Tobe is banking on areas water as selling point for new business

by David Robinson, News Business Reporter

Richard Tobe, Buffalo's top economic development official, thinks fresh water eventually could be one of the region's biggest selling points to businesses.

Tobe, Buffalo's commissioner of economic development, said Tuesday that the availability of vast amounts of fresh water could, some day, be a valuable magnet to lure water-intensive businesses from other, more parched parts of the country.

The availability of fresh water has long been cited as a potential asset that could lure business to the region, although it has yet to develop into a powerful lure for companies.

"We would like to add that to the tools" that the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise (BNE) uses to market the region, Tobe said during a semi-annual update on the BNE initiative. "We won't win just with water, but we might with water and all of these other things."

Those other things include the BNE's other initiatives to make the region's economic development system more efficient and to market the area to targeted industries. "Economic development in Buffalo is about bunts and singles and stolen bases," not home runs, Tobe said.

To do that, though, Tobe said it is important that the region make more land ready for quick development by companies that need to expand rapidly. "We need to work like crazy to make land available for development," he said. "We want to be more in the game than we were in the past."

"Our cupboard now is virtually bare," especially for larger sites of 10 acres or more, he said. "I want to get that inventory into shape so we can start promoting it," along with other lucrative development tools such as Empire Zone benefits and brownfield tax credits.

BNE officials overall painted a generally upbeat picture of the BNE's efforts, highlighted by the recent decision by IntelliRisk Management Corp. to expand its call center operations in Cheektowaga.

"There are a lot of good things going on," said Thomas Kucharski, the BNE's president.