Albany Convention Center Seeks $54m Expansion, New Nuke Plant Could Compound State Costs
Every city has a downtown, but there’s one thing many have that Albany hasn’t got: an expanded convention center. That, as the Times Union reports, is something Albany County is planning to remedy, working on an agreement for an $54 million expansion of the Capital Center, which opened in 2017 at a cost of $78.5 million in state money.
Though Albany Capital Center director Monica Kurzejeski called this “taking the funding that is generated through tourism and hospitality and driving that back into the community,” that’s not how it’s worked out for most cities. Companies have long been cutting back on convention spending, a trend that accelerated after the pandemic and the rise of virtual meetings. That’s left a handful of cities like Orlando and Las Vegas increasingly dominating the industry — one 2023 report found that just 20 convention centers hosted 82 percent of the nation’s 250 largest annual events — and led to massively disappointing returns on expansion: After Philadelphia opened its expanded convention center in 2011, hotel stays by attendees actually fell by 26 percent.
In that light, spending public money to expand the Albany Capital Center would seem foolhardy enough. But the agreement between Albany County and the Albany Convention Center Authority would also commit the county to backstopping bonds if hotel taxes fall short; if taxes come in faster than expected, the added funds will be siphoned off to spend on more development around the convention center.
And if all these gifts that keep on giving don’t increase convention bookings? You can always expand the center again! Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results is the sign of ingenuity, pretty sure that’s what Einstein said.
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And in other corporate giveaway news this week, from NY and beyond:
- Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to build New York State’s first new nuclear power plant since 1989 at an as-yet-undetermined upstate location, with the help of what the Times described as “investment from the private sector” — which should immediately raise questions about whether state spending will end up underwriting private energy company profits. New Yorkers already provide Constellation Energy (formerly Exelon), which owns three aging upstate nuke plants, with a $7 billion subsidy that appears as a $3 a month surcharge on household electric bills.
- Micron’s full draft environmental impact statement for its project in the Syracuse suburb of Clay has been released (full text here). In addition to $350 million in highway costs, reports Syracuse.com, negative impacts could include “a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions, destruction of more than 200 acres of wetlands, noise from construction and traffic, and loss of habitat used by five species of rare bats and birds.”
- The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing a retrial of the Buffalo Billions defendants to move forward, denying a petition arguing that holding a new trial after initial convictions were thrown out would violate the prohibition on double jeopardy. Developers Louis Ciminelli, Steven Aiello, and Joseph Gerardi, along with former SUNY Polytechnic Institute president Alain Kaloyeros, may now face fresh charges of wire fraud for their roles in alleged bid-rigging to obtain $850 million in contracts.
- New York’s RAISE Act to mandate transparency standards for large AI models, currently awaiting Gov. Hochul’s signature, could be short-lived if Congress has its way: U.S. House Republicans are considering an amendment to Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would block states from regulating AI, reports Boondoggle. U.S. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, passed a version that would merely bribe states with AI infrastructure money if they agreed to drop regulations.
- Another state’s film tax credit program has gotten poor reviews: Connecticut state auditors found that state legislators failed to provide any justification for its film production tax credits even as the state handed out $555.9 million in credits between 2019 and 2022. Previous audits found that one film company, Blue Sky Studios, received two different types of credits for the same movie, and that the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development sometimes failed to compile such basic information as why the company should receive a tax credit and copies of required licenses and permits. Not that other states are taking the hint: California just approved hiking its film tax credits to cover 35 percent and up of production costs.
- New York may be rife with quasi-governmental development agencies with lax oversight over their spending, but at least none of them have been raided by officials of the state attorney general’s office investigating a state grant. There’s always next month!
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