Posted on 12/10/2007 7:27:41 AM PST by shrinkermd
It's a real estate developer's sugar-plum dream: a mega-shopping mall complete with 10 Broadway-style theaters, an indoor river, a Tuscan village and a 39-story luxury hotel sheathed in green solar panels shaped like giant blades of grass. Plus as much as $1 billion in government-backed financing, thanks in part to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Not everyone thinks the plan, known as Destiny USA and still in the early bulldozer stage, is a good idea. Many on the Syracuse City Council consider its tax breaks a waste of public money. Others fear it could damage the struggling downtown area. Others question whether all its dazzling features will ever be built.
One thing is clear, however: Destiny is a classic example of how New York's junior senator has embraced old-fashioned pork-barrel politics, first to build power in the state, then to extend it nationwide as she becomes a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And to fuel her rise, Clinton has relied on the controversial funding device known as "earmarking." The earmarks enabled her to win favor with important constituents, many of whom provided financial support for her campaigns.
In the case of Destiny, she teamed up with other New York lawmakers to secure federal backing for the private investment project. And she collected tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the developer and others associated with the project.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Man, Davos is next month and just maybe, just maybe they will select us a different President for 2008?????
Bread a d Circuses
Tim asks fluff questions anyway.
The list makes interesting reading...
“This is going to end badly. Upstate NY is in the PITS economically and the national housing market bust will put a quick stop to any sane sales...”
This is Hillary’s “Steamtown” moment.
Whitewater never got finished either.
Bob Congel and the Pyramid Co. will make this fly if anyone can. They have been talking about this DestiNY business for 10 years and at the time it was first proposed it would have made sense. Now...after 10 years for foot dragging and political wrangling, the project is a waste of taxpayer’s dollars.
Syracuse (my former hometown) is essentially vacant. GE is gone (Lockheed Martin is not what GE was), Carrier is pretty much gone, Crouse Hinds is pretty much gone. The largest employer is Upstate Medical University.
Ditto for Utica ( GE and Grifiss AFB)
Ditto for Rochester (Kodak and Xerox)
Ditto for Buffalo. ( Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, Ford, GM, the railraod yards)
Ditto for Binghamton. Also the weather is lousy in that area, the least days of sunshine per year in the continental US except for Seattle area, I think.
The corruption started in earnest with former mayor Lee Alexander. (Son is part of Alexander & Catalano ambulance chasers) Terry McAuliff is a piker in the corruption scheme of things in upstate NY politics. Nobody can hold a candle to McAuliff’s major benefactor Assembly Speaker - Sheldon Silver D-Manhattan
Note to the nation: Vote for a 'Rat/RINO for prez and all this, too, can be yours...
As you say. Upstate New York has been turned into a wilderness by more than half a century of misbegotten state tax policy that has directed all the state’s money into the cesspit of NYC welfare.
Here in Vermont, the state is poverty-sticken except for rich trustifarians who have moved in after making or inheriting their money elsewhere. But rural Vermont looks like paradise compared to what has happened to the farming regions of upstate New York, not to speak of the cities.
Well, at least this puts an end to my impression that hillary has done nothing in seven years as the junior senator from NY. Evidently she has done something after all.
Thankyou,saw the article.
In syracuse,if you are not correctly connectd[make sure the correct people are compensated],private projects get no help and maybe hindered.
SYRACUSE?? Good Grief!
They're coming here to Delaware, the new Florida. The weather's not as cold, seniors get tax breaks, there's no sales tax. The cost of living is lower. New Yorkers can buy a beautiful new mansion in Delaware for what they sold their old homes for--and still have money in the bank to live on.
I lived in Solvay for about 5 years. Some of the ex inlaws are still there (they own NY Bakery). Syracuse was doing pretty bad then, Solvay Process was being slowly shut down and the State Fair was about the only big draw. Judging by this, the big Carousel Mall project which was supposedly going to make Syracuse a boom town didn’t quite do what they thought I guess.
Yeah, things took a pretty big slide when Allied Closed and and GE bailed. Since then, Carrier closed up their manufacturing, and the Miller Brewery closed. Upstate Medical Center is the largest employer in town. Not that they have grown, they have to a degree, but the other businesses that employed thousands are gone and they took that title by default.
Carousel Center was a very nice shopping mall by most standards. This DestiNY USA project was being talked about when the mall was originaly built in the early ‘90s. Fifteen years later, the economy has become depressed. This business about payments in lieu of taxes (pilot)deals are the mall developer trying to keep his taxes flat. The city wants to keep raising taxes on the Carousel Center Mall. They are salivating that the original pilot is set to expire in the next few years and they can’t wait to spend the money they want to extract from Mr Congel. I’m not a big fan of Bob Congel, he’s a shark when it comes to business. But to his credit, if anyone can make this thing work..he’s them man for the job.
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