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The New Buffalo
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The following is a press article from 2010 that will be! We can see it now. EASTWARD HO! THE NEW MIGRATION
They are like the Pioneers of the nineteenth century. Their Conestoga's are U-Haul Trucks or Allied Vans. They are like the Dustbowl Okies, pick-ups and minivans packed to the gills, but instead of going west they trek north, east, their GPS set for Buffalo. Yes, Buffalo, the New Silicon Valley, the Engine of the Post-Meltdown Economy!
Buffalo, New York This town once known primarily for snow and rust, is emerging as a city better known for the color green, both in terms of the color of money, and the color of sustainable, twenty-first century innovation. This city known, until recently, primarily for blight, brain-drain, and economic stagnation, is now a magnet to innovators, telecommuters, sustainable industry, and business incubators. Thanks to efforts by individuals and organizations, primarily in the private sector, that were able to envision the Buffalo-glass being half-full as the economic meltdown hit, the city has positioned itself well to jump start the national, even the world economy, and to build the engine that will keep the new economy roaring for years to come. "It suddenly occurred to some of us that if the economy is bad everywhere, and people are losing jobs and trying to start new businesses from home, why not encourage them to do so where the cost of that home is $100,000 instead of $500,000, and where the overall cost of living and labor is also among the lowest in the nation," Mayor Byron Brown said. Our first objective was to bring back our own, assuming that some of our brightest and best expats wouldn't need that much convincing to come home, especialy if it made financial and business sense. With the help of one of Buffalo's most prolific "Repats" (expat come home and repatriated), Marti Gorman, we began to create organizations and programs such as "Buffalo Homecoming," and "Buffalo by Choice" to encourage our expats to come back, re-connect, and take a second look. So the campaign began to lure back pink-slip entrepreneurs as well as those who hadn't lost their jobs but had the ability to telecommute and who, due to the economic downturn, might be more interested in coming home to be near family if things got worse, and to take advantage of the flexibility offered by their employers to telecommute, by moving back home where the dollar would stretch further, where the current Chicago or New York City or California standard of living could be maintained for much less expense, and thus less guilt or worry about spending at a time when things could (by popular perception) get worse. And it worked. Strategically placed messages and strategic use of traditional media started the rumor that Buffalo was a refuge in the recession. Word spread virally through the internet, and the old fashioned way around office water coolers, bar counters, and street corners. Expats started coming home. And a few who weren't expats started to discover their new home. But that was only the beginning. Boosters such as Gorman, and others such as Newell Nusbaumer, who casts himself as a career Buffalo promoter and activist, worked tirelessly for years to raise the profile of Buffalo, to replace bad press with good press, rusty stereotypes with resiliant and renewing images of the city and the region. Gorman, who also owns a publishing company (Buffalo Heritage Unlimited) says she is determined to only publish beautiful books about Buffalo and books that make Buffalo beautiful. One of her cohorts, Mark Donnelly, created a website entitled "Cultural Niagara" with pages upon pages of beautiful images of the region and its architecture. These people, with other partners and colleagues too numerous to mention here, began new websites, projects and enterprises designed to reverse the brain drain in Buffalo, to attract new kinds of buisiness and industry in Buffalo, and to create a virtual and real time/space environment that promoted Buffalo and any efforts by individuals, business, cultural organizations and government to renew and rebuild Buffalo. Indivdual activists and promoters such as Gorman, Nusbaumer, Donnelly, et. al, along with organizations such as Buffalao Niagara Partnership and Buffalo Niagara Enterprise joined forces to drive an aggressive and comprehensive effort to seize the moment to position Buffalo at the center of the next great renaissance. And it worked! (more below.) | The above three slogans became the centerpiece of the media and viral marketing campaign, as well as the mantra for those who had made it their primary purpose not only to recussitate Buffalo, but to recreate it, based on its own inherent strengths. But those were all focused on what the region is not. It's not as bad as other places in the current meltdown. It's a place to hide from the bogeyman, to ride out the storm, to hunker down in relative comfort while bad things happen all around us. As good as these slogans were, Buffalo also needed something more, something positive, something transformative, so one more tagline was adopted. "From Rustbelt to Greenbelt!" This said volumes about the vision the Buffalo rebuilders had in mind. Yes, Buffalo was a good place, perhaps the best place in the country, all things considered, to ride out the recession, espeically if you have roots here, but... Buffalo is an even better place to stake a claim, to create a new business model, a new economy, that not only survives the downturn but thrives in it, turns a loss into a gain, a negative into a positive, finds a way to adapt and thrive in the new reality, in a way that is unique to Buffalo, that is best done in Buffalo because of the people, climate, economy, and infrastructure available or easily created here. It began with Vision Those luminaries in and from Buffalo who had the faith and vision to imagine what Buffalo could be and become with the right impetus, the right convergence of imagination, passion, and action at just the right time, made sure it happened. They created an economic perfect storm. As telecommuters and pink-slip entrepreneurs began moviing home in droves, other initiatives and collaborations were spearheaded that called together the new Buffalo inteligencia for brainstorming purposes. The questions: - What is unique about Buffalo in this time and economy that gives us an advantage over other places?
