Rochester has a local labor shortage - the folly of the Wellesley Hotel and COMIDA grants
I wrote about the brief mention in the D&C covering the withdrawal of COMIDA monies from the Wellesley hotel. Follow this link to background information. What that article missed the City News paper covers the quite well - the “why”. The reason monies were withdrawn is that the owners, Andy and Manish Patel, cannot find local labor to use to complete the project.
Let me say that again - cannot find local labor to complete the project. From the article…
The company, however, said it couldn’t find the local labor required for the sales-tax exemption, says Judy Seil, COMIDA’s acting director, so it asked the agency to withdraw the benefit.
I can understand not being able to find local labor with all the massive downtown building projects like PAETEC HQ and the REN Square and all the other huge projects currently underway. It must be difficult to find people to renovate a hotel. Oh, wait - those projects have not started. So what could possibly be the hold-up? Can’t find a local contractor to use illegal workers like the Cheesecake Factory?
I mean do we have such a dearth of local labor in Rochester? This project was folly from the beginning just like Brighton residents said, in extensive detail, at an open forum.
Something else is going one here. Remember - as the owners said, their business plan does not make sense unless they were awarded a COMIDA grant. So now that the grants are going away will they still hold on to the hotel?
I wonder if this hotel is still obligated to create the single job it it was supposed to create (another point of contention)?
Oh - in other news - Brighton loses about 20K based on the allocation of the mortgage grant.
The mortgage tax benefit is still in place, since it doesn’t depend on local labor, Seil says. That benefit amounts to a $20,000 loss to the town of Brighton, says Ray Tierney, a town councilman and COMIDA critic.
Great. 2O K that could be used towards offsetting Maggies unF.A.I.R. plan.
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[...] Frequent readers of this blog and my posts know what words are coming next - Like the taste of a bad peanut can you say Wellesley Inn. That was the one where the owners received a COMIDA grant because the hotel was labeled as a tourist destination. How did that work out anyway? [...]