BS (as in Bait and Switch) Part II:Wonderful Bait for a Sinister Switch

On March 29, 2009, NY State Senator Mike Nozzolio’s website read “Senator Nozzolio Delivers!” What was it that he was delivering? Over $26 million in State dollars for projects bundled as the “21st Century Geneva Plan”-- and what turned out to be lots of bait for local practitioners of bait and switch.

$5 million of the bundle was dedicated to a “signature building for the Finger Lakes region that will serve as a destination for tourists.” That building, it was eventually determined by City Council, would be the Finger Lakes Boating Museum, currently operating out of meager facilities in Penn Yan.

$6 million was earmarked to match $6 in funding the Ontario County board of supervisors had already set aside for the “Finger Lakes Community College Campus in Geneva.” The Geneva FLCC campus had been housed for many years at the “Civic Center” and, in 2006, was moved to the former Geneva Middle School building at the corner of Pulteney and Milton Streets, leased to Ontario County by the Geneva City School District.

At first, taxpayers seemed generally pleased with the use of their state dollars in these ways. State money, it appeared, was being used to support placement of a regional tourist attraction, the Boating Museum, on the lakefront. And the new structure would be an architecturally significant building replacing the drab City building which currently houses the Chamber of Commerce.

Recall how the current building, which formerly housed the local Boy Scouts Council, was put on that site without proper footings. Over time, revenue from the lease with the Chamber for the use of interior fell short of expenses for the upkeep of the exterior. The building, of no historical significance, has been generally accepted as an eyesore on the lakefront and might be better used as a source of recycled building materials.

In September 2009, the City Council agreed with the Finger Lakes Boating Museum (FLBM) to design and build a more appropriate facility to house the Chamber and to serve as a regional tourist destination. However, as that project appears to move forward, the money Nozzolio promised seems to move back to Albany.

Nozzolio had come up with the $5 million figure by securing $4 million from the NYS Dormitory Authority and keeping his fingers crossed for another $1 million from a specific source he has yet to identify. The Senator’s office still has not been able to tell reporters from the local paper where the other $1 million resides.

In addition, it seems, Nozzolio’s priority has shifted from a regional destination to a local office complex. Rather than clearly backing the boating museum concept, the $4 million seems now to be flagged for new-and-improved offices to be occupied by the Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce (GACC).
If that is the case, Geneva City taxpayers would lose out doubly. While both the GACC and FLBM are tax-exempt entities, the FLBM is a regional destination, a place that people living here or visiting would come to experience. So, not only would the upgraded deluxe Chamber of Commerce not house activities that local residents could participate in, it would also eliminate another activity that would presumably draw tourists Geneva to boost the economy.

It is also worth noting that the notorious Bergmann report of 2009 on downtown-lakefront connectivity emphasizes the need to pursue water-related uses on the lakefront as a maximization of the highly coveted land that currently belongs to all of Geneva’s citizens. A Chamber of Commerce executive suite hardly seems water-based or even water-related. A boating museum and the proposed enhanced dockage fits the vision perfectly.

In the case of the FLCC extension center, use of the former Geneva Middle School building has accomplished many community goals. First, it stabilized a building that has significant community value and is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic places along with its neighboring church and church school.

Second, it keeps FLCC students near the city center, utilizing its optimal location both to benefit students looking for a convenient location and downtown businesses happy to have more patrons in the vicinity. Last, it assisted the Geneva City School District in putting to good use a building that was no longer serving the district but still in need of maintenance.

But wait. A memo from FLCC president, Barb Risser, states her preference to tear down the building and looking forward “to the day a couple of years from now when we will open a… modern campus center in Geneva." So those two $6 million amounts, $12million total, which is nothing more than a combination of county tax and state tax dollars, will be used to pay Casella to take tons of building debris and then to build a smaller more contemporary looking building in its place.

Bait and switch takes many forms. In this instance, what’s used as the ‘bait’ are the community’s own values and ideas. Then, once the tax dollars are appropriated, under the guise of the public good in the public interest, the ‘switch’ comes in and we end up with projects that not only don’t achieve the intended outcome, but actually work against it.

Foregoing a boating museum for a Chamber office takes up valuable lakefront space for an unnecessary purpose. Foregoing a building renovation for contemporary new construction destroys a valuable piece of the community fabric and dumps a costly, unsightly single-purpose structure in its place. In both cases, what is unique about Geneva is used as leverage to get money for projects that ultimately destroy that very character.