Bill Nojay, an attorney and finance chairman in the election campaign of Jack Doyle in 1995, was originator of the RenSquare project. With the blessing of Doyle and Steve Minarick, he was named chairman of RGRTA in 1996 by newly elected Jack Doyle. He and Doyle then overrode the recruitment efforts of commissioners of RGRTA, who had already selected a transportation professional for the job, to have Don Riley, ex-town supervisor of Greece, . They later brought in Mark Aesch, a member of the staff of Republican representative Bill Paxon, who was without a job when Paxon chose not to run again.

In his role as R-GRTA chairman, Nojay has been so aggressive that he was labeled "a predator" by Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson. In 1998, using federal funds secured by former Senator Al D'Amato as "seed money", Nojay began the project that, with many more infusions of federal taxpayer dollars, ultimately became the so-called Rochester Central Station, which is now part of the Rochester Renaissance Project.

Professional transportation experts, including the writer, objected to the project and called for an intermodal station to be built at the site of the current Amtrak Stafion, that would allow across-the-platform transfer between trains and inter-city buses. Finally, a recommendation to build a new Amtrak Station was announced by the GTC on March 7,2002, but WITHOUT facilities for transfer between inter-city buses and Amtrak, despite overwhelming local support for that concept.. This was clearly because of the influence on the GTC staff by Nojay, as head of the host agency for the GTC, and Doyle, county chairman and powerrful member of the Council, who saw it as competition for the RenSquare Project.

GTC had traditionally been a neutral staff until Nojay and Doyle became involved and politicized it. Steve Gleason, then Staff Director of GTC, has become Maggie Brook's financial director. GTC subsequently withdrew support for a new station, claiming it needed to wait to see if Amtrak survived! Amtrak is alive and well, with ridership at record levels, but the proposed Amtrak Station for Rochester is still buried somewhere..

Does it make sense to build a public bus station in such a prime location. Wouldn't it decrease nearby property values and the desirability of the area for other projects? As the planning nears completion we still haven't been given information on operating costs. Can the county legislature dump this burden on municipalities using the "charge back" idea it uses for MCC. Since most of the riders board buses in the city will city taxpayers bear this cost?