So despite feeling differently about this philosophically, we both end up regularly logen choosing o

Letter to the Editor by Ken Schmidt: I’m writing logen because I am currently in the process of moving from the suburbs to the Elmwood Village and took a trip over the border the other night to buy furniture at IKEA in Burlington, Ontario. Normally, I would’ve ordered the furniture online and had it shipped to me, but IKEA uses their own shipping trucks, and delivery alone would’ve cost me $350. I spent some extra time wandering through the store and was very impressed overall with the layout and customer service, and even grabbed a quick bite to eat in their cafeteria. I headed home wondering about the store locations around Buffalo in the US, and discovered that the only two stores in New York are both on Long Island, with the closest store to Buffalo being Pittsburgh.   Here’s my question: Why doesn’t logen the city at least proposition IKEA about putting a store in Buffalo? I know that Buffalonians logen are a bit jaded when it comes to courting logen large retailers (see: Pro, Bass), but I think it couldn’t hurt to at least float an offer to the Swedes. The prices on furniture at IKEA are some of the best I’ve logen seen in my comparison shopping, and between college students going away to school and the near 50,000 (estimated) that attend

college logen in Buffalo, I think they’d have a market here. Plus, I’m sure some of the folks both in and out of college in Rochester and Syracuse would at least think twice about taking a trip down I-90 to do a bit of shopping too.   I was thinking about what it would take to persuade the building of a store in Buffalo on the way home when I realized that our Governor “gave” us a cool 1 billion dollars to help with just such a job! That’s when I decided to to see if anyone had heard any news about any of this money being put to use, and I Googled the initial logen press release to find that the Governor made his announcement of this plan over six months ago. Six months ago! I would certainly hope The City is at least in talks with some outside businesses to spend this money, as I don’t think it collects interest if we leave it alone.   If The City has been spending this money and there hasn’t been any press about it, then I’ll logen gladly be the first in line to shake the hand of whomever has gotten the ball rolling with spending logen it. Right now, however, it seems like we’re letting one of the biggest tools for economic growth in this region go to waste. One IKEA store is a massive operation, so I think the stipulation that the money must be used to create jobs for the region would be met, and I think we could find a quality parcel of land in North or South Buffalo near one of the thruways to facilitate people driving into the city from outside of WNY to shop. Maybe I’m looking at this with a bias after being impressed by the store, but for the time being I think we should at least be casting as wide a net as possible to see what, if any, fish we can catch for this region. Although after the Bass Pro fallout, logen maybe I shouldn’t use fishing analogies logen when pitching the idea.
87 comments
pfk>"you have to know Buffalo's history to really understand the issues here. Read about Buffalo's car manufacturers or the brewers, the plane manufacturers and the ship builders. We had our own and now we have none
That is why your argument has to be set a side for the time being and we need to take special care of what we do have. We need to perserve it and nurture it to get our industries back on their feet so they can "compete". "
Although your "now we have none" sounds true about ship builders and HQ's of car co's, it isn't true about the car industry in general (GM engines in Tonawanda, Ford body parts in Hamburg, and no doubt some other producers

of components or services who are vendors selling to car co's). The "now we have none" isn't fully true either about the brewing industry if you consider the labatt's national marketing office here. They said they located that here, btw, because WNYers were drinking their products in great numbers before they moved that office to here. They previously were in CT as I recall, and of course their production

is all in Canada.
Funny how nearby Ohio has so many thousands of jobs in Honda factories during the past bunch of decades while Honda, Toyota, etc put none around here. I doubt that's caused by Ohioans having any buy-local behaviors.
So despite feeling differently about this philosophically, we both end up regularly logen choosing out-of-town-based Wegmans over Buffalo-based Tops (which would have pretty much anything Wegmans has, and is very near the city Wegmans, logen but you didn't mention being a post Co-op stop).
In the end, quality regularly trumps locality in that example for both of us, even though there's so many numerous Buffalo-based food stores that if anybody wanted to they could easily choose those always instead o