Last Wednesday night, the Olmsted Conservancy and Magnolia Events LLC convened an event at the Buffalo Seminary for what the invitation card said, was “our third public input and informational session regarding ‘The Terrace at the Marcy Casino.’ A proposed ala carte [sic] venue for the upstairs and outer terrace.”

During the 20 minutes UB School of Architecture and Planning dean Robert Shibley and Olmsted Conservancy executive director Stephanie Crockatt talked about the evening’s format and how we got here, and what would happen next, a line from Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet” kept running through my head:
“Juliet, the dice were loaded from the start.”

What transpired at Sem

Shibley said they wanted to hear everyone’s questions and concerns. We could write them in a one-inch box on a card they provided, or say them to one of the representatives of the Conservancy or Magnolia Events (which manages the present catering operation in the Casino), to an officer from the Buffalo Police Department, or to representatives from the city, who would be stationed in four locations for “break-out groups” after the introductory remarks were done. Or we could go online and write to the Conservancy. All remarks, he said, would be considered.

This was all planned, he said, in the interest of efficiency and fairness. He then recommended we think about gratitude, grief, and active hope. I won’t try to summarize that here. It was the inspirational part of his statement. 

“The goal now,” he said, “is where to from here.”

He didn’t say, and wouldn’t allow anyone to ask, where “here” was.

There would be four breakout groups at which questions could be asked: one about a possible advisory group for the Conservancy. (They already have one; it hasn’t been convened since 2011 and it was not consulted about any aspect of this plan.) Another about parking enforcement. Another about security in the park. And the fourth about how Magnolia would function. 

Crockatt reiterated much of what Shibley said, absent the inspirational part. She did refer to parking concerns in the neighborhood and two polls which showed strong support for the Magnolia plan.

The bogus polls

One of the polls was mounted online and by mail by Magnolia. It said wonderful things about the planned operation and asked something on the order of, “Do you think this is a good thing to do?” As I recall, there was no option to oppose the plan; you could only endorse it or remain silent.

The other poll, Crockatt said, included vote cards at the restaurants and bars around town owned by Magnolia’s owners, Jason Davidson and Mike Shatzel. That is, patrons at bars and restaurants they liked were asked if they would like there to be another bar/restaurant operated by the same people. 

All pollsters know you can get any poll result you want if you select your questions and your respondents with care, as was the case with both of the polls Crockatt talked about. That’s about as good a job of poll-trolling as I know.

Parking

She referred several times to neighbors’ concerns about parking. That issue was cited several times in the press and on public media. It felt pumped out.

Nobody I know in the single-family or multi-unit houses near the park worries about parking for themselves. All these houses have more than enough parking space for residents. The concern is parking space for ordinary users of the park.

Even now, ordinary users are being kept out of public parking spaces on Lincoln Parkway coned off to accommodate customers at Magnolia’s “Hoppy Hour” and “Happy Hour” events. How can this possibly be legal? Why should families using the park or people going to Shakespeare in Delaware Park be blocked from parking on a public street because the spaces have been claimed by a private corporation operating a concession that people under 21 cannot attend?

That’s what the parking concern is about.

The break-out groups

Then people milled about, talking for a while at one area or another, or in groups of two or three to one another, and then most of them drifted off. Thirty minutes after Shibley and Crockatt finished speaking, the place had mostly emptied out, save for the people working the event. 

Normally, when a large meeting goes to break-out groups, it follows a session in which people have talked and gotten a chance to ask questions and voice concerns about larger issues. The break-out groups take off from there, focusing on specific aspects of the larger issues. Shibley would not allow that at the Wednesday night meeting; he said it wasn’t efficient.

Also, normally at large meetings that spend time in break-out groups, everyone reconvenes to talk about what those groups decided and consider those things, as a committee of the whole. If you can’t share or question what you’ve learned, what’s the point? 

That didn’t happen, either, because the break-out groups were almost entirely conversational, and by the time they ended there was hardly anyone not working the room to convene.

Consultation

Ostensibly, this meeting was set up to do what Crockatt called “a soft reset” of the whole process. They had previously developed and cut the deal with Magnolia, then had two meetings at the Casino where they talked about what they were going to do and the public was allowed to ask questions and comment. But the public questions and comments would clearly have no effect on the deal, which, from their point of view, was very much done. 

(I wrote two previous Public articles on those meetings, so I won’t go over them here. They are: “The Delaware Park Casino as Profit Center” (June 15, 2016) and “Undoing Olmsted” (June 22, 2016).)

The Magnolia restaurant/bar operation was set to open by Memorial Day, but there was so much blowback on the process and the unanswered questions that it has been put on hold.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the public was indeed invited to voice concerns, but, because of the refusal by Shibley and the Olmsted Conservancy to permit discussion of one key question (none of the four breakout groups permitted it either), this meeting was even more of a sham than the first two. Participants were told their concerns would be logged and considered. Would they influence anything? If yes, how? No one said.

