Sunday at Kingdom Halls in the Rochester region, they read a letter to the gathered Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It said that this summer’s conference was off.
The last weekend in July and the first weekend in August – three days each time – cancelled.
After 50 years at the Rochester Community War Memorial, the Witnesses are staying home, one more victim in the push by the building’s new managers – Pegula Sports and Entertainment– to use the property almost exclusively to house just their own sports teams.
And to push or price everybody else out.
At a dramatic cost to Rochester tradition and benefit.
The Community War Memorial, build after World War 2 to host everything from concerts to circuses, has been sacred ground to Rochesterians. It has also been a hub of activity and great community benefit. It was a place to gather.
And now it seems to have gone out of the gathering business.
So 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses have nowhere to congregate, and downtown hotels and restaurants have 10,000 fewer potential customers. And the generations who have gone to the WarMemorial for Section V basketball and cheerleading championships stand aghast at the possibility that their own sacred strings may be coming to an end.
How could this happen?
And did City Hall, before it signed a give-away contract with the Pegulas, know they intended to idle the building? If so, why? And if not, why not?
Was it an effort to force business to the convention center? Was it an effort to save the city the policing costs after some events?
Or did the city get played? Did the Pegulas flim-flam Rochester and its mayor and City Council?
Apparently so.
Three council members who voted on the matter said that their understanding was that the Pegulas would do just the opposite – that they would increase the number of events, therebyreducing the city’s need to subsidize the facility.
But that was mostly verbal, and the deal was rushed, and one council member said, “From the jump, it was shaky.”
And the new direction was almost immediately evident. Promoters would try to book shows in the venue and their calls would not be returned.
And when there were pre-existing arrangements, the new managers seem to have had a pattern of raising rates to prohibitive heights, to chase events away. That’s what happenedto the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the price got jacked up.
For another event, forced to go forward because the price increase was made too close to the event for it to be rescheduled, the Pegulas increased the fee some 300%.
These aren’t for fly-by-night shows blowing through town, they are for hugely popular community events of many long years standing. We’re talking tens of thousands of people intotal, who were gathering as community at the community’s traditional gathering place – using the building for the purpose for which it was built and dedicated.
All of a sudden, with the hurry-up signing of a contract, those events and that use are apparently lost.
Maybe Rochester kids can see the Ice Capades in Syracuse or Buffalo.
Or maybe the Dome Arena in suburban Henrietta can salvage for the region the shows and gatherings that used to grace downtown Rochester.
Why did this happen?
In the minds of several people, it arose out of Mayor Lovely Warren’s upset with SMG – the War Memorial’s last managers. She came to dislike them, and she got rid of them. Andthe Pegulas rode into a deal that helped both their Rochester and Buffalo businesses.
It probably isn’t wise to make someone their own landlord, or give them charge of a business which competes against them. But the City of Rochester did that with the Pegulas.
And after 50 years of being welcomed at the War Memorial – and being able to afford it – the Jehovah’s Witnesses are gone. Probably to be followed by foot races and other activitieswhich have previously anchored at the War Memorial.
This is a colossal fail.
The city seems to have entered into an ill-advised agreement that it either didn’t understand or misrepresented to the community. Several decades-long community traditions seemto have come to a screeching halt. And the Pegulas have tainted their own name in our town.
And a dead downtown just got deader.
We got played, and we’re going to pay a big price for it.