreneurs-- Marketing Urban Parks," started on July 25th and finishes tomorrow (August 5th). The program allowed four teams of students to brainstorm ideas for marketing and utilizing the Riverside neighborhood's park system. The program included an introduction to skills necessary for successful entrepreneurship, such as public speaking and persuasion through daily exercises and classroom work at the Medaille Campus. Furthermore, the students visited local park systems daily and took field trips to foster creative ideas for students' proposals and to explore Buffalo's great offerings. The students used this knowledge from their excursions, collaborative learning and other assignments to create viable business proposals to support underfunded and underused local urban parks.
Students are presenting their final proposals today Thursday, August 4th, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Medaille College's fourth floor cafe. All are welcome to attend. During the celebration, the four groups of Riverside area students will present their proposals.
Additionally, the A.C.E. program will conclude its 2011 program during the celebration. By displaying the students' wonderful work, Buffalonians can explore possibilities for revitalizing Buffalo's park system and view how collaborative community efforts can both enrich neighborhoods and the lives of local students.
^Student in the program explores local parks to foster creativity 
^Program directors Dr. Cofield, Dr. Mulvey, and Ms. Soule
Lead image: A.C.E. Students at the Buffalo Zoo
Nick Barnett can actually practice starting today (Photo: BuffaloBills.com)
(Note: I’ve now updated this article to include the Bengals signing Donte Whitner Thursday afternoon.)
With the free agency period winding down (most free agents have been signed and are allowed to practice today), it’s time to really assess if NFL teams have succeeded in strengthening their rosters. So how did our Bills do in that regard?
Lord knows the Bills had plenty of weak spots on this roster. Did the (relatively few) moves the Bills made make any sort of difference? Let’s check out Buffalo’s free agency report card:
Signings:
ILB Nick Barnett – A talented linebacker who’s been a productive member of some very good teams. Still young enough (30) to have some good years. Very reasonable price (3 years – $4M per season). Fills some big needs as an everydown 3-4 inside linebacker who can defend the run and pass. Will instantly command respect in the locker room. Only real concern here is his injury history (missed large parts of two of past three seasons). All in all, an excellent signing. Grade: A-
Afraid that a small band of tea party radicals would blow up the economy, feckless Democrats simply caved instead of getting out front in the debate.
A quick look at what's happening today in Western New York
Donn Esmonde wrote a very nice story about how people are moving into dilapidated buildings in rough parts of the West Side and gentrifying them; they’re taking an interest in their properties, fixing them up, keeping them up, and otherwise reversing blight. This is a great thing, and there’s no need to cast aspersions against anyone, right? No need to call anyone out, except perhaps for the formerly negligent property owners.
But Esmonde can always find a villain – he has to, because it’s easy. It’s funny because it’s usually a personal conceit, packed with poignant irony (how many typical Esmondian anti-parking screeds has he penned against the News’ fugly surface lot on Scott St.?), so he writes this:
They are not yuppies looking to gentrify. They are working-class folks eager to stabilize a multicultural neighborhood. The light of true believers is in their eyes. The energy and commitment are typical of the new-homeowner posse.
So what if they were “yuppies looking to gentrify”? People with cash who drive BMWs installing Poggenpohl kitchens would be a bad thing in a rough, abandoned city neighborhood? If the gentrifiers were suburban folks looking to return to the city, would that be okay?
It’s like Esmonde’s writing is always just a facile bundle of conceits wrapped around a story that shouldn’t have been controversial at all. Oh, this gentrification is okay because they’re “working-class” people. Are they? One is a massage therapist, which is an allied health profession, and the other is a teacher, who gets great benefits and has a distinctly white-collar job. Neither of them works the third shift at Carborundum or the Tonawanda engine plant.
Did you also notice that the owners of the dilapidated homes all “fled to the suburbs”? Did he poll the neighborhood? Did he look it up at the clerk’s office? Is he sure they didn’t possibly move away from the area altogether? Or to a different part of the city? Yet another Esmonde conceit, clumsily hurled without factual basis.
I’ll tell you what – when a neighborhood is characterized as “hot” because the average home price is $80,000, then there’s still a lot of work to do. We can start by not hurling invective at phantoms.