And that is why almost everybody left early. 

The question that was not asked or considered

I should have realized that the dice were loaded when I read the invitation from the Conservancy and Magnolia. If the evening really had been about what to do about the park, the invitation would have come from just the Conservancy.

Everything at all three of these meetings has been directed to making the Conservancy/Magnolia deal work.

The Conservancy never seems to have asked internally or invited the public to ask: “What kind of facility would best serve the people who use Delaware Park? What would the mothers with kids, the people walking around the lake, the people hanging out in the shade, and all the rest find of most use to them?”

The cards with the one-inch box for questions and comments I mentioned earlier also had two questions. One had one box that might be checked: “I would like to be involved with the Olmsted Advocacy Council.” The other question was, “Do you support the concept of an upstairs restaurant service at the Marcy Casino?” It had three boxes: yes, no, and undecided.

There were no questions on the order of, “Would you like discussion of what kind of food and drink options might be best for Marcy Casino?” or “Would you prefer to be able to vote on something more than this single proposal from Magnolia?” 

Questions like that were not solicited or wanted. There was no space for them in the full forum or on the card. 

“Juliet, the dice were loaded from the start.”

The single reason given for this topsy-turvy process is, “The Conservancy needs the money to do its work.”

But that is backwards: The park and its ordinary users shouldn’t be put in service to the Conservancy’s budget. If there is a funding problem that forces the Conservancy to abandon its mission, then the question of funding should be confronted, not the question of how to squeak through a deal done in secret.

The small kitchen gambit

One public official said the reason he was told this hadn’t been open to public discussion or put out for bid is Magnolia has two years to run on its catering contract and there isn’t room on the Casino’s small kitchen for two food operators.

“In that case,” I asked him, “why not wait until Magnolia’s contract is up in two years and then let the public in on it?”
“I didn’t hear anyone suggest that,” he said.

Operating in the dark

The Conservancy gets money from the City, from concessions and from a few other sources. The Public thought to do an article in this series addressing the question of whether or not the City of Buffalo was fulfilling its obligation to the citizens in Buffalo in this regard. Maybe it should be kicking in a good deal more than the $1million it currently provides. The Conservancy has done a superb job maintaining the park and, in so doing, it has raised property values in a large part of the city, thereby increasing the City’s tax revenue. Maybe the Conservancy should get a bigger slice of the revenue it has produced.

The Public asked Stephanie Crockatt for three documents we thought necessary to begin working on that article. They contain numbers and other facts we need to know before we can talk to anyone in the Conservancy or in government about policy. 

The documents were:

• the Conservancy’s actual operating budget,
• the Conservancy’s contract with the City of Buffalo,
• and the Conservancy’s contract with Magnolia. 

Crockatt stonewalled on all three. For the operating budget, she sent us to the Conservancy’s IRS form 990, which is available online. That form shows no line items for income from any concessions; it is, for this inquiry, useless. For the contract with the city, she told us we’d have to file a FOIL request. For the contract with Magnolia, she said she’d have to consult with Magnolia.

All of that is nonsense: If you’re a party to a contract, you can show it to anyone you like, unless the contract contains clauses saying it must be kept secret. That would raise other questions, like: Why would an organization like the Olmsted Conservancy need secret contracts with a restaurant/bar owner concerning the use of a building owned by the public? Why should a newspaper have to file a FOIL request for a document that had (presumably) been approved by the Buffalo Common Council? 

Enemies?

On the way to the meeting room at Buffalo Seminary, I saw an Olmsted Conservancy trustee I know well. I said to him, “We’ve been trying to see some Olmsted Conservancy financial documents for a Public article, but your executive director is stonewalling us.” 

I was certain he’d say something like, “It’s probably a misunderstanding. Let me talk to her. I’m sure we can help.”

That wasn’t what he said. What he said was, “Of course. Why would she show them to you? You’re the enemy.” 

“The press is your enemy?” I said. 

“Yes,” he said.

He was standing with one former trustee and another current trustee, both of whom I’ve also known for a long time. Neither of them said anything. 

Maybe it wasn’t just incompetence, after all

I’d thought the first two post-deal Marcy Casino informational meetings about an important deal for city property carried out in secret with a private developer were just heavy-handed errors by administrators not used to working on projects that should involve public consultation and input, administrators who didn’t understand that public consultation is slower, but it leads to far fewer problems at the finish line.

But that conversation with the trustee before the meeting and the pointless meeting that followed suggest otherwise. 

They suggest that the current management of the Olmsted Conservancy feels separate from and perhaps even antagonistic to the public which it has every reason to want as friends, and which it needs as friends. And with which it should be friends.

Perhaps the restaurant/bar project isn’t the only Olmsted Conservancy issue that needs a soft reset.

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Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at the University at Buffalo.