The Seneca Gaming Corporation wants the city of Buffalo to abandon two blocks of Fulton Street in the Filmore District and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown wants the Common Council to let them have it. He’s haggling over the price, but he’s hot to cut the deal.

Whatever price the Senecas pay Buffalo for Fulton Street will be a bad deal for Buffalo. If that public space becomes sovereign territory and therefore part of the proposed casino complex, the casino will increase its capacity to cannibalize tax-paying Buffalo businesses, thereby costing Buffalo far more in lost taxes and jobs than the selling price for Fulton Street now being negotiated by Mayor Brown. As Councilman Michael Kearns put it at a meeting of the city’s Planning Board Tuesday morning, the assessor may think those two blocks are worth $638,000, “but to the Senecas that land is priceless.”

He’s right. Seneca Gaming Corporation spokesmen say acquisition of the street will permit them to build an elegant home office, gambling casino, restaurant, hotel and shopping complex at their site adjacent to Buffalo’s Cobblestone District. The site, to go by their architects’ recent concept drawing, would have decorative green space and running water.

SGC spokesmen threaten that if Buffalo doesn’t sell them the street they will have to scale back their plans for the site because they then would have to build a footbridge to their parking lot, so there won’t be any green space or running water. And they might build an unsightly rather than a pretty casino.

Nonsense. That green space would just connect the gambling joint and the parking lot. It wouldn’t be a place anybody would hang out, except maybe gamblers on the way to the parking lot working on a story to tell the spouse to explain why they’re coming home so late and why the charge cards are maxed out. Does anyone think the SGC guards will let kids from the projects come over to hang out on the benches or play ball on the lawn or wade in the water? Current plans have a four-lane highway separating the casino from the Perry Street projects, so there won’t even be a way for the kids to get to the park, if it existed, which of course it won’t.

And SGC can’t even build the footbridge unless city officials agree to let them do it. Why would they do that? Why do anything to make it easier for the Seneca Gaming Corporation to pillage Buffalo’s economy?

The kid problem

But some officials seem to be dealing with the potential kid problem. Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority officials are now saying they are planning to demolish the Perry Street projects and build new housing further away from the proposed casino. That way, the casino and the kids won’t get in each others’ way and the gamblers won’t even have to look at the people who live in the projects.

This is lunatic: with what money is the city going to build all this new public housing? And whom is it going to serve—the people or the Seneca Gaming Corporation?

The sewer/sovereignty question

There is a further problem with deeding Fulton Street to SGC: the main water and sewer lines serving South Buffalo run under it. What happens if, after Mayor Brown turns the property over to the Seneca Nation, there is a problem with those lines under what is now a city street? Will the street be sovereign territory? If so, what rights of access will the city have? What rights of access would the city have once the current Compact expires in a few years? What rights to anything would the city have once the current Compact expires?

Should Fulton Street become Seneca sovereign territory, it would be sovereign territory forever. This is not like leasing a city-owned venue on Main Street to an operator who, if he turns out incompetent or malevolent, can be thrown out and replaced by someone who will do the job right. If Fulton Street becomes sovereign land, it is gone from Buffalo, whether or not the SGC even builds a casino.

According to statements at meetings of the City Planning Board and the Common Council’s Finance and Community Development Committees Tuesday, no one in the Mayor’s office or the Council has given this any thought at all.

Or so it appears. There may have been some secret talk. When pressed, the assistant city attorney said he wasn’t allowed to talk about these things. A city attorney “not allowed” to talk about critical issues at a public hearing on a matter of vital importance to the city? What’s going on? Who’s calling the shots? Who shut him up—the Mayor or the Seneca Gaming Corporation?

How can they plan if they don’t know what they’re planning for? How can they sell city property if they don’t know what the consequences of selling are? Why would anyone in a position of civic responsibility want to give up city property in a condition of such ignorance?

Byron Brown’s error

Byron Brown has had the perfectly wrong response to the Seneca threat. As soon as he realized how much more possession of Fulton Street would permit the SGC to do on the site, he set about figuring out how much he could sell it for. Instead, he should have dug in his heels and said, “Never. My job is to protect the city, not to make it easier for you to suck it dry.”

Brown is ignoring a basic fact: all urban land made sovereign territory and put in the service of tax exempt operations is land that is in direct and unfair competition with all ordinary businesses in the same city.

It can be no other way. A hotel, theater, restaurant, bar and gift shop that pay, and therefore charge, no taxes and are subject to no state environmental laws, operate at a huge advantage over ordinary hotels, theaters, restaurants and shops. Add the factors of smoking for those who want it and free booze for those who gamble, and the edge is even greater.