I guess getting a personalized license plate was cheaper than getting that long-overdue brake job! As seen in Niagara Falls, USA. — Jim Corbran, You Auto Know
It’s a good one too. In response to one of my previous posts about Genesee County shenanigans, GOP Chairman Dick Siebert calls me a liar, then admits to talking about fraud and legal action but quibbles about intent and context. In the brilliant finale, he tells us all who, exactly, has been securing the Independence Party line for Genesee County Republicans all these years. At least local Democrats can sleep well knowing why they’ve never had a chance to even interview for an endorsement.
Enjoy:
Click to enlarge
The letter was addressed to the Genesee County Republican Town and City Chairmen, the Genesee County Legislators (for no apparent reason) and the Genesee County Republican Committee Officers.
Some of you may or may not be aware of statements and accusations made by the above against me as Chairman of our Party. The Statement being made is that I threatened to file charges or have someone else file charges with the District Attorney’s office to have Debra Buck Leaton, an Independence party member, arrested. This is entirely untrue and is just something Mr. Charvella created in his own mind.
The fact is that when I heard Independence petitions were being filed in the Board of Election for candidates only in LeRoy and Byron, I spoke to my fellow Commissioner, Dawn Cassidy and told her I was not going to take issue with it. I did tell her that if Debra Buck Leaton was not authorized to grant authorization for those petitions to be filed for candidates not belonging to the Independence Party, someone could object, and this could be construed as fraud that might be a legal matter but that I, as GOP Chairman, would not Pursue the matter. For the record, Dawn and I have discussed this and she fully concurs with my statements.
I felt the publicity this matter would generate would not be in our best interest and that is why I told my fellow Commissioner I would not take any legal action regarding the issue.
We did get the Independence Party line for our candidates in Alabama, Le Roy, Pembroke, Stafford and the City of Batavia. I am proud of it and have thanked Steve Hawley for all his help in accomplishing our goal.
It’s funny how things unfold. The people who related the story to me took Mr. Siebert’s comments as a thinly veiled threat (contrary to Siebert’s theory, I don’t sit around and make up fun stories about Republicans, people actually call me up and tell me things.) So much so, that the result was the withdrawal of the Independence Party Chairwoman’s authorizations.
Siebert’s remarks were enough to cause a reasonable person to fear a legal battle over the petitions which were then withdrawan because of that fear. That’s not something I ‘created in my own mind.’ That’s what actually happened.
Siebert’s explanation of his remarks (he admits to suggesting that ‘someone’ may choose to take legal action to battle some act of fraud that wasn’t actually happening) basically requires us to believe that he didn’t care at all that he may be facing challenges on the Independence Party ballot line, a line that his party has controlled for years. I suppose all the talk about fraud could have just been the inane ramblings of a man who was being bothered while he was on vacation.
The best part of the letter, for me at least, came at the end when Siebert ensures his committee that he took time to thank Assemblyman Steve Hawley, (R)Batavia, for fetching his pet ballot line. I’ve been trying to get a Republican to admit to me for years that either Steve Hawley or Sen. Mike Ranzenhofer was the go between for the Independence line in Genesee County. My money was on Ranz, but I’d like to thank Chairman Dick Siebert for clearing that up.
I wonder what happens next. Siebert did not acknowledge Ms. Leaton as the Independence Party Chair in his letter, only referring to her as an ‘Independence Party member.’ Will he continue to send Assemblyman Hawley off to wherever with a list of loyal Republicans to be endorsed? Will he follow the rules and begin sending his candidates to the local party Chairwoman?
Maybe he’ll mail out another letter and let us know.
Picked up off waivers from Pittsburgh in the first half of the 2010 season, Kraig Urbik was rarely noticed on the game field on Sundays. So it’s not surprising that a good number of Bills fans are ...
I took a vacation for a couple of days and no, I didn’t tell you ahead of time. I don’t like to let 30,000 people know when my house is going to be empty. I’m back now, here’s your daily morning grumpy.
