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Mall magnate Scott Congel wants to put the Medley Centre name to bed. His SRC Development firm is now calling the Medley Centre, previously Irondequoit Mall, Lakeridge Centre. The name change is part of a rebranding effort, says SRC spokesperson Jim LeBeau. The SRC folks were in front of Rochester Broadway Theatre
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Webster's proposal for RBTL's new theater took a tack that others haven't: Town officials want the theater organization to consider reusing an old office and storage building. Specifically, they're talking about building on a 20-acre site at 800 Salt Road, just north of the Route 104 expressway. The site has good
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Today, it was the Town of Webster's turn to present a proposal for a new Rochester Broadway Theatre League theater. I'll get to that in another post. The presentation was bookended by reaction to the mayor's suggestion that RBTL ought to consider the former McCurdy's site at Midtown, if renovating
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Governor David Paterson has called for special session of the Legislature on November 11. Among the items on the agenda is a property tax circuit-breaker and same-sex marriage equality legislation. The main thrust of the session is to get the Legislature to pass Paterson's deficit-reduction plan. If experience tells us anything,
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Representatives from J. Fiore & Co., the DiMarco Group, and Bergmann Associates pitched a property in the Canal Ponds commercial park to an RBTL selection committee this afternoon - Morgan Management is also involved in the proposal. The presenters emphasized many benefits of the sites, which straddles the Greece and Gates
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The way Farmington officials and their partners see it, a new theater next to the Racino could mean more money for the Rochester Broadway Theater League, as well as more bodies in the seats. This afternoon, the town made its pitch for RBTL to locate its proposed new theater next to
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There's a good reason why so many environmental groups and even politicians - Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, for example - want the DEC to extend the comment period for the DEC's new shale gas-drilling regulations: it's a very complicated topic. That was evident during Monday night's forum on natural gas extraction in
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Anthony Costello says the Rochester Broadway Theater League should choose his company's Brighton site for a new performing arts center because it'll have a built-in audience. Anthony J. Costello and Son proposes locating the new theater in its planned Clinton Crossings expansion. But when he pitched it, Costello tied the performing
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I don't know what to say about last night's special meeting of the County Legislature. The meeting dealt with a proposal to contract with a newly-formed local development corporation, which would buy new public safety communications equipment and lease it to the county. With a 20-year term and a $224 million
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Remember the Taxpayer Protection Act? Well, it's put the county in an interesting and possibly unanticipated position. The TPA requires the county to keep non-mandated spending increases below the year-to-year increase in the Consumer Price Index. It was introduced by Republicans in 2007 and put on the November ballot that year.
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County parks have been the focus of several controversies in the past year, and at this point, it's almost certain they'll be an issue in the County Legislature elections. One of the first indications came when Republicans began robocalling Democratic Legislator Harry Bronson's district after Bronson voted in favor of stabilizing
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The two freshman Democrats in the Rochester area's Congressional delegation - Dan Maffei and Eric Massa - voted against admonishing South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson for shouting "You lie" during President Obama's speech last week. Their "no" votes, which came after just over an hour of debate, was symbolic. "My vote against
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When the Rochester Labor Council, AFL-CIO, announced its endorsements over the weekend, one County Legislature race was conspicuously absent: the 29th District. The Council endorsed two Democratic Party-backed candidates facing primary challenges: Nora Bredes in LD-18 and incumbent Legislator Carrie Andrews in LD-21. There's another primary in LD-29, which covers
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Today, General Motors is touting the one million miles that testers have driven its Chevy Equinox hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. That once again puts all eyes on Honeoye Falls, where so much of the research work on these vehicles is taking place. There's not any specific significance to the one-million-mile mark, other
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So what's the biggest issue facing agriculture right now? Is it crop prices? Energy costs? "The biggest agricultural issue we have is labor," Congress member Eric Massa told us during an interview earlier this week. Part of the problem is that employers face sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, so they've been more
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We hear a lot about how technological advances and breakthroughs are needed to advance clean energy, we hear a lot less about the headway scientists and researchers are actually making. Take this idea: a three-layer liquid battery that stores megawatts of energy from intermittent power sources like wind and solar. It
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The most telling moment in Representative Eric Massa's health-care town hall meeting last night was when he asked for a show of hands on whether he should support the bill. Almost every hand went up as a "no." The problem, though, was that there was no delineation between those who didn't
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Is it cap and trade, or cap and tax? The Waxman-Markey Climate Bill (H.R. 2454), which was passed in the House last month, implements a mechanism commonly known as cap and trade. (The idea can get complicated but there's a good summary here.) Some, though not all, Congressional Republicans tend to
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County Democrats have just announced their official slate for the Legislature and gave a glimpse into what they'll campaign on. During a press conference on the County Office Building steps, Dems invoked the politicized selections of the public defender and Monroe Community College president, the divisive FAIR plan, and
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Here's an important question about today's meeting between City Council and Ren Square leaders: Who's going to run the thing? The meeting is at City Hall, on Council's turf. But earlier this week, Ren Square officials sent out a notice that the Main and Clinton board - of which Mayor Bob
