WBFO 88.7
Citizens Group Supports Bass Pro Project
Eileen Buckley
BUFFALO, NY (2005-07-06) A group of concerned citizens has offered a detailed analysis of the Bass Pro memorandum of understanding. The Western New York Coalition for Progress has come out in full support of the Bass Pro project.
The MOU was signed between the City of Buffalo and Bass Pro to build a Bass Pro Shop in the former Memorial Auditorium site downtown. The coalition is a non-partisan group of concerned citizens formed in late 2004.
Coalition member Alan Bedenko says the group supports the MOU, as well as the public money committed to enhance and improve the area that surrounds the old Aud. The public funding was a concern to the organization since Erie County -- buried in a fiscal crisis -- was the one floating the public dollars for both the county's and city's commitment for the project.
But Bedenko says once they learned the County earmarked tobacco funding to provide $14 million, the coalition no longer felt it was an issue. And the organization feels if the city and county are creative, money could made as they do pre-work at the old Aud.
"Part of their job is to take out the interior seating bowl of the Aud. That includes taking out the score board, the seats and flooring. All that stuff could be auctioned off to sports fans throughout the country," Bedenko said. "And they could possibly make back some money. That's what Boston did when they tore down the Boston Garden."
The group says it was most concerned about Bass Pro as an employer. Bedenko says they called on a development agency that dealt with the new Bass Pro store in Auburn, New York to find out if Bass Pro ever had a bad reputation with employees or was hostile to unions. But he says everyone had only "good things" to say about Bass Pro.
"There have been no formal or anecdotal reports of any sorts of bad business practices on the part of Bass Pro or that it is some how unfair to its employees," Bedenko said.
The Coalition says it decided to review the deal after it appear that other organizations, like Free Buffalo, offered the public a negative assessment toward the Bass Pro deal.
© Copyright 2006, WBFO
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