The public hearing was abruptly cancelled.
With one day to go before the meeting, Amazon notified the town of Grand Island, NY that it was withdrawing its application for rezoning that would have permitted the company to build what was reported to be the second largest warehouse in the world in this small upstate town. This move may yet be revealed to be a tactical ploy, but for now opponents are breathing a sigh of relief, while The Buffalo News decries the loss of the project as “a black eye for the region.” Thus may end the nearly 2-year long behind-the-scenes effort by Amazon--revealed to the public only in February. The company is now seeking greener pastures.
Responsibility for the successful deflection of the development certainly lies with The Coalition for Responsible Economic Development for Grand Island (CRED4GI). The group, headed by Island resident Cathy Rayhill, was formed months after the town’s first revealing of “Project Olive,” a 3.8 million square foot warehouse development for an undisclosed company. Few who became aware of the project envisioned that it would do anything but founder as the pandemic progressed into lock-down, closing Town Hall and the machinery of local government with it. But the project kept moving forward, likely aided by COVID-19 fears and stay-at-home orders dissipating any vocal dissent. When Rayhill realized that Olive was somehow pressing ahead, she and a few other angered Islanders formed CRED4GI and mounted the remarkably fast, focused, and disciplined efforts that, despite the pandemic, brought public attention to the project that was developed in secret then unveiled complete in the form of a 2,000+ page project plan submitted to the town. When Amazon was later revealed to be the mystery client, it was considered by most to be a done deal.
With the promise of 300 construction jobs, 1,000 full-time jobs, many millions in tax revenue (after 10-20 years of payments-in-lieu-of-taxes), and, finally as a sweetener, ten million dollars for the town to use for a new community center, the town’s Chamber of Commerce and business community, along with many residents and a handful of elected officials, seemed to be on board with Project Olive. But as word of the magnitude of this project got out, resistance quickly mounted. CRED4GI had already gone to work.
“No Amazon Warehouse” yard signs immediately sprang up on lawns throughout the town, CRED4GI ensured they had a visible and vocal presence at public and on-line official meetings where the project was discussed, plotted strategy for questioning in public hearings, and staged picket lines outside of Town Hall. They blanketed the Island with CRED4GI flyers, and of course, an on-line petition, with near-daily follow-up emails and a website encouraging submissions of public comments to the Town Board.
Meanwhile, local television stations for months have been regularly airing ads with warehouse workers speaking glowingly about how they love working for Amazon. Other ads silently touted what a responsible corporate citizen Amazon is. But the question was not Amazon’s commitment to solar energy or the creation of decent jobs. The question was how could Amazon think such a behemoth belonged in this particular town?
This was not a simple matter of knee-jerk NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard). Many in this bedroom community of 21,000 were aghast that Amazon would consider placing any facility here. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a worse place for such a massive warehouse.
The Island is home to two NY State Parks (now connected by a 7-mile bike bath in a linear park along the West River overlooking Canada) and has been designated as a Ramsar site by The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, and it is a significant corridor for migrating birds. Ok, so it’s a small town with a fragile environment and green space with attendant wildlife that its residents want to protect, so is half of America.
Unlike Grand Island, Nebraska, and many other places with ‘Island’ in the name, Grand Island, NY is entirely an Island, in the Niagara River just upstream from Niagara Falls (from the northern tip of the Island you can see the mist rise from The Falls). Its semi-rural character has slowly eroded over the past few decades as woods and farmland have increasingly given way to residential development. Town zoning laws have long been in place defining a large swath of the center of the Island, including the area purchased for the Amazon project, as “light industrial.” Project Olive did not meet the parameters of this designation; specifically, the planned building height of 87 feet was twice that allowed under current zoning.
The town’s Planning Board was quick to recognize that the project was a bad fit for the Island and after due consideration voted against the requested re-zoning. The Conservation Advisory Board raised a number of environmental questions that weren’t answered satisfactorily in the mountain of paperwork and balked at the lack of independent analysis of environmental impacts. They, too, advised the town not to approve the re-zoning.
