Weak Dollar a Boon to Buffalo Niagara Enterprise

By David Robinson NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER

The weak U. S. dollar is helping to keep the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise busy, even as the economy slows.

BNE President Thomas A. Kucharski said Thursday the group is getting about 20 percent of its leads from Canadian companies exploring the possibility of moving into the Buffalo Niagara region.

“The weak dollar is putting us back in play,” Kucharski said Thursday after the BNE’s annual meeting in Buffalo. “With a strong dollar, your margins are really tight.”

The regional economic development and marketing initiative laid claim Thursday to 20 project “wins” during the fiscal year that ended in June, only one fewer than last year, despite the slowing economy.

“What’s really cool is, in a down economy, to see people walking in your front door,” Kucharski said. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised . . . We’re quite busy and that bodes well for the future.”

Those projects created 889 new jobs and helped retain 1,031 positions, it said. The group defines a “win” as a commitment by a company that has been working with the BNE as its project manager to launch a new business venture here or expand an existing one.

The group said 16 of the wins were for projects that brought new business here. In all, the projects involved $70 million in new investment in the region.

“I believe very strongly that the results and initiatives we have reported are not only proof that our Buffalo Niagara region can successfully compete for new business and jobs, but that this community can prosper in a global economy,” BNE Chairman David Smith said at the group’s annual meeting.

The BNE, now in its 10th year, gets roughly 90 percent of its annual funding from private sector donors. The initiative last year shifted its focus more toward attracting new businesses to the region, while handing off efforts to help retain companies that already are here to other economic development agencies, including the local industrial development agencies.

But the BNE’s more focused approach, which is geared toward six targeted industries and attracting companies from outside the area, led to the group reporting its fewest project wins and its lowest job creation and retention figures in four years.

“We knew that we had to restock our pipeline,” Kucharski said.

The 1,530 jobs created through the BNE’s wins and other BNE-aided projects that were managed by other economic development agencies is 25 percent less than its peak in the 2006 fiscal year. The total investment generated by the BNE’s initiatives totaled more than $145 million, also its lowest in four years.

“The competitive environment in economic development and global attraction is very, very fierce, especially in a slowing economy,” Kucharski said.

More than half of the jobs created through the BNE’s efforts came from a pair of projects — Center One Capital’s new credit card servicing business in Buffalo and the expansion of Tops Market’s headquarters operation in Amherst following the chain’s acquisition by Morgan Stanley Private Equity.

Kucharski said 16 of the projects were with companies that are either new to the region or brought new operations to the area. A quarter of the projects were in the region’s fledgling life sciences cluster, while another quarter were for advanced manufacturing. The BNE also was successful on three projects apiece in the targeted back office, logistics and distribution industries, as well as with one agribusiness project.

Paul Fumo, the general manager of Compact Mould Ltd., a Canadian company that makes molds for plastic bottles, said the firm’s U. S. operations shifted from Chesapeake, Va., to Wheatfield after the company considered sites in Atlanta, Texas and other U. S. markets.

The company, which is expected to employ about six local workers, wanted to be closer to its customer base, which is mostly along the East Coast, as well as to be closer to its headquarters outside Toronto, Fumo said.

The BNE has since added a sixth targeted industry cluster that will focus on firms that manufacture and design equipment for the renewable energy industry, such as solar power and wind energy.