12/06/2012
"At the meeting of the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council where the AMRI grant was announced, the main event was the unveiling of the plan, the big plan, that has been more than a year in formation. Its outlines have been known for a while because when Cuomo said that he’d put $1 billion forward, WNYREDC leaders Satish Tripathi and Howard Zemsky organized dozens of meetings with hundreds of participants, all of whom talk. For Niagara Falls, there will be a continued focus on developing tourism, an effort that will include promoting the art, architecture, and landscape of Buffalo, too. For Buffalo, there will be the AMRI investment, and more effort on workforce training so that prospective workers get better matched to prospective jobs, and there will be what Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Portland, Kalamazoo, and other second-tier former industrial cities have all had versions of: a formalized, funded, annual business-plan competition that will be promoted here and everywhere, the better to build up the supply of enterprise-creating entrepreneurs."
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