Clearly Amazon liked the 145-acre site’s proximity to the New York State Thuway, with exits from I-190 just a stone’s throw away, and only a few miles from the Canadian border. But Grand Island is accessible only by a pair of bridges on the north and south ends, and residents are all too aware of the pre-pandemic traffic delays at the bridges, periodically through the day and across the seasons. In addition, road work, accidents, and your average Niagara Falls tourist season can often bring bridge traffic to a halt, backing up traffic for miles. All ambulances have to go over the bridge--there are no hospitals or urgent care centers in town. Physicians who live here have publicly bemoaned the problems with bridge traffic, as they risk being unable to get off-island to hospital emergencies. Western New Yorkers proudly claim, “You can get anywhere in 20 minutes.” But they also know that the first locations shown on local TV news traffic reports are always the Grand Island bridges, because they are the bottleneck for so many commuters.
Add to that the expected 500 trucks per day, which is no doubt a conservative estimate, plus auto traffic for hundreds of Amazon workers in and out for each shift and you create the certainty of increased logjams at the bridges. Meanwhile, other residential developments elsewhere on the Island proceed apace and will be adding hundreds of new residents and their cars.
All the studies and data regarding the traffic, environmental, and economic impact of Project Olive were provided by Amazon and their developers, and, oddly enough, they concluded no significant adverse impacts, but many, many jobs and tax dollars. No time for third-party independent consultants to be brought in to evaluate the proposal, the wetlands, the noise, the light, the traffic, the fumes, the runoff from the massive parking lot, the surrounding community…no, the developers were in a hurry to move ahead.
The stinging part of this adventure to many was in the way the development effort was stacked against the public. Not simply in that it was the retail giant and their lawyers descending on a small town. It was that Amazon had secretly enlisted allies in this effort among local public officials, silencing them with non-disclosure agreements. Among them was the Erie County Executive (and as-yet-non-disclosed others). Sure part of their job is to promote the local economy, but their oath is to the people of the region, who were left out of the discussion until the last possible moment. Their private discussions under NDA’s do not jive with the strict open meetings law under which local governments must operate. Are such agreements with public officials even legal?
Could these NDA’s be responsible for the surprisingly stolid objection to a generic tree ordinance proposed last year by the Grand Island Conservation Advisory Board? We don’t know. It’s still a secret, but coincidentally, the proposed ordinance would have gotten in the way of Amazon’s developer clear-cutting the site.
The year or two of private discussions meant that the residents of the town were taken by surprise when the fully-formed development plan suddenly showed up. No presentation of a concept, discussions, draft plan, negotiations, another draft plan…nope, it was all done, i’s dotted and t’s crossed, ready to go. Certainly they intended to head off any resistance, getting the project approved and underway before opposition could organize and find their voice.
They did not anticipate CRED4GI moving swiftly and emphatically to educate and muster support among Islanders to stand up together against Amazon’s ill-conceived plan.
The company downplayed the role of public opposition in their decision to pull the plug on Project Olive, citing instead increased infrastructure and labor costs. The Grand Island Town Board could have ignored its advisory boards and approved the project. But certainly the PR and legal costs in fighting against a well-organized opposition had something to do with Amazon’s decision. With both Grand Island’s Planning Board and Conservation Advisory Board having considered and rejected the project, a protracted lawsuit and a very public fight was surely in Amazon’s future if they were to try to press for this development.
Below is an email sent to CRED4GI members and friends upon hearing of Amazon’s withdrawal of the project.
Contact information for the group is on their website: cred4gi.org.
What It Means to Be a Community:
Reflections on the Successful Campaign to Stop Amazon’s Warehouse on Grand Island, NY
The Coalition for Responsible Economic Development for Grand Island
CRED4GI.org
August 13, 2020
With the announcement last evening, 12th of August 2020, that Amazon is abandoning their plans of a massive 3.8 million square foot warehouse on Grand Island, NY, we reflect on the steps that led to this meaningful victory.
The Coalition for Responsible Economic Development for Grand Island (CRED4GI) came together about forty days ago with one goal: protect the community we love from ill-conceived and unsustainable economic predation. We were not on a crusade against Amazon as a company. We were not backed by any political or special interests, or “outsiders.” We are neighbors and grandparents and friends and community members whose families have lived on Grand Island for generations or who have recently chosen to move here out of love for our way of life and the serenity and nature that surrounds us.