- What is unique about us: those of us who are here or coming here, the talents, expertise and experience they bring, the synnergy of the combination of such, the greater value of the whole of this group versus the sum of the parts that gives Buffalo and business built in Buffalo a clear advantage in the marketplace?
- And what kinds of buisness plans, products, services, models, etc. benefit most from the above?
The answers to those questions resulted in numerous relocations of new technologies and sustainable businesses, especially those focused on wind energy, and other renewable and alternative energy sources. Other business models, industries, and ventures that emerged and continue to develop in Buffalo in high concentrations include: (continued above, opposite) | - Business incubators: cooperative use of space, infrastructure, technology and support staff to minimize start-up costs of new businesses and entrepreneurial ventures, complete with mentoring, financing, and cooperative services. The concentration of these support services for new ventures has increased the number of new ventures, the number of newcomers to the city to start new ventures, and the quanitity and quality of of products, services, consultants, and experts available to benefit all new start-ups. Even organizations that offer grant money have relocated here to be near the center of the action.
- Sustainable Energy Innovations: As Silicon Valley was to information technology innovation, so is Buffalo emerging, relative to sustainable energy solutions. Numerous existing companies have opened offices or plants in Buffalo, many of which have made Buffalo-Niagara their corporate headquarters, and many new businesses and companies in this field have begun cropping up. One or more of them will likely emerge as the sustainable energy equivalent of Microsoft and Google.
- New Urbanism and Infrastructure: What the sustainable city of the twenty-first century will look like, what systems and technologies it will use, how it will be designed and by whom, and how and by whom all of this will be built, will be centered in Buffalo, first as a laboratory for demonstration, and then as a clearinghouse for dissemination, implementation and duplication around the world.
- Imagination as a Commodity: Even the nebulous natural resource called imagination will be known as headquartered and most abundantly mined in Buffalo-Niagara. It is here that people have come to surivive the recession, to overcome the economic downturn, and to create a sustainable and profitable model for business, lifestyle, and even government that not only reflects the new realities, but adapts and recreates them.
- Affordable Culture: The acting, musical and artistic talent available in Buffalo is world class, at the low end of regional theatre discount prices. As Buffalo emerges as a leader in other areas, Buffalos boosters have also more successfully marketed some of the strengths Buffalo has always had from a World Class Philharmonic, to a Broadway class regional theatre, to galleries and museums that can compete with any in New York, Chicago, LA or internationally. Now the world knows they can enjoy Buffalo's affordable accomodations and admissions prices. For the price of a Broadway ticket a family can enjoy a night in a top drawer Buffalo hotel, a great dinner, and a great night of music or drama, and... with a couple of great museum visits thrown in.
- And with it, tourism in general: because Buffalo has Niagara Falls, nearby Candadian destinations such as Niagara on the Lake and Toronto, from which Buffalo is the perfect staging area, as well as the Finger Lakes, wine country, agritourism in the Southern Tier, and so much more to come, see, and enjoy.
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