LCDC brings millions to NT

Chuck Bell and Jim Sullivan are the practitioners of progress in a city where the metric of success is often measured in development dollars.

They're the men behind the scenes with the Lumber City Development Corporation, convincing state and federal grant sources that North Tonawanda should be first in line for hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

"Certainly we want to change the brand of the community and a lot of that has to do with fixing blight, filling vacancies, certainly job creation - creating critical mass,"  Bell said.  Terms like "brand" refer to the look and feel of the community as though it were situated alongside others for review.  "Critical mass" is a scientific term relative to nuclear fission, but in general means projects that jump-start growth.

As usual, funding is all that stands between the vision and the final product.

Sullivan and Bell found money the city needed to begin or conclude scores of targeted projects last year.  Their never-ending mission is to correct decades of industrial collapse throughout Western New York by replacing it with things like tourism, for instance.  When a plan for revitalizing the downtown area was compiled in 2006 using public input, Bell said "the thing that came through loud and clear is there's not any quality lodging downtown."

While the list of projects is too long to include here, it most recently means helping to shore up pieces of funding of the burgeoning Remington Lofts on the Canal, incentivize In&Out Furniture's new Main Street location creating 21 new jobs, securing about $190,000 toward a new business park at the former Buffalo Bolt site through a grant by National Grid, pushing through the city's new land-use master plan, orchestrating funding structures for a phased upgrade at Gratwick-Riverside Park using the state's cash cow Greenway fund, purchasing the former Teddy Bear building at 64 Webster St. for redevelopment using mostly grant money, finding $175,000 to conduct a land use study for future investors on Tonawanda Island...you get the idea.

"We hope the proof will be decreases in the tax burden in the years to come,"  Bell said, since profitable business and putting vacant properties back on the tax rolls shifts the cost of essential services from homeowners.

Though it seems like a recent burst of development news making headlines these days fell from the heavens, LCDC earns a lot of the public funding to underwrite citywide projects through good old-fashioned hard work.

But that credit can be shared as well.  Formed under former Mayor David Burgio in 2004, the process of forming a semi-public development office was begun when Sullivan was brought on board a year before.  

A request for board members followed.  Fourteen local business owners and others were chosen based on their resumes.  The board ensures that the corporation's goals aren't inherently political.  Two seats, one for whomever happens to be mayor, and another for a city council representative make up the only elected spots.

"You can't drive a political agenda when it comes to our decisions.  It's going to be what people who care about North Tonawanda want to see happen," Bell said.  Sullivan said past board applicants have actually been turned away because they were entertaining a bid for public office.  "That makes all the difference in the world," he said, using the word apolitical to describe the company's mission.

While members' terms expire after a couple of years, Sullivan said everyone who's expressed an interest in staying on has been welcomed back by the board.  The company funds itself just about enough to continue funding city projects.  Aside gathering small administrative bonuses on the city grants they land, the company collects interest on loans to local businesses.  According to Bell, there's a ton of overlap, but the hours employees work for the city and to sustain the corporation must all be documented specifically.

The loans currently out with about 18 local businesses are a significant source of revenue.  And the interest rate, while it's designed to pay the bills, is usually only around 5%.

"People are blown away by the fact that we don't have one loan repayment in arrears," Bell said.