The Metropolitan Development Association of Syracuse and Central New York, which represented the 200 largest companies and institutions in Central New York, and the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce completed the move in May to become CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity. . . .
The area covered includes Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties and runs from the St. Lawrence River to Tompkins County and from Utica to the eastern Finger Lakes.At least Greater Utica is now no longer the only place to have its Chamber of Commerce hide its geographic identity inside an amorphous regional "blob." But including Utica in with Syracuse??
Bringing a business to Ithaca should make economic developers in the north country happy because it could mean growth for the entire region.If new businesses in Ithaca are good for Watertown, I guess it is less of a stretch to imagine that bringing businesses to Syracuse will be good for Utica . . . or vice versa?
I wonder why the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce hasn't folded itself into CenterState since it seems to subscribe to the same regional philosophy. Why not add EDGE, too, since it already cooperates with the now former MDA on the "Creative Core" marketing concept.
And since all of Upstate is pretty bad from Amsterdam to Buffalo, why stop with just Central NY?
Does anyone really believe this nonsense?
7 comments:
I don't.
That's like saying "A benefit in Austin is growth in San Antonio!!!"
Uh, don't think so.
Although I agree that a continuous geographic increase in outfits like the MDA, or EDGE for that matter gets to be laughable, there is a kernal of a positive message implicit for our area. We should admit and plan around the concept of us being a bedroom community of Syracuse. Airports, sports, conv ention centers, performing arts, a zoo and many other facilites are best anchored in Syracuse and utilized by us. Paying for both the creation and maintanence of facilites that cannot be supported by our now small population is wasteful and unnecessary given Syracuse being less than one hour away.
Utica is too far away from Syracuse to be a bedroom community of Syracuse. Wait until gas goes to $10/gallon.
Economically, Syracuse looks more like Utica every day. I'm not sure that it is that much stronger. I won't want to support facilities in Syracuse because I'll never use them.
That's typical of the parochialism that is driving our area bankrupt and empty. The Syracuse Zoo, Carier Dome, an actual airport, SU and all that goes on there, fine dining, Wegman's, the Everson Museum, etc., etc., and you never use them!
Anonymous - If you want to spend your life wasting two hours a day to commute back and forth to Syracuse, adversely impacting your quality of life, spending money on gas and tolls, and polluting the air, that is your preference -- not mine.
It's not "parochialism" -- its called being sensible and acknowledging that everything, including a commute to Syracuse, has a time/money cost associated with it . . . something our local leaders have never learned to deal with which has led to our local mess.
I would hope to keep our local institutions going for as long as we can afford it. I'm afraid, however, that you are correct that we may already be at the point where we can no longer afford them ... that they will have to be shut down ... and that people will go to Syracuse (or Albany) by default for everything.
At that point, why would anyone bother staying in the Utica-Rome metro?
You are welcome to pay for my move to Syracuse when that happens.
A short commute to learn, enjoy and broaden one's mind and experiences is so much of a chore. Paying millions a year to maintain an airport with no service, a zoo with few animals and little space for them, arts centers not utilized, failed professional baseball teams makes so much more sense. Of course somone who operates under the specter of $10 a gallon gasoline does have insight not possesed by many.
Syracuse is a dump. Murders are practically a daily event. It's a gang & drug infested city that isn't worth the 1 hr. drive.
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