Invest and They Will Come

Interesting post. I question several area's though. I'm sure people in Indianapolis would resent having their city refered to as a "bit dull" just as people in Buffalo did as proven last week when it made the international press as to how dull it is here. Next, take away the Niagara from Buffalo and what do you get in numbers? Two citis close to each other which Indianapolis does not have. Niagara falls is getting "Falls tourism", that does not compare to "convention tourism" which is what Indianapolis is getting. What are Buffal's numbers for conventions? Less than million ppl I bet. I agree with you that Buffalo needs a new/larger convention center and another 1,000 rooms at least downtown to play in the big leagues of attracting conventions.

What stands out to me is the number of visitors vs. the revenue from them. Buffalo makes about $75 per visitor, while Indianapolis makes over $160 per person. Could be due to the fact that there are very little options for spending a lot of money right near the convention center or HSBC arena, especially on a weekend. But a good note for Buffalo is that for every 1 dollar we spend we attract 3 people, but Indy only gets about 1.5 people per dollar spent. We clearly don't have to try as hard to get people to come. Solution: start building up tourist attractions downtown and spend more money to attract visitors. Wonder if anyone has ever thought of that...

Interesting but maybe not for the same reasons.

Indy spends 3x as much and gets less than 1.5x as many visitors.

Goofy analysis. What is your point?

Draw a circle around Indianapolis and you will see that all roads lead there. It is the biggest draw in a multi-state area with easy year 'round travel from smaller population centers,

The Indy 500 is an icon. The Final Four will only go to places where there is a large enough venue supported by sufficient numbers of hotel rooms. We have neither.

Take away those two events from your numbers and how dramatic is the difference?

Your stats show Indy generates 7X the jobs and 3X the revenue from 1.4X the number of visitors and 3.1X the amount of money spent?!

a) what kind of jobs?....seven times as many as Buffalo?

b) subtract the Indy 500 and the occasional Final Four and they only get the same number of visitors for 3X the spend?

c) How do 40% more visitors spend 300% more money? That figure would indicate that Indy has figured out a way to tap corporate expense accounts!

d) If they spend 3.1X to generate 3X revenue, they are being less efficient.

Hmmmm. C+ for effort, but you need to think this through.

Buffalo has 1.1 million people, Indianapolis has 1.7 million. 600,000 more....that's over 50% more people.

Indianapolis has an impressive array of sports stadiums/arenas all located downtown and adjacent to each other...unlike Buffalo which only has HSBC arena.
Add the fact that Indiana and the midwest live and die with college sports,there is an impressive critical mass.

Very different cities.

But, this would require creativity and ingenuity.....of which I am not sure our Convention Bureau is capable. Oh yes...and a political leadership to drive and support.

Buffalo does have great potential as a destination...I hear more and more people who want to pay a visit...but, as in the World Juniors, I am not convinced we have the infrastructure set up for when the ARE here.

How much of a factor is the midwest location of Indianapolis? Is Indianapolis a major hub for air traffic? I know Chicago is one of the largest airline hubs along with Atlanta. I have to assume this makes them attractie to large companies trying to draw travelers from across the nation. The convention center itself is a large part of the problem. I am on board with allocating all of the bed tax toward development of a new waterfront convention center and re-opening the street grid at the current convention center. My argument against that proposal has always been funding. Use the bed tax appropriately and at least some of the funding is there.

Another comparison used as an argument for something in Buffalo that fails to recognize the key components that are lacking here compared to Indy, Chicago and whatever other place that everyone wants to point to and say "Hey, they're doing it, why can't we?"

1. Population GROWTH! We don't have it, they do. That means they can invest with taxpayer dollrs in projects that will return investment overtime while the region grows in population that will step in and help pay off the debt/incentives/grants/bonds or whatever mechanism is used. When we give money away here, every year there are less and less people to pay it off and support it and those that remain have to carry a higher burden.

2. Governance. Any comparison to Indy is a joke. They have one government that makes decisions for the region and it works spectacularly. They can best analyze regional needs and goals and aim development where it should go and in the best interest of EVERYONE. We have a handful of individual communities with their own development agencies that fight each other for local taxes in a zero sum, losing game. ANy dicsussions of regionalism is thwarted by political powers and ignorant residents who are more concerned over whether Williamsville can stay Williamsville than where or not WNY remains viable.

Taken together, you can see why a place like Indy is doing well and a place like Buffalo never will. Sure, we can have small gains in certain areas but this place, under current governance and under current states laws and practices, will continues a cycle of decline and dismay.

Bank on it. Everyone here can keep talking about architecture, Belgian beers, taco trucks, the EV, and whatever else you consider major leaps forward for this region but the fact remains that this place is dying. No convention center, waterfront projects, Peace Bridge, or architectural treasures can overcome a systematic structural failure that is local governance and state politics.

