Good evening. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you, both local residents and guests, to the official opening of A Canal Conversation.
I would also like to extend our appreciation to those who have waited so patiently for a seat and a meal. The overflow crowd is a very real measure of your interest in the Inner Harbor project. Special welcome to our Mayor, Tony Masiello, and County Executive, Joel Giambra. Your presence here tonight is very meaningful.
My name is Catherine Schweitzer. I am the Executive Director of The Baird Foundation and will serve as your official greeter this evening.
I suspect many of you have had conversations for months with friends, neighbors, even strangers, about the importance of the Erie Canal in our history and its role in our future.
Certainly it is a topic that has received formal attention through the appropriate public process. It is also a topic that has received generous coverage by all forms of our local media. Yet, it has become a passionate subject for our community to discuss informally.
The questions posed in your conversations are not easy ones to answer, for the issues are complex, layered, like the archeology of the site.
For a brief moment, our community has an additional opportunity to be educated by professionals who have worked on heritage and canal projects all over the country. The consultants gathered for this unique conference have rich and varied experience, as well as success stories, to share with us, guiding this chapter in our conversation.
We have an opportunity to learn from the presenters and an opportunity to learn together. The opportunity has been made possible through the efforts of the conference founder and organizer, local attorney, Kevin Gaughan, with the support of his awesome network of volunteers.
A graduate of Harvard, Georgetown Law School, and the London School of Economics, Kevin chose to pursue a life of service to our community, returning to Western New York after an impressive legal career on Wall Street. Making this community’s public life the focus of his work, we are fortunate to have his energy, intellect, creativity and passion dedicated to improving our region.
Examples of other important initiatives conceived and organized by Kevin were the 1997 “Chautauqua Conference on Regionalism in Government,” the 1998 “Regional Conversation,” an interfaith dialogue between urban, suburban and rural congregations, and the 1999 “Regional Conference on Education.” In each conference the approach has been to expand and extend our definition of public conversation, moving from a conflict orientation towards an increasingly inclusive and participatory model.
Kevin brings a rare and unique style to his work. Preeminent is his optimism. He is convinced that Buffalo and Western New York are someplace special. Working together in a positive and collaborative manner, he believes we can realize our potential. He persistently approaches issues from a positive perspective, identifying what can be done, rather than why something cannot be done. To borrow and paraphrase a quote from Time magazine, “A community must have access to optimism — not often an available grace in areas of poverty and stagnation.” Kevin provides it in abundance.
When he first proposed the idea of this conference, The Baird Foundation was quite reticent to follow his lead. We found many objections: not enough time, too contentious, too political, too confusing, too many questions. Eventually, our reluctance became the reason to support his proposal. Perhaps the general community shared our confusion about what original material remains at the site, why it is important, and what benefits would return to the community from this large public works project. Perhaps we all could learn how successful public-private alliances and partnerships have been built around similar projects.
We
are grateful to the Paul J. Koessler Foundation and the Western New York
Foundation for adding their financial support to our leap of faith. Collectively,
we turned to Kevin, based on the strength of his past achievements and
his relentless determination, to gather a forum of people from outside
our community and outside this project to add one more dimension of knowledge
to the record. Most importantly, this knowledge would be openly available
to all the parties involved with this decision, including the general
public.
Kevin, yet again you have demonstrated your ability to drag us along with you, to patiently approach and re-approach our skepticism, and to stretch our imagination until we have caught up with you. We have been well rewarded by your willingness to use every ounce of your industriousness, dedication, determination, energy and charm to gather us tonight.
At this time, it is my great honor to introduce my friend and colleague, Kevin Gaughan.