So, seventh: Are people patient? Good heavens, I think everybody here has the patience of Job. You’ve been putting up with this for so long. Declare the Peace of Buffalo. Get on with it and join the Augustas and the Charlestons and the Chicagos and the Pittsburghs and the Decorah, Iowas. Just, do it!

Eighth: Does this place practice quality? I don’t know yet. But if you don’t practice quality then the rest of the citizens in this place aren’t going to proud of what you do. And when visitors come the first time, they’re not going to come back. So you’d better practice quality and I assume that you will do so. Because everybody likes to live in quality communities, people like to visit quality communities, and businesses like to invest in quality communities.

Ninth: Is it doable? Well, I don’t know about that either, but, in the several years’ editions of the newspapers and so forth that Kevin sent to us, I read about $200 million here, and $38 million there, and $25 million somewhere else, and $200 thousand over here, and $100 thousand over here. Devoted to canals. I assume the money can be found.

And tenth: if you declare the Peace of Buffalo, throw a party, call that your first early action, and I’ll come back. (laughter, applause).

Now, one more observation, and as I said to a couple of your very fine newspaper people in earlier interviews, this is off the record, okay? You’ve got one, two, three, maybe four, maybe five, architectural plans for this fairly small area down there. No more architectural plans. Please. (applause).

What you’ve got to do is decide what the story is because the story is going to inform the plan and then you can do one plan that everybody will have agreed upon because it will tell the story. No more plans. For 120 days. The first 120 days. The Peace of Buffalo. No architectural plans. Talk about your story. That will go a long way toward bringing everybody on board.

One more off the record observation: If you’re going to decide on that story, then let it strongly inform the other things that you’re doing in the area. And I mean the Peace Bridge, that “Signature Bridge.” And I mean the Convention Center. Because once you will have defined the story there, that’s going to tell you a heck of a lot about what you gotta do elsewhere for the benefit of the entire region.

So, it appears to me that Buffalo and the Niagara region have most of the things that you need to really get started, including this conversation.

f the good people of Salem, Massachusetts can work together on a celebration of America’s shipbuilding traditions and early maritime heritage as well as that city’s other widely well known heritage, witches, then unquestionably you can bring all the parties together in Buffalo.

If five competing auto makers and 50 labor unions and 25 competitive museums in Detroit can get together to tell the story of “America on Wheels,” then you can certainly rally all the factions in Buffalo.

If Selma, Alabama, a town of 25,000 can create a partnership that brings 50,000 people to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to talk about America’s civil rights heritage and the Selma-to-Montgomery march, then you can get over your differences.

And if the Alabama Historical Commission is even talking about a cultural heritage tourism theme having to do with America’s civil rights legacy, now in the year 2000, you can do something here too.

If the tiny Czech village of Spillville, Iowa, population 400, can decide to throw a 100th birthday party for Anton Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and 100,000 people come to this community of 415, then you can do some nice things here too.

The process is pretty simple. It isn’t quick. It isn’t easy. It doesn’t work everywhere. But, with enough pride and compassion and common sense, you can do it. So you know what you gotta do: do it! Thank you. (applause).

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