Democracy In Albany - New York Politics || Return of Convention Center

Return of Convention Center

By DIA, Section News
Posted on Sat Feb 02, 2008 at 03:21:11 AM EST

Jennings gives up but McEneny fights on!

The board was given a detailed breakdown of the project's expected costs, including $192.5 million for the convention center and a pedestrian walkway to the county-owned Times Union Center and $153.2 million for a 400-room Sheraton Hotel.

George Leveille, the board chairman, said the authority does not decide whether the project should continue.

"At the end of the day, it's something the legislature and the governor's office has to decide," he said.

No one has yet told the authority to stop working, he said.

Assemblyman Jack McEneny said he has spoken to the governor's office and legislators and support for the project is still there.

"There is still great enthusiasm and support. I am still very positive about it," said McEneny, an Albany Democrat. "We are turning down conventions wholesale. The governor and his staff have been very supportive, very helpful. The word is just keep doing what you're doing."

McEneny said Jennings' earlier comments that the city's higher priorities are state aid to balance the budget and fight blight have not caused less support for the center, which he emphasizes would be a state facility.

"Having spent most of yesterday on the phone, I don't think any harm has been done," he said.

If it is a "state facility" I hope Jack has completely changed the way it is being funded. If that isn't the case and the Sheraton Hotel's profits would still be guaranteed by the tax payers of Albany, than I look forward to McEneny's letter to the Times Union offering a correction on this article.

< Values | Times Useful >

Menu

+ create account
+ faq
+ search

Login

Make a new account

Related Links

+ up but McEneny fights on!
+ Also by DIA

Return of Convention Center | 8 comments (8 topical, 0 hidden)

Sooooooo, Mr. McEnemy....(oops!) (none / 0) (#1)
by hawkny on Sat Feb 02, 2008 at 04:42:56 AM EST

Yur'e quoted as saying, "We're turning down conventions wholesale"!!!! (emphasis added)

Then pray, let us ask...

1. Who, exactly, be doing all
this "turning down"?, and,

2. Who, precisely are the "turned
downees"?
It seems strange that someone, or some body, has
been authorized to accept applications to hold a convention, at this early date. What is his/her name and where does he/she work?

Likewise, what organizations, corporations, groups, or individuals have filled out and submitted requests, at such an early date. After all, the first spade of dirt has not been turned over yet. What are their names and who did the requesting on their behalf. Names, please, names.

C'mon, Jackieoooooo, give us the source data for your claim in today's Times Union article!

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=660424&category=FRONTPG&BCCode=HOME&n ewsdate=2/2/2008

Truth be known, it appears to be you been "sipping the poteen bottle" again, in the absence of any specifics.

Sooooooo, Mr. McEnemy....(oops!) (none / 0) (#2)
by hawkny on Sat Feb 02, 2008 at 04:43:00 AM EST

Yur'e quoted as saying, "We're turning down conventions wholesale"!!!! (emphasis added)

Then pray, let us ask...

1. Who, exactly, be doing all
this "turning down"?, and,

2. Who, precisely are the "turned
downees"?
It seems strange that someone, or some body, has
been authorized to accept applications to hold a convention, at this early date. What is his/her name and where does he/she work?

Likewise, what organizations, corporations, groups, or individuals have filled out and submitted requests, at such an early date. After all, the first spade of dirt has not been turned over yet. What are their names and who did the requesting on their behalf. Names, please, names.

C'mon, Jackieoooooo, give us the source data for your claim in today's Times Union article!

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=660424&category=FRONTPG&BCCode=HOME&n ewsdate=2/2/2008

Truth be known, it appears to be you been "sipping the poteen bottle" again, in the absence of any specifics.

Now You're Talking (none / 0) (#3)
by fineagedwine on Sat Feb 02, 2008 at 07:50:06 AM EST

Right about McEneny. I would think that he does believe that the State should foot the bill for the convention center, just as they do with the "Conn. Center" in Hartford. There is reason to believe that this project should be a State of New York project and that local hands should be out of it. This would surely play into Spitzers "Upstate Revitialization" plans. and would be a start to brining this deplorable State Capital to a better place and reputation.

Build it. Hype it. They will come. (none / 0) (#4)
by TerryONeillEsq on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 07:20:53 AM EST

The people who plan conventions certainly know what their capacity needs are for exhibitions, meetings, seminars, accommodation, hospitality and local attractions. They don't even think about places that simply can't accommodate their clients' needs. If people have been calling Jack McEneny to offer their convention business, the recorded exchanges will probably be developed into a future episode of Comedy Central's "Crank Yankers." Any guesses on which puppet characters will play whom?

