You have authenticity. The real stuff is here. It’s in place. Not everyone understands it necessarily. It may not have been packaged in a way that everyone can understand in a comprehensible way, but the Real McCoy is here. You have a story and you have enough historic fabric to interpret it. There is a very, very rich story here in Buffalo and it’s architecture and it’s people and it’s immigration and it’s canal and it’s industry — it’s all of those things. It’s a wonderful story.

You have many — although I don’t think quite enough — of the required supporting services and amenities: hotels, places to eat, places to spend time for entertainment. You have that for, I think, some segments of the market, but maybe not all segments of the market.

Successful heritage travel destinations offer multiple components that create a total experience. Now that sounds like a jargon expression, but that’s what we want now. Experiential tourism. Give me an experience that’s different than what I get every day. Give me an experience that’s different than what I can get at home. That’s my memory. Give me an experience and it needs to be real. Successful sites need enough elements to draw repeat visitation. If you only get people to come once, then it’s failed. If the story you’re giving is so one-dimensional that people only need to hear it once or get everything they need out of it once, then it’s failed. So, it needs to encourage repeat visitation. And that means you have to keep it fresh and add new things periodically.

The best sites have attraction value for residents as well as visitors. What do visitors want? Show me where everybody here eats. I don’t want to eat at the Howard Johnson’s. I want to go to the local place that I may not know about. Show me the local experience that you all like the best. You know, I’ve seen Niagara Falls. It’s beautiful. But, show me the real place here that’s something different. Give me something that attracts you. What do you like about your city?

It needs to offer more than just a static level of involvement. The museum, as a concept, is being re-thought in this country in a dramatic way, where people standing in front of static exhibits is going fast. People now want to participate. They want hands-on. They want to touch things. They want to feel involvement. They want to be assaulted in all of their senses, in a very visceral way, to have a good museum experience. And, the idea of walking up and down static displays is going fast. It’s changing dramatically. It’s changing the way museum stories are being interpreted.

And finally, these sites ought to offer multi-generational appeal. If it only fits for the seniors or only fits for the school kids, it’s going to bomb out. You’ve got to draw everybody.

A couple of observations about Buffalo, specifically, and then I would like to turn it over to Elaine. I believe that Buffalo has very strong and multi-dimensional story lines in place that we just mentioned a minute ago. They’re here. They’re real. They’re you. And they have a value. That can be presented to other people who will want to come here and share that with you.

I’m not sure they’re fully resolved yet as a package that people can understand, but that’s where the history and the place and the experience you create all come together.

Your infrastructure has a pretty good base. I think it can grow more, but that’s a part of long range planning.

I think Buffalo has gotten a bad publicity rap. I think you’ve gotten a lot of negative perceptions thrown out there about you starting with Howard Cosell and all the comedians since then who have dumped on Buffalo. And the point of that is, you have a little extra struggle than some other cities have. You need to get to zero first to get people to realize how good you are.

Now, I have to tell you, I loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I read the book when it first came out. I went down to Savannah. I’d never been to Savannah, oddly enough, being interested in history and preservation. The fact is, Savannah is beautiful. But when the paper mills are running, it smells. It’s incredibly hot and humid in the summer. It’s not paradise. Very few of these places are perfect. In fact, I can’t think of any that are perfect.

So, what does that mean for you? Well, it means that you’ve had a bad rap but it’s not all over. This story is not over yet. I think there is a genuine opportunity here, in the sense of community identity, which I think this conversation speaks well of. Look how many of you were here last night and today because you care about the future of Buffalo and about important decisions that are coming. That speaks very well for you as a city. And a lot of other cities I don’t think could gin this up. That significant public commitment to the city’s future is very, very important for you and for the story you’re going to tell to the public.

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