1. Later this afternoon, we’ll be announcing the first local merchant that will get a visit from the #BuffCashMob. I need to call the owner today to make sure he can handle a (hopefully) large influx of people and that he is both properly staffed and stocked with merchandise. I have no idea if we’ll get the turnout I hoped for, but I’m planning for 100 people to visit this business within a two hour period on Friday. Stay tuned.
2. Chris Sasiadek and I will be covering the Accelerate Upstate confab today and tomorrow. What the hell is “Acclerate Upstate”? Well, howdy-doo, here’s the details.
Buffalo will be host to a two-day conference of Upstate leaders in August to develop an action plan for accelerating priority projects and economic growth in the 40,000 square miles that compose Upstate New York. The leaders will focus on how Upstate can thrive given the state’s particular political balance and the resulting limited political clout Upstate.
The Partnership organized the Accelerate Upstate conference after encountering universal frustration – expressed by Upstate business leaders, labor leaders, municipal and school leaders, environmentalists, not-for-profits, farmers and more – over the region’s inadequate political clout, and the negative impact of it.
Consider the following:
- Only 81 of the NYS Legislature’s 212 members represent Upstate constituents
- All major statewide elected offices are held by Downstaters
- The leaders of both legislative houses hail from Downstate districtsThe 17 New York State counties that showed a population decline in the 2010 census are Upstate
The conference will produce an action plan that will be delivered to Albany within 4-6 weeks. Will the plan be a regurgitation of the standard Buffalo Niagara Partnership annual agenda which simultaneously demands smaller government and lower taxes while asking for big budget public projects? Or will this event provide some fresh perspective on the unique challenges of Upstate New York? This time, I’m hopeful for the latter. Here is the agenda for the event, Chris and I will file reports through the rest of the week.
3. Here’s a homework assignment for you. Have you ever heard of ALEC?
For decades, a discreet nonprofit has brought together state legislators and corporate representatives to produce business-friendly “model” legislation. These “model” bills form the basis of hundreds of pieces of legislation each year, and they often end up as laws. As media scrutiny of the nonprofit—the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC—has grown, we’ve built both a guide and a searchable database so you can see for yourself how ALEC’s model bills make their way to statehouses.
This is simply an AWESOME piece of reporting from ProPublica…just a stunning work of enterprise data journalism. We’ll be revisiting this topic more often in the coming weeks and months. Read up and see how your government fucks you over on the regular.
4. I’m not going to say much about the debt ceiling debacle, except to point you to Matt Taibbi’s pitch-perfect take on why the Democratic Party capitulated and why it’s become clear that the majority of Americans no longer have a political party working on their behalf.
The Democrats aren’t failing to stand up to Republicans and failing to enact sensible reforms that benefit the middle class because they genuinely believe there’s political hay to be made moving to the right. They’re doing it because they do not represent any actual voters. I know I’ve said this before, but they are not a progressive political party, not even secretly, deep inside. They just play one on television.
Maybe this time, the Green Party will nominate someone who isn’t a total disaster and I’ll have a reason to vote on their line.
5. Hey, remember that whole BP Oil Spill thing that we seem to have completely forgotten about as a nation?
Yeah, it’s not going real well down along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. See, BP did a great job of making the oil disappear rather than actually cleaning it up.
Those who work along the coast say they know the presence of tar mats left by the BP oil spill last year is heavy because tarballs continue to float ashore every day.
And that’s heightened with the activity of rough seas.
About a week ago, a 1,500-foot by 30-foot tar mat as much as 18-inches thick “exposed itself” just west of Little Lagoon Pass just off the water’s edge, according to Grant Brown, spokesman for Gulf Shores.
BP’s use of chemical dispersants to break up nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil solved some short term problems of oil making it to the coast, but it created a longer term problem. The oil will be churned up in rough weather and it is nearly impossible to track where the oil has sunk to or how how far it has traveled. Over 1 million barrels of oil remain unaccounted for, and there is a dispute about how much was actually recovered. Awesome.
6. A beautifully well done long read about the capture and kill of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad.
