Support Bass Pro & Geico

I was up in Vaughan, Ontario today and shopped at IKEA and Vaughan Mills. Vaughan Mills happens to have a Bass Pro Outdoor World. This gargantuan mall was packed, and I counted maybe two vacant storefronts in the whole thing. Bass Pro itself looked quite impressive, though I didn't go in. [Side note: Sales tax in Ontario is over 15%. The weather there is cold. Yet people don't bitch about it, and they go out and shop. Their government isn't perfect, but it's not in crisis mode and it's not the most dysfunctional. Interesting, that.] From what I understand, the Bass Pro in the Aud will be much larger than the one in Vaughan, and I know for a fact it's about 3 times larger than the one in Auburn. It's quite obviously a "get" and a draw. What I don't get about freebuffalo's planned opposition to Bass Pro, and its concomitant opposition to the Geico deal is this simple fact: If we don't get it, someone else will. Municipalities must compete against each other to attract people and businesses. It is incumbent on Buffalo and Erie County to be involved in that competition, because you can't improve our lot without attracting people and businesses. Every job that Geico brings equals one person who will come or stay in WNY. And every one of those people will buy cars, and houses, and improve their houses, and buy pizzas, and drop off drycleaning, and buy gas, and buy furniture, etc., thus improving WNY exponentially. Bass Pro? Sure, in a perfect world they'd just come to Buffalo and build it in the Aud themselves. But, as we're all aware, the world is not perfect, and nobody has the time to wait for it to become perfect. So we work with what we have and do what we can do. Maybe it'll help downtown, and maybe it'll fail. But if we never take the risk, if we never take the shot, then failure is 100% secured. I know hope & optimism are in wicked short supply around here. But I think things are looking up, and we have to keep trying.