NIAGARA COUNTY
Panel told of efforts to attract businesses
By Thomas J. Prohaska - NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU
Updated: 03/15/07 6:43 AM
WHEATFIELD — The president and chief executive officer of Buffalo Niagara Enterprise told a Niagara County Legislature committee that the regional marketing organization is actively recruiting business for the county.
Thomas A. Kucharski told the Economic Development Committee that his group helped place Videon Digital Technologies, a video security company with fewer than 10 jobs, in a location on Buffalo Avenue in Niagara Falls shortly before Christmas.
He also said he met Wednesday with a company interested in locating in the former Army Reserve facility on Porter Road in the Town of Niagara. He provided no details on that.
Kucharski’s report covered the first three months of the county’s membership on the organization’s board. The County Legislature, after some controversy, voted Sept. 5 to pay $50,000 for a seat on the board for a year. The payment wasn’t made until October.
Kucharski and Christina P. Orsi, the organization’s business development representative, said they worked with the county’s economic development staff to land the HSBC Bank data center for Cambria, after the bank considered sites near Chicago.
The county Industrial Development Agency is expected to approve tax incentives today for that nearly $1 billion project.
A joint marketing effort sought to lure Canadian companies, with BNE providing the IDA a 1,000-name mailing list.
Planning is under way for an air cargo symposium in June at Niagara Falls International Airport and two other site tours are planned for prospective new businesses.
Asked if he thought that record would silence the organization’s critics, Kucharski said: “Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but we don’t pay much attention to that. We keep forging ahead. We’re the lean, mean, investment and job-finding machine.”
“We believe we should think as a region,” said Legislature Majority Leader Richard E. Updegrove, R-Lockport, also the committee’s chairman. “That’s the key to our success.”
Orsi said publicity about the HSBC project has led to contacts from other businesses looking for places to build computer centers.
“A lot of them like rural locations,” she said, because many businesses want large buffer zones around their buildings. HSBC is buying 51 acres.
Kucharski said development agencies need to work with the State Power Authority to land such projects. “If you have lowcost power, it can be the difference- maker and the decisionclincher in a deal,” he said.
BNE took heat from the County Legislature late last year when it refused to help promote AES Corp.’s proposal for a $1 billion “clean coal” power plant in Somerset.
The Power Authority contract went to NRG Energy’s Huntley plant in the Town of Tonawanda.
“We will not advocate one site in the region over another. We never will,” Kucharski said.