Brigadier General Marshall Webb, an assistant commander of JSOC, took a seat at the end of a lacquered table in a small adjoining office and turned on his laptop. He opened multiple chat windows that kept him, and the White House, connected with the other command teams. The office where Webb sat had the only video feed in the White House showing real-time footage of the target, which was being shot by an unarmed RQ 170 drone flying more than fifteen thousand feet above Abbottabad. The JSOC planners, determined to keep the operation as secret as possible, had decided against using additional fighters or bombers. “It just wasn’t worth it,” the special-operations officer told me. The SEALs were on their own.
Fantastic access…
7. The Conservative Nanny State is coming to get you…
Under language approved 19 to 10 by a House committee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required to track all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along with your name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, and IP addresses you’ve been assigned.
Remember, conservatives hate big government, except for big government which favors their social and corporatist agenda.
8. Al-Jazeera English does what our “liberal media” fails to do, tell the liberal (factual) side of the story on the economy and wealth inequality.
A brilliant expose on just how fucked the working class is in America and how current policy intends to keep it that way.
9. After all that bad news, I feel like I owe you something cool. So, I present to you, the best of Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm. He brings the ruckus to the ladies.
Joe Pepitone up in this motherfucker.
Have a day!
visit site to read more
Rocco Termini's ambitious Hotel Lafayette redevelopment project is progressing quickly. At least two components are likely to be completed by the time the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference is held. Work crews are hurrying to ready the Dutch Grill and much of the Crystal Ballroom for the October event.
The 367-room Lafayette Hotel, in its prime, was considered one of the 15 finest hotels in the country. It was designed principally by Louise Blanchard Bethune, the first professional woman architect in the country, the first female member of the American Institute of Architects, and the first woman to be made a Fellow of the A.I.A. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places last August.
Renovation plans for the $40 million project are being prepared by architecture and engineering firm Carmina Wood Morris. R&P Oak Hill is the general contractor.
The building is currently on schedule to be ready for tenants to set up by April 1st next year with the grand opening date slated for May 1st. Termini is calling the project the Hotel at Lafayette.
While very few alterations have been made to the exterior since the building's construction, the same cannot be said of the interior. 'Renovations,' neglect and water damage have taken their toll on the interior.
Work crews have gutted much of the building, are clearing the building of debris and furnishings, and are removing dropped ceilings and other historically inaccurate "renovations" that have been done over the past few decades.
One of the most dramatic changes to the hotel's interior occurred in 1942, when an Art Deco lobby was installed. The Art Deco in the lobby and several other areas will remain. Other areas on the ground floor will be restored to their original design (see history of the building's interior here).
Termini has secured an impressive lineup of tenants to essentially fill the building's lower floors.
Sea Bar Chef Michael Andrzejewski will be opening Michael A's Steakhouse in the former Dutch Grill Room, later remodeled as the Lafayette Room, that is located along the Clinton Street side of the building (above). Despite many modifications including its use by a radio station, it retains a high degree of its original integrity and is by far the best preserved public space from the original 1904 Bethune designed hotel. The plasterwork on the walls and ceiling is intact though damaged. Two freestanding columns and pilasters along the walls support this vaulted ceiling. The offices and sound studios were constructed largely without disturbing the wood and plasterwork of the original space, now exposed.
Michael A's Steakhouse will also utilize the former Lobby Lounge located behind the elevators. This will become a bar and lounge for the steakhouse and will keep its Art Deco styling.
Woyshner's Flower Shop will open a store on the first floor at the corner of Clinton and Washington streets. The space was used as a pharmacy for many years but in the recent past was an optical office. It will retain its Art Deco style. A jeweler is taking space off of the main lobby where a nail salon was located. Get Dressed is also opening in the building.
Along Washington Street, the former Lafayette Tap Room space (above) is going to be run by Earl Ketry of Pearl Street Grille and Brewery. He was also be taking the old Lafayette Coffee Shop space (between the lobby and Tap Room fronting Washington Street) that will be returned to its original 1904 Outer Dining Room appearance. Banquet facilities for the Tap Room will be located on the second floor in former service areas of the building.
The rear of the building is all becoming Marquis de Lafayette run by restaurateur Bill Koessler. The Crystal Dining Room (along Clinton Street east of the future steak house space, photo above), Grand Ball Room (photo below) and AAA Room (south side of the building) will be banquet facilities.