If people only had the attention spans and desire to know what is the true problems, rather than being distracted but what only amounts to pop culture and aestheticism.

Indianapolis made a conscious decision about how to define themselves as a city. They chose to focus on a single thing - "be the #1 city in the country for sports tourism" - and then did everything humanly possible to achieve that. E.g., luring major sports events, building stadiums and arenas, hotels to support those events, etc.

I think hyper-focus has a downside, too - what happens if the world changes and people are no longer interested or no longer have the disposable income for sports tourism. But it is definitely a marketing advantage to be able to point to a specific thing and say "THIS is what our city does. If this is what you are looking for, our city is the obvious place to go."

The current convention center was built in a crappy location and small because the Statler Hotel's owner pleaded for it to be built around it, whoops. It has always been small and always deemed a failure.The convention center was first planned for the waterfront! (along with the bills stadium and what is now UB's north campus) Little problems got in the way and the planners moved forward for to a different direction. Buffalo can move forward, but the majority of the people who want progress in Buffalo need to go to public meetings and fight off the complainers who stop everything.

I wonder if the cost of constructing convention centers and stadiums is worth the amount of tourism revenue. I think "whatever" posted a link a while back to a study that showed these places were money pits. Anybody familiar with this?

if we levied a sales tax and built a state of the art stadium for the bills and put it downtown, that would attract a ton of hotels, restaurants, etc

a community commitment to something like that would pull us through

however, people here would just complain about it being corporate welfare and nothing would get done

I think my problem with the Convention Center is that the exterior of the building is dead space. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about walking by that structure.

Imagine your view of Buffalo if you took the rail north past the Main Place Mall, and then walked over the convention center. Minus the view of City Hall, it's doom and gloom.

I think the New Convention Center should be built upon a new Main Place Mall. Because of the T1 cables (or whatever important internet cables) running beneath the structure, it would make it hard demo the mall. Design the mall and convention space together. Tenants in the Main Place tower will go up because they'd be able to hold large conferences right in their own building.

Putting a Convention Center along the waterfront in the Outer Harbor would create a suburban, little to no metro, building. Building it along the water on the inner harbor probably won't give you the necessary size you're desiring.

Putting Sports aside we need a larger and more up to date convention center. When larger conventions are being organized they are looking for space that can accommodate thousands of people, that means more hotel rooms in the immediate area also. As pointed out, we do have a few nice attractions to help facilitate a draw such as the Falls and Historic arcitecture. But without good convention space and rooms it will not happen. Should we ever become a convention destination than yes, other things follow such as Hard Rock Buffalo etc, that will amuse the guests after hours.

When it comes to a national convention, isn't Indianapolis a little more accessible to west coasters?

enough of the daily comparisons of Buffalo to much larger metros. Indianapolis is more than 50% larger than Buffalo. It would take the combined Buffalo and Syracuse metro populations to equal Indy. Enough already U N C L E

Well, there are a lot of differences between Buffalo and Toronto. Would you not agree with that? Toronto is a huge metropolitan area, with a large diverse population and a lot of corporations. Buffalo is a city that made its money largely out of industry that is mostly gone. Not a lot of people are moving in here, but a lot of people are moving out of here. I think what he was arguing is that it would be better to look at Buffalo in the context of other cities that are in a similar situation to us. I agree that population alone is a poor measure to compare cities.
Why do you have to keep dismissing people who disagree with you as losers? It doesn't help your argument any when you do that. Not everyone sees Buffalo in the same light that you do.

Right, I agreed with you that population size doesn't tell the whole story. Again, I think he was arguing that Buffalo is a totally different city than Toronto on more than just a population front. He seemed to be arguing that we are facing problems similarin regards to economics and social issues to those cities that he mentioned. If he gets on here we'll have to ask him, but I'll bet that's what he meant. If what I'm saying is right, there is no real contradiction in what he's saying
I don't see how trying to take a more realistic approach to discussing what Buffalo is and what we can become indicates that someone feels that Buffalo is inferior, or that anyone who thinks that way is a loser. We all can come up with reasons why we like it here.
You can dream all you want about what Buffalo should be, but we have to face the facts that Buffalo has a lot of problems and limitations that we have to deal with if we want things to get better here, and that by relentlessly trying to find the good in situations that we can often overlook a lot of the bad that needs to seriously be examined.
MBA, I'm pretty sure that most people that take the time to post on BRO don't hate it here. If they did they could have joined the migration out of here a long time ago. Instead they want to give their opinions about what we should be doing, and what we can be as a city and an area. Just something worth thinking about.