Upstate New York

There are 17 posts tagged Upstate New York (this is page 1 of 2).

The Proposed STAMP Data Center: A Closer Look at the Benefit/Cost Claim

A large-scale data center campus known as Project Double Reed is planned for the STAMP industrial site in Genesee County. According to the applicant’s February 18, 2026 SEQR filing, the project would occupy roughly 90 acres, divided between a 60-acre North Campus and a 30-acre South Campus. It is designed as an extremely power-intensive facility: the project’s utility filing says it is expected to require about 500 megawatts of electric load. In comparison, STAMP’s electric plan contemplates a substation system expandable to 600 megawatts.

The project summary submitted to GCEDC also states that the developer is seeking a package of public assistance, including major sales-tax and mortgage-recording-tax exemptions, and a long-term PILOT arrangement, while projecting substantial electricity-related tax payments and other revenues over time. In short, this is not a conventional industrial project with large permanent employment; it is a very large, utility-intensive data center proposal whose economic case depends heavily on assumptions about long-run operating benefits and public costs. Are the sponsor’s claims well supported?

Students Outside New York City Underperform on State Tests

The poor academic performance of students in city schools has been a long-standing concern. When students struggle to acquire essential skills, it can significantly hinder their ability to compete successfully in the job market as adults. Large city schools tend to have high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students. In fact, over three-quarters of students in […]

How the State Senate Gerrymander Ultimately Hurt Upstate Residents

The November election brought a marked change in the composition of the New York State Senate that will have significant implications for upstate New York residents.  Tom Precious in the Buffalo News noted, “Majority party rules and minority party lawmakers are left with table scraps when it comes to funding and policy matters.  As a […]

How Amazon Could Help Upstate New York

One of the Thanksgiving meal discussions at my house involved Amazon’s new HQ2 and why Governor Cuomo didn’t get the company to locate its new facility in upstate New York.  And, though my argument that upstate metropolitan areas lacked technology focused labor pools of sufficient size to be seriously considered by a technology based firm […]

Upstate’s Uneven Metropolitan Economies – Implications for Policy Makers

The story of New York’s job market since the 1990’s has been a tale of two regions.  The New York City metropolitan area, where two-thirds of the state’s population lives, has seen private sector employment growth (42.4%) that is near the national rate (48.3%). Albany-Schenectady-Troy’s employment growth – 27.5% – is higher than the remaining New York […]

Traded Employment Losses Since 2001 in Upstate New York

Metropolitan areas in Central and Western New York, like others in the Rust Belt that had high concentrations of manufacturing employment, have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs.  Ninety-one thousand net manufacturing jobs were lost in the 2001-2010 decade in five upstate metropolitan areas – Utica-Rome, Syracuse, Rochester, Binghamton, and Buffalo-Niagara Falls. […]

Government Policies and Job Growth in New York State and the Rust Belt

A recent Washington Post article, “As senator, Clinton promised 200,000 jobs in Upstate New York. Her efforts fell flat.”[1] points out that during Senator Clinton’s tenure between 2001 and 2009, Upstate New York saw job growth of only 0.2%, far from what Clinton claimed could be achieved.  While the article neglects to point out that […]

Poverty in Upstate Metropolitan Areas – Characteristics and Change: 1999-2013

This is a paper based partly on data previously presented on this blog site. This paper examines the incidence of poverty in upstate New York cities compared to the surrounding suburbs. The data shows that while residents of upstate suburbs enjoy incomes that are substantially higher than the national average and poverty rates that are […]

More on Race, Income and Student Achievement

A few months ago, I wrote about the link between economic disadvantage and poor student performance.  I looked at the performance of students on the State’s annual student assessment for grades 3 to 8, and found that the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in schools and school districts accounted for about three quarters of the […]