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Yahoo! favors Lockport over Genesee County for new facility

By Howard B. Owens

Purple will not become the official Genesee County color any time soon. Yahoo! has taken a pass on our fine county and instead chosen Lockport as the location of its planned WNY data center, reports the Buffalo News.

Town officials announced this afternoon that Yahoo! will present a site plan to the Town Planning Board at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. A public hearing will be held June 30.

Yahoo! also has applied for a property tax break from the town Industrial Development Agency, Town Attorney Daniel E. Seaman said.

Supervisor Marc R. Smith said the 190,000-square-foot computer center will take about 13 months to build, and Yahoo! would like to break ground in August.

Russ Stresing

From the same Buffalo News article:
The good news is hardly a done deal.

"We haven't made a final decision," Yahoo! spokeswoman Kim Rubey told The Buffalo News. "We're in discussion with other states. ... There are multiple stages of the process."

Asked why Yahoo! would apply for site plan approval and a tax break in Lockport if it was still considering other sites, Rubey said, "I can't elaborate on that."

Jun 11, 2009, 9:14pm Permalink
Howard B. Owens

And there's <a href="http://blogs.buffalonews.com/inside_the_news/2009/06/yahoo-its-a-lock-f… from the BN</a>

<blockquote>
Town officials, wary of giving the big build-up to the project in a region that has seen all too many bogus development schemes, and also compelled to clam up by a Yahoo! confidentiality agreement, kept "Project Pilgrim" hush-hush for about three months. Thursday,the digging of reporters, the need to schedule public meetings and the natural tendency of politicians to self promote led to the lid coming off.

The company won't say it has chosen Lockport, despite having submitted applications for site plan approval and tax breaks. And town officials emphasized they have applications, not a done deal.

But in contrast to Lockport's Walmart project, which took more than three years of town red tape and a year and a half of litigation, the town seems prepared to whoop this one through in a few weeks.</blockquote>

Jun 12, 2009, 6:52am Permalink
Bea McManis

Genesee County's loss (once again).
This would have been a good fit for our area. When one major company finds a good location then others, from the same industry, will also start looking.
I would like to know what is the flaw in the County's recruiting of new businesses.

Jun 12, 2009, 10:40am Permalink
Bea McManis

Posted by Howard Owens on June 12, 2009 - 10:56am
High taxes in Orleans County, too. And Erie, and Monroe, and Wayne, and Ontario ...

Exactly, Howard. All things being equal what is missing in Genesee Co.'s recruitment arsenal?
I know when the balloon was floated on here about Yahoo, the naysayers came out like gangbusters. They saw it as a politcal kickback scheme and they didn't want it in Genesee Co. because of that.
Can it be that there is too much negative backtalk about any new business coming in. Is the impression given is that they just aren't welcome.
Especially a dot.com. They are more than well aware of what is being blogged about them. No matter how good a fit they would have made, the 'not in my back yard' crowd willed out.

Jun 12, 2009, 11:07am Permalink
Gabor Deutsch

The winner is.... HIGH TAXES ! I toally agree. If non business owners are complaing about high taxes then its gonna be the same if not worse for any business.

Jun 12, 2009, 11:07am Permalink
Howard B. Owens

Peter, Bea's question was specific to Genesee County. Yahoo!'s choice wasn't between WNY and FL, it was between Erie and GC .. so it would be curious to know what went into Yahoo!'s thinking ... was it entirely a better tax-break offer from Lockport, or do they prefer long-leisurely strolls along the canal?

And I refuse to blame all of WNY's problems on high taxes. Every place has its draw backs. We would never move to Florida because of the humidity and frequency of hurricanes. In California, its high prices, smog, crowds and crime. In Texas, it's Texans. WNY has none of those defects (well, maybe a couple of months of humidity in the summer). The worst thing about NY is taxes and Albany, but those are no worse than the defects of other states, and while companies do tend to emphasize bottomline thinking, for forward-thinking companies, that isn't the only calculation.

And beside, there's more to growing a local economy than relocating companies -- nothing is more important than local entrepreneurs starting new businesses ... we need way more of that in WNY.

Jun 12, 2009, 11:21am Permalink
Richard Gahagan

In Texas, it's Texans?

Don't Mess With Texas. Texans are loyal to Texas first then the United States. The Federal government needs to stop trying to tell Texans how to run things in Texas. Texas is larger than 93% of Countries in the world today. Texas has the most stable economy in the country and in fact Houston was rated the number 1 economy in 2008. Texas is a donor state to the federal government, meaning Texas pays out more than it receives in the balance of taxes and federal funding and to sum it up Texas might be better off without the burden of the deterioration currently witnessed in the United States at the hands of a socialist government. Not to mention, Texas might as well be the capital of capitalism hosting more small businesses than any other state in the U.S. today and there lies a significant opportunity to attract more wealth, business and jobs as people come here for relief of the tax burdens other states impose. Oh yeah and don't forget the women - Texas women are .......uh ..........well..... just gawl dang fine - saweet as cherry wine!! And that ain't no lie. How y'all doin RRiiiick ya beeeen dooinnn alllll riiiiiight you better git yorself onn over here n give me summ that sugar honey-Just gives me goose bumps all over.

Jun 12, 2009, 2:29pm Permalink

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