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Buffalo Niagara Enterprise wins deals

September 27, 2006
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(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--Just seven years into its mission to promote Western New York as a place to do business, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise is now competing on par with more established economic development organizations nationwide, and winning more deals, officials said Tuesday.



The region's privately-funded business development group, whose job is to retain businesses in Western New York or attract new ones, said it achieved 38 "wins" in its 2006 fiscal year ended June 30.

That's a 5.5 percent increase over the previous year, when it raked in 36 victories. And the previous total for fiscal 2005 was more than twice the number of wins of Kansas City, Phoenix, Richmond or St. Louis.

"You've had a lot of wins here, for a community that doesn't think of itself as a national leader," said Marilyn Higgins, the Syracuse-based vice president of economic development for electric utility National Grid, an investor in Buffalo Niagara Enterprise that actively aids business development efforts across upstate New York.

Those numbers don't count other business development successes in which the group either wasn't involved or took a secondary role to a local industrial development agency. Enterprise officials say they plan to consolidate those numbers in their total in the future.

Even so, the efforts last year resulted in $258.2 million in new capital investment in the region, a 12.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the group's annual report. And they created or retained 3,436 jobs -- 1,384 kept and 2,052 added.

That's a drop of 27 percent in jobs from the previous year. But officials argue that investments, especially those that generate more dollars in the future, are more important than jobs. And they note the group had some unusual success of late.

More than 11,000 jobs were created or kept in the previous two fiscal years combined, including the 2,500 service jobs being added by insurer GEICO Corp. in Amherst. The GEICO project was the biggest economic development success in the nation in the 2004 fiscal year, while a second local project that year, for health insurer Definity Health, was one of the top 30.

"We got spoiled," said Enterprise CEO Thomas Kucharski, in an interview with the Buffalo News Editorial Board.

The challenge now, both Kucharski and Higgins said, is to ensure the region maintains a supply of "shovel-ready" properties that are already prepared and approved for development and that can be turned around quickly to meet a client's needs. There are 10 such sites locally, but only one is in Buffalo.

"All upstate cities have to provide shovel-ready sites if they want to compete for projects," Higgins said. "The cities that do that will score very big. The cities that don't offer speed and predictability will lose out to the suburbs every time."

This morning, the Enterprise will release its most recent annual report in a public presentation to its 71 investors. Only 10 percent of its funding comes from government -- $500,000 from the state -- but officials hope to bring in Niagara County, the city of Buffalo, and the Southern Tier counties as well.

So officials say it's critical for them to prove to the businesses that the Enterprise is worth it. About 95 percent of the original investors have maintained their participation, and 20 percent increased their support.

Buffalo Niagara Enterprise was formed seven years ago as a separate affiliate of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, sharing space, technology and some staff. But where the Partnership tries to improve the business climate locally, the Enterprise just markets the region.

Unlike the local industrial development agencies or the Empire State Development Corp., the Enterprise does not give out any cash or tax incentives. Instead, it seeks to coordinate the efforts of all the other agencies locally that do, so that businesses have a single point of contact. Officials said it's now expanded its reach to all eight counties of the region, signing collaborative agreements with appropriate parties.

"We now have a system where everybody knows what their role is," Kucharski said.

The organization has tightened its marketing, targeting specific industries where officials believe Western New York has an edge. Those include advanced manufacturing, customer service and back-office centers, hospitality and tourism, life sciences, logistics, and Canadian or international expansions.

It's a member of the Toronto Board of Trade, has a representative on the board of the American-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and shares an office in Mississauga with National Grid and Empire State Development. And it introduced a new advertising slogan, "Where life works," and a Web site to help prospective companies.

As a result, it now deals with fewer leads and prospective projects -- 428 last year, compared to 703 in its second year of existence. But the leads are more solid and realistic. And the number of wins has risen steadily each year.

Enterprise recorded 36 wins in its 2005 fiscal year, compared to 18 for Phoenix -- a hotbed of activity where one BNE official said they "don't recruit, they take orders" -- and 17, 9, and 8 for Richmond, St. Louis and Kansas City, respectively.

Its $229.2 million in investments fell short of $386 million in Phoenix, $373 million in St. Louis and $320 million in Richmond, but beat $130 million in Kansas City. But with 4,730 jobs created or retained that year, it easily beat all four cities by more than 1,000 jobs each.

To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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