The decision to stand against one of the largest companies in the world is not an easy one. Many of us had never protested before, hadn’t spoken at a Town meeting or public hearing, didn’t know what it meant to engage in a campaign or how to create flyers or go door-to-door. We didn’t know what a SEQRA process is, what kinds of particle emissions emanate from diesel tractor trailers, how many decibels of ambient sound is too many, how to interpret an Environmental Impact Statement, how to call for a public referendum, what an Article 78 is, or how to calculate tax abatements for a large industrial business. But we did our research because we needed to understand each of these in order to assess and communicate and educate about the true impacts of this proposed Amazon warehouse development.
We were told, more often than we can count, that fighting against Amazon is folly, that the project is a done deal, that we should accept the inevitable and take the best deal we can get, that if we are going to lose we might as well get something out of it. We didn’t focus on the big picture because the big picture looked too much like an exercise in futility: they make movies out of David versus Goliath stories because they happen so rarely, if at all, in real life.
Instead, we stuck to the important tasks: distributing signs, creating websites, researching, writing talking points, gathering petition signatures, reaching out to friends and neighbors. We went from one Town Board meeting to the next, planning strategy as we went along and organizing to meet the challenges of the dynamic situation, learning in the process. Each person who joined us brought new energy. Every skill and talent and voice was appreciated and valued, and we worked to engage every volunteer and utilize their abilities and commitment.
The growth was noticeable. More than 700 “No Amazon Warehouse!” signs appeared in front of homes across the Island. We received donations from generous community members who could not imagine the 2nd largest warehouse in the world on this 33-square mile island, upstream from Niagara Falls, the 8th natural wonder of the world. Respected regional and national organizations came forward to communicate their staunch opposition to this project. People increasingly turned out when we sent notice of hearings and rallies. They were passionate and encouraging of our work, which became their work too, and we gained momentum from their strength and their outrage and their belief in what we were doing together. And we believed it too. Because we couldn’t accept anything else. The alternative was unthinkable.
Our resolve was apparent to Trammell Crow, the Texas-based project developers, who temporarily put the project on hold to solicit the support of the Erie County Executive and others with economic interests and little understanding of the environmental fragility and critical importance of our Island ecosystem. We celebrated prematurely and they returned with reinforcements.
But we could now imagine success. We had momentum and we realized how to win this struggle: by demonstrating the will of the community. In forty days we had received petition signatures or written statements from twenty percent of the households on Grand Island. We had fundraised more than we expected to, we had punched holes in their cookie-cutter development plans that didn’t fit our community, we received expert legal counsel to guide our decision-making, and we rallied the people to voice their opposition to this project. We rejected Amazon’s assault on our way of life and our environment and the future of our Island and it was apparent.
Amazon can claim that they are just making an adjustment to their multifaceted and flexible plans, that factors such as cost increases and labor requirements and the attractiveness of other locations are the reasons why they have walked away from Grand Island.
Here’s what we know: Amazon does not want to be seen as a Goliath. They don’t want to give the impression that they are conquering or predatory or constantly calculating how to increase market share while crushing competition both big and small and subjugating small towns. They want to win us over with slick campaigns and analytics and convenience and accessibility, even as these cost us our sense of community and our local businesses and our traditional way of life. With their nearly unlimited resources they tried to buy their way into our neighborhoods and to promise us a vision of jobs and tax income that never could compensate for the costs we would have paid with losses to greenspace, tranquility, roads and infrastructure, health and safety.
When we asked the people of Grand Island how much money we would take in exchange for our way of life, the resounding answer was that no amount of money was worth that cost. And that’s when we knew we had won. Once we demonstrated to each other that we are united in our commitment to our community together, it was only a matter of time before Amazon walked away. And what feels so wonderful is not only that we have protected our community, but that we have learned what it means to be a community in the process.
With sincere appreciation and dedication,
The Steering Committee of CRED4GI