In the old speak easy in the basement, Butterwood Bakery is opening a dessert bar and restaurant. That space will be accessible from Ellicott Street.
The greatest challenge with the main floor is the amount of plaster work which needs to be done. Most of the plaster can be repaired, but some has deteriorated to nothing and will need to be replicated and replaced.
The second floor will be used as the hotel aspect of the project, providing thirty four rooms. One hundred and fifteen apartments are planned for the third through seventh floors.
Termini expects to have a model apartment on the sixth floor completed this month which was coming along nicely on a recent tour (above). Much of the framing and drywall was already installed and with a small stretch of imagination, it is not difficult to see a beautiful living space taking shape.
Although the project will not be completed until next year, over a dozen weddings have been booked including hotel rooms needed for the wedding parties. A model hotel suite is expected to be ready this fall.
The $40 million project has a long way to go in a short amount of time, but Termini has a proven track record of getting projects done. It is on its way.
Photos by Dylan Marsh
Nik Wallenda is on a tightrope when it comes to convincing those who must grant permission for his high-wire walk above the falls.
In my seventeen years of government employment, I encountered many bureaucratic procedures that made accomplishing anything very difficult and inefficient. Most government employees know that the agency or program they are working for could be improved but they do not have the opportunity to express their ideas or are afraid to express new ideas as most department heads do not value dissent in any way. For any type of change to occur in an organization, a culture that values opinions must be created.
As Chief Operating Officer of PayPal, David Sacks had 500 employees reporting to him. As an experienced business officer, Sacks has leadership skills that others can learn from. In a New York Times article titled Fostering a Culture of Dissent, Sacks makes the following points:
- Open Door Policy – “Anyone can walk into my office and start talking to me.” “Anybody can ask me questions and debate me. You could be a new employee and you can start getting into a debate with me about something. The start-up culture is very democratic in general. I think you need that in order to attract good people. You’ve really got to create a company culture that people want to work at. And so you try to give them a voice, give them a sense that they influence the direction of the company, and try to avoid unnecessary process and hierarchy — things that might frustrate employees.”
- Management By Walking Around – “I also walk around the office and just start talking to people about what they’re working on. I’m not trying to micromanage what they’re doing, but I am trying to find out what they’re working on and talk to them about it.”
- Create A Culture Of Dissent – “ I think you’ve got to create a culture in which dissent is valued. And there’s probably a lot of ways to set that tone. Certainly you can tell if you’ve got a culture of dissent when you walk into a company. People can figure out very quickly whether dissent is encouraged or whether it’s actually something that’s not welcome. It’s a red flag to me if there’s just too much consensus and not enough dissent. I feel like in any human community there’s always dissent because people just disagree. Anytime there doesn’t appear to be dissent, it means that the corporate culture has just shifted way too much toward consensus. That means the leadership just doesn’t welcome dissent enough.”
- Communication – “We do a lot of things to try and pull the company together and make sure that we’re all on the same page. So about once a quarter, I give a company presentation that lays out our thinking at a high level about the strategy. And then once a month we have Yammer Time at the end of the day on Friday, and the executive team takes questions from anyone in the company. They can also submit them online. They can also submit them anonymously if they want. We’ll basically answer anything that people want. People can see the anonymous questions online, and people can vote on which questions they want us to answer.
- What Are We Trying To Do Here? -“We just implemented this quarterly process called Morph. So Morph stands for Mission, Objectives, Results, People, and the H is for “How,” as in, “How did you do by the end of the quarter?”Mission is just a one-sentence description of what’s your mission at the company? What do you have ownership of? And that really gets people to think about, O.K., what is my overall mission here?Objectives are the top three, maximum five, things that you want to achieve this quarter. Results are about the metrics you’re going to use to measure those objectives. How do we know if we’ve achieved them? People refers to, what changes do we need to make in the organization to achieve this? Do we need to hire people? Do we need to create new teams? Do we need to change the way that a team is defined? And then at the end of the quarter we just ask, “How’d you do?”
I think it is helpful just to pause once a quarter and just kind of step back for a second and say, “What are we trying to do here?” You have to be centralized with respect to direction, decentralized with respect to execution.
