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Seneca Nation President Barry Snyder and Buffalo
Mayor Byron Brown are walking away, going their separate ways on a casino deal that seems snagged on the question of whether good intentions are good enough.
"I thought we had a handshake deal," Snyder told us last Thursday after negotiations blew up.
"I cannot sign off on a handshake," Brown responds. "I insist on having it in writing."
Both are talking about agreements that say the Senecas won't turn more of Buffalo into sovereign territory beyond the nine acres they already own for a casino, and to provide hiring goals for local residents and women and minorities.
A proposed agreement lists Brown's points as "intentions" of the Senecas; Brown wants them under the category of "Covenants," which are legally enforceable. For Brown, good intentions are not good enough. "We want it in writing that's legally enforceable," he says.
The City's bargaining chip is Fulton Street. It bisects the Seneca's casino site right down the middle. Buffalo owns it and won't sell it without the guarantees limiting Seneca land acquisition and setting up local and minority hiring goals.
Rich Kellman: "What will you do with Fulton Street if they go ahead without buying it?"
Brown: "Fulton Street will be reopened."
Kellman: "It's in terrible shape,looks awful. Is it going to stay that way?"
Brown: "We would do whatever our plans are."
And those plans don't include fixing up Fulton Street.
Snyder told us he'd rather the Seneca's go their own way without Fulton Street, without the City as a partner, on a less lavish casino. "With Fulton Street not being a part of it," he said, "it kind of puts us back in a situation, it'll be a nice casino, but it's not going to be as nice as we'd like it to be at this point."
A casino spokesman says that without a signed agreement as the contract is now written, the Senecas won't provide any of the assistance the Nation had promised. "The City is on its own," he says.
Kellman: "If it comes down to that, Mayor, is it worth it to the city not to have the infrastructure improvements, the marketing, the advocacy in Albany which they had promised otherwise?"
Brown: "It's worth it to me and my administration not to enter into a bad deal
and then have people come back in a year or two years or three years and say that Byron Brown and his administration, they gave away the store, they should have gotten a good deal. They should have gotten guarantees. They should have gotten it in writing. And they didn't do it and shame on them. I'm not going to have that happen."
What happens next is up to the Senecas. A spokesman tells us their tribal council is scheduled to vote Saturday on whether to put up a small temporary casino to avoid forfeiting the Nation's exclusive right to build a casino on the site, and then move ahead with plans for a casino which the Senecas say would cost between $70-$90-million. The original "grand" design, as Snyder describes it, would cost $125-million. "They have every right to do what they want on the land that they own," says Brown.
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