City Newspaper Archives - 10/2007
DOWNTOWN: Midtown to make way for PAETEC
Published by Tim Louis Macaluso on Oct 16, 2007
That was the news Governor Eliot Spitzer brought when he stopped in Rochester today. The city will acquire Midtown Plaza, and the state will provide $50 million for demolishing the Plaza and making the site "shovel ready." PAETEC will bring its 600 employees downtown and plans to employ 400 more workers in the near future.
Rochester's downtown has everything in place, the governor said, for a major resurgence, but the plaza has been a serious obstacle to development, with too many structural problems to salvage.
"Not only does this structure present a physical impediment to revitalization," Spitzer said, but "it is 10 acres large, right in the middle of downtown."
Space that PAETEC doesn't use will be made available for mixed-use office and retail development.
Spitzer's announcement came as part of his "City by City" redevelopment plan for Upstate New York.
