Working for Downtown

Calendar | Committees | Bricks For Buffalo | Thursdays in the City Brown Bag Lunch Series

Brown Bag Lunch Series

4/2/2008 Carl Montante
Jr. Vice President Marketing and Strategic Initiatives
Uniland Development

5/7/2008 Doug Swift and Joe Petrella of CityView Properties

Previous Events

Brown Bag Lunch Series- “Urban Renaissance”

St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral- Walker Room

Date Speaker

9/5/2007 David Granville- Asst to the Commissioner of Economic Development
Marti Gorman- Coordinator, Old Home Week
Brown Bag Lunch Series - Wednesday September 5, 2007

10/3/2007 James Rykowski- VP, Regional Director
Community Preservation Corporation

11/7/2007 Larry Meckler- NFTA Executive Director
Brown Bag Lunch Series - Wednesday November 7, 2007

12/5/2007 Marnie LaVigne, Ph.D.
Director, Business Development
UB Ctr. For Advanced Biomedical & Bioengineering Technology

1/9/2007 TBA

2/6/2008 William Huntress, President
Acquest Development Co.

3/5/2008 Paul McDonnell
Buffalo Public Schools

4/2/2008 TBA

Also:
January 2008 Holiday Social
April 2008 Member Appreciation Social

Brown Bag Lunch for November 7, 2007

November’s Brown Bag lunch started with introductions by Working For Downtown President Rick Serra and a few humorous stories from our featured speaker, Larry Meckler, NFTA Executive Director.

Meckler told the noontime group at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral about promising development including a direct flight from the Niagara Falls International Airport to North Carolina and 5 direct flights from Buffalo Niagara International Airport to Florida. The increase in direct flights is promising and as more develop we’ll see airport use increase significantly.

The Niagara Falls airport is building a new terminal to handle an increase in commercial flights. Canadian travelers are seeing the value in traveling from Western New York’s airports and that is prompting the BNIA to look at plans to expand security check in stations. Currently, the busiest time of the day is between 5:30-7:00am and the NFTA is looking to ease congestion and improve the flow to decrease waiting times and traveler inconvenience.
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There are some bright spots too on land owned by the NFTA on the waterfront. The Pier building has now been demolished and cleanup is underway for the Outer Harbor area. The land should in the near future be made much more accessible, with improved access from roads leading to the Outer Harbor.