Whether or not Albany gets a convention center will be totally a political decision. Whether or not it pays for itself will be the result of marketing and the creation of unique attractions.

Not a problem.

The late Marty Silverman paid me an unexpected visit one day in 1999. He had heard (I never knew how) that I had an ambition of creating a SUNY institute on transnational organized crime and terrorism here in Albany. (Nota bene, this was a full two years before 9/11) I laid out a whole concept for making it a uniquely New York thing that would be self-marketing and could be entirely funded with private money -- a $3.5 million endowment. He thought it was a great idea. He had a big arial photo of downtown Albany centered upon the University Heights complex on New Scotland Avenue. He showed me exactly where he would put my program -- a whole building all to itself.

Mr. Silverman looked down upon Albany and saw a concentration of impressive institutions of higher learning, a huge VA hospital that he thought was growing obsolete and would be available for assimilation, a very concentrated downtown, gentrifiable housing and a location on all routes of transportation central to many large (and more expensive) cities to the four points of the compass. He saw it as a potential intellectual powerhouse and an international attraction.

I agreed with him then and I agree with him now. In fact, I would consider this confederation of intellectual resources as the "anchor tenant" for a continual cavalcade of higher education and public policy-themed conventions.

I say: Let's do it.

O, yes. And my plan for a SUNY Institute on Transnational Organized Crime and Terrorism? It's moving forward under the sponsorship of Senate Homeland Security Chairman Vincent Leibell. In seeking an Assembly sponsor, I certainly approached Jack McEneny. He declined, saying that he didn't "want to go out in front on it."

All the more reason for me to succeed him as Assembly representative for the 104th Assembly District. I'll be damned if I'd sit around waiting for convention organizers to call.

: Hon. Edward Griffith (none / 0) (#5)
by TerryONeillEsq on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 09:28:54 AM EST

I should disclose that the idea for creating the SUNY institute referrenced above arose out of a conversation I had in 1999 with former Assembly Assistant Speaker Edward Griffith. Mr. Griiffith, a native of Panama, returned from a visit there that year appalled by the unrepaired war damage left behind by George H.W. Bush when he sent the armed forces in to arrest Manuel Antonio Noriega in December 1989.
When I explained to the Assemblyman that Noriega had turned his country into a piggybank and money laundry for the Colombian drug cartels and that these powerful criminal organizations were facilitating terrorist organizations and generally up to similar no good in many small nations throughout the region, he wanted to do something. I drafted him a bill (precursor of the one Senator Leibell is now carrying) that would marshal the tremendous intellectual resources of our great public university system and make them a resource for the international security community. That New York has a world-acclaimed tradition of pioneering leadership in exposing, confronting and defeating organized crime provides a ready-made marketing advantage for raising an endowment and attracting participation in the institute's programs.
Mr. Griffith represented the 40th Assembly District in Brooklyn. His constiutuents were not the kind of people who have these big transnational issues on their minds. But they are simple, grassroots Americans, many of them immigrants from affected Caribbean nations. Many are the kind of people who were performing all kinds of service sector jobs at the World Trade Center when it was destroyed two years after that conversation we had that led to the SUNY proposal. They are also the kind of families that have sent so many of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers off to Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the elected representative of people like them who put this proposal down on paper and laid it on the desks of every member of the New York State Legislature. The Legislature owes it to them to lay it now on Governor Spizer's desk.
During his twenty-eight year career in the Assembly, Mr. Griffith didn't author that many bills, but the few he did made a truly remarkable contribution to the common good of the people of the State of New York.

[ Parent ]

Let it Go Terry (none / 0) (#6)
by fineagedwine on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 04:21:12 PM EST

Terry Oneill,
You are a decent guy with alot of knowledge and a passion for law enfrcement and the people who enforce our laws. However you should keep your heart and sould doing those things that you know best, not by running for the Assembly.

: Heart not sold (none / 0) (#7)
by TerryONeillEsq on Mon Feb 04, 2008 at 05:11:44 AM EST

The Assembly seat comes with a paycheck, a mandate to respond to the needs and concerns of my community and the authority to introduce legislation. If I had a paycheck and an Assembly representative who had the imagination and the stones to sponsor some of my propopsals, that would be a different story.

[ Parent ]

The Business Review Albany edition is... running a (none / 0) (#8)
by Jim Travers on Mon Feb 04, 2008 at 10:21:03 PM EST

conducting a survey that asks:

"Should state government fill the $192.5 million gap to build a $397.5 million convention center in downtown Albany?"

http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/poll/index.html?poll_id=4993&ana=e_du

When voting you may comment. I did. When I voted the talley was running at 30% for additional state aid, 70% against.

Return of Convention Center | 8 comments (8 topical, 0 hidden)

create account | faq | search