Niagara Falls’ poison pill

You need look no further than Niagara Falls, New York, for proof. Instead of being an economic development engine, the huge casino operation there has turned out to be an agent of death for the rest of the city. Since Casino Niagara set up operations, no new bars, restaurants or hotels have opened; many previously healthy establishments have closed. The only bar that reports an increase in business is one catering to casino employees because they’re not allowed to drink on the casino premises. And last week New York State took by eminent domain 17 acres occupied by a splash park and parking lot and gave it to the Seneca Gaming Corporation so they could expand their operations.

The negative effects of Casino Niagara reach beyond Niagara Falls. Many acts, and customers, who would have gone to Darien Lake, now go to the casino. It has become more difficult for Buffalo’s Thursdays in the Square to book acts because the casino can afford to pay more.

That’s development? It’s development the way cyanide is medicine.

A lousy economy

For a one-time payment the Common Council and the mayor are poised to vastly increase the likelihood that the Senecas will drive scores of healthy Buffalo businesses into oblivion. Those are businesses that contribute to the local economy every year, every day. They pay better wages than the casino will pay, they pay taxes the casino will not pay, they protect their employees and customers as the casinos will not protect them.

It’s not only Buffalo businesses that will be at greater risk. Since the primary market for the Buffalo casino is local residents, it is Buffalo area residents who would be at the kind of risk patrons of the Niagara Falls and Cattaraugus casinos are now. Get hurt because of negligence in a Buffalo shop or entertainment venue and even a halfway-competent attorney will get you fair compensation for your pain and loss. Get hurt because of negligence in a Seneca casino and your only recourse is Peacemaker Court on the reservation. You may get justice there. Then again, you may get the kind of justice the volunteer operators of the Niagara Falls Aerospace Museum got when they went to Peacemaker Court after SGC announced it was tossing them on the street. They weren’t allowed to cross-examine, have discovery or present witnesses. They were just allowed to read the letter telling them their claim had been denied.

The Common Council

So far as I know, the only members of the Common Council looking at the casino issue with any seriousness are LoCurto and Kearns, and sometimes Golombek. LoCurto and Kearns have both done a good deal of investigation on their own and they’ve both concluded this would be a major disaster for Buffalo. Golombek seems to understand what a lousy deal for Buffalo this is, but sometimes seems to buy the line that it’s a done deal so we should get the best deal we can. Common Council President David Franczyk is generally regarded as Carl Paladino’s man in city hall, someone who will do nothing to jeopardize casino construction and expansion. Other than Brian Davis, it’s hard to tell where the others are.

The city, Davis says, should use Seneca requests for water, sewer and police to negotiate, but he refuses to admit that the city has the capacity to block the casino in the first place. His position is like a guy who leaves his car unlocked with the keys in the ignition who says, “They’re going to steal it anyway.” Well, yes, if you’re foolish enough to leave it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Crooks love guys like that, since they make the work so easy. Davis, by all appearances, does what Byron Brown tells him to do; he gives no sign of being willing to think about this at all.

That explains Brian Davis. What explains Byron Brown? Why would he do this to Buffalo? “Byron wants to be a congressman,” said a Washington friend who knows both Buffalo politics and Byron Brown well. The implication was that by going along Brown was ruffling no feathers and hoping for support when he makes his next upward move. “The last thing Buffalo needs is a mayor who wants to be a congressman,” the Washington friend continued. “Buffalo needs a mayor who wants to be mayor of Buffalo.”

What next?

The key City Hall meeting Tuesday was the Common Council’s Finance Committee, which had been asked to approve the Fulton Street sale. Instead of recommending for or against the sale, or sending the request forward without recommendation, the committee tabled the request.

Franczyk and the Mayor had expected the Finance Committee to report the resolution out, then to have a public meeting August 2, followed by a Common Council vote ratifying Brown’s plan a day or two later. The Finance Committee tabling seems to have blocked that.

The Council has only one more meeting before its August recess and at this point it doesn’t seem possible for the Finance Committee to take the resolution off the table in time for the Council to rubberstamp the mayor’s request. There may still be a public hearing in August, but this shouldn’t come up for a vote in the Common Council before September. But this is Buffalo, so you never know. It’s not too soon to let your councilperson know exactly how you feel about the proposed sale of Fulton Street to the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at UB. He is also vice president of the community organization Citizens for a Better Buffalo, http://betterbuffalo.com.