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A new Rochester will emerge, but not overnight
Mark Hare
Go to Rochester D&C
(June 5, 2007) — It's going to be hard to live down the fast-ferry flop until Rochester emerges with a new economic identity — whatever that may be.
The New York Times has repeatedly written about the ferry as a dream-turned-nightmare. A story last week began this way:
"Two years ago, this city of 190,000 — with more per capita murders, high school dropouts and children living in poverty that any other in the state — paid $32 million for a high-speed ferry. It was considered a way to help revive the local economy by shuttling thousands of passengers a day to and from Canada, across Lake Ontario."
That's true, but it's important to remember that while a lot of ferry supporters (I among them) hoped the boat might help re-brand Rochester as a port city, we did not see it as being more than one piece of a large puzzle. It was, and is, hard to see what the next Rochester, the one after Kodak and Xerox, will look like.
The Times story goes on to catalog the city's decline, including the shrinking of our indigenous manufacturers, such as Kodak and Xerox. The story talks about the city's efforts to revive the Port of Rochester in hopes of drawing people through the city and region. Former Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. told the Times that the city was desperate. "And the ferry, even after it had failed in the hands of private investors, seemed like a possible way out," the reporter wrote.
OK. Yes, we are flailing about, just like a lot of other old cities whose manufacturing bases have collapsed. The most worrisome aspect of this in-between Rochester economy, also pointed out in the Times story, is the widening gap between city and suburbs in terms of wealth, opportunity and education, creating two different worlds that know little of each other. If we don't develop a one-community mind-set, change will be very difficult.
That said, transition is never easy, and our own history is full of economic upheavals.
The city's first industry was milling — initially using water power to grind Canadian and later Midwestern wheat into flour. In 1834, the year the city was incorporated, there were 21 flour mills along the Genesee River. By the 1850s, Rochester mills shipped more than 750,000 barrels of flour annually. Milling declined after wheat blight ruined many growers and as mills were built closer to Midwest fields.
But as flour waned, the flower business waxed. Nurseries were developed on former wheat fields and prospered because the new Erie Canal made it possible to transport seeds and trees much faster. But the nursery, too, declined over 50 years.
Meanwhile, the city's shoe and clothing industries grew. By 1879, there were 18 clothing wholesalers employing 2,700 workers.
And by the 1880, Rochester was one of the leading beer-producing cities with 15 breweries — in part a measure of the demand for lager that grew with an influx of German immigrants after the Civil War. But with Prohibition, most of the breweries closed.
Over the next several decades, large manufacturing companies came to dominate the economy, but they, too, declined.
All we see today are hints of the next Rochester — perhaps a mix of smaller bio-tech, digital tech, imaging science, new services and higher education. Who knows? Colleges and industry are already training a work force for the next Rochester.
There is no point in blaming our predicament on the fast ferry or any other single incident. Can we learn from fresh mistakes? Yes. But we can also learn from history — which suggests we will find our way again.
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