Why is it that the type of leadership Sacks talks about are hard to find in government; especially among County Executives, Mayors and Town Supervisors? County Executives and Mayors rarely have an open door policy, rarely communicate with front line employees about the bureaucracy of government, are uncomfortable with any type of disagreement regarding their decisions, do not like to share information and rarely ask “What are we trying to do here?”. While Sacks advocates for fostering dissent, I would be happy to at least be part of an organization that values communication and the expression of opinions.
What do you think?
In my seventeen years of government employment, I encountered many bureaucratic procedures that made accomplishing anything very difficult and inefficient. Most government employees know that the agency or program they are working for could be improved but they do not have the opportunity to express their ideas or are afraid to express new ideas as most department heads do not value dissent in any way. For any type of change to occur in an organization, a culture that values opinions must be created.
As Chief Operating Officer of PayPal, David Sacks had 500 employees reporting to him. As an experienced business officer, Sacks has leadership skills that others can learn from. In a New York Times article titled Fostering a Culture of Dissent, Sacks makes the following points:
- Open Door Policy – “Anyone can walk into my office and start talking to me.” “Anybody can ask me questions and debate me. You could be a new employee and you can start getting into a debate with me about something. The start-up culture is very democratic in general. I think you need that in order to attract good people. You’ve really got to create a company culture that people want to work at. And so you try to give them a voice, give them a sense that they influence the direction of the company, and try to avoid unnecessary process and hierarchy — things that might frustrate employees.”
- Management By Walking Around – “I also walk around the office and just start talking to people about what they’re working on. I’m not trying to micromanage what they’re doing, but I am trying to find out what they’re working on and talk to them about it.”
- Create A Culture Of Dissent – “ I think you’ve got to create a culture in which dissent is valued. And there’s probably a lot of ways to set that tone. Certainly you can tell if you’ve got a culture of dissent when you walk into a company. People can figure out very quickly whether dissent is encouraged or whether it’s actually something that’s not welcome. It’s a red flag to me if there’s just too much consensus and not enough dissent. I feel like in any human community there’s always dissent because people just disagree. Anytime there doesn’t appear to be dissent, it means that the corporate culture has just shifted way too much toward consensus. That means the leadership just doesn’t welcome dissent enough.”
- Communication – “We do a lot of things to try and pull the company together and make sure that we’re all on the same page. So about once a quarter, I give a company presentation that lays out our thinking at a high level about the strategy. And then once a month we have Yammer Time at the end of the day on Friday, and the executive team takes questions from anyone in the company. They can also submit them online. They can also submit them anonymously if they want. We’ll basically answer anything that people want. People can see the anonymous questions online, and people can vote on which questions they want us to answer.
- What Are We Trying To Do Here? -“We just implemented this quarterly process called Morph. So Morph stands for Mission, Objectives, Results, People, and the H is for “How,” as in, “How did you do by the end of the quarter?”Mission is just a one-sentence description of what’s your mission at the company? What do you have ownership of? And that really gets people to think about, O.K., what is my overall mission here?Objectives are the top three, maximum five, things that you want to achieve this quarter. Results are about the metrics you’re going to use to measure those objectives. How do we know if we’ve achieved them? People refers to, what changes do we need to make in the organization to achieve this? Do we need to hire people? Do we need to create new teams? Do we need to change the way that a team is defined? And then at the end of the quarter we just ask, “How’d you do?”
I think it is helpful just to pause once a quarter and just kind of step back for a second and say, “What are we trying to do here?” You have to be centralized with respect to direction, decentralized with respect to execution.
Why is it that the type of leadership Sacks talks about are hard to find in government; especially among County Executives, Mayors and Town Supervisors? County Executives and Mayors rarely have an open door policy, rarely communicate with front line employees about the bureaucracy of government, are uncomfortable with any type of disagreement regarding their decisions, do not like to share information and rarely ask “What are we trying to do here?”. While Sacks advocates for fostering dissent, I would be happy to at least be part of an organization that values communication and the expression of opinions.
What do you think?
He will appear from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the American Legion Post, One Legion Drive.