Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

February 24, 2024

“I wish you could see the place here – there is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees …” Artist Georgia O’Keeffe on Lake George, 1923. (Luke Dow photo)

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

A seasonal gloom and doom settles deeply into Upstate New York (and its collective psyche) this time of year, and it can sometimes seem like a permanent condition. Yet last week there was a breakthrough. The gloom lifted suddenly, thanks to a sunny-blue sky announcement of some game-changing economic news.

GlobalFoundries, the firm making microchips at a facility with 3,000 employees in Saratoga County, will spend $12.5 billion to expand its operations there and in Essex Junction, Vt., and add 1,000 or more new jobs. The company will pay for the expansion, in part, with $1.5 billion in federal funding from the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act written by Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In addition to building a second factory in the Saratoga County community of Malta, GlobalFoundries also is undertaking a $1 billion capacity expansion of its existing facilities there to support a new supply agreement with General Motors, the Department of Defense and other customers.

Supply chain disruptions during COVID kept U.S. automakers from obtaining the chips now critical to their vehicles. “The supply problems forced mass layoffs and factory closures and helped to trigger historic inflation across the U.S.,” the Albany Times Union reported. “GlobalFoundries has since stepped in to help the auto industry and Defense Department suppliers secure their own dedicated supply of chips.”

The news about GlobalFoundries, U.S. Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo said, was “a big day for our country, and a big day for New York and Vermont.” Indeed, it follows announcements of a very different kind -- recent plant closures at Quad (formerly known as Quad/Graphics), AngioDynamics, Essity, and Lehigh Cement, as well as The College of Saint Rose, all major employers in the Capital Region of New York.

WITH EVERY GIFT comes a challenge, of course.

To continue to support new jobs, Upstate New York needs more housing – homes for young people, working people, seniors, single adults, and families. The entire nation is facing a shortage of around 3.2 million homes, the result of low levels of new construction over the past 20 years. There are increasing numbers of millennials and GenZers in the pipeline and not enough homes to keep up with the growing number of households which is an important cause of high home prices and rents.

In almost every community, we need to build more homes if we want to keep school enrollments from declining further.  We need to welcome developers who will invest in these new projects and embolden elected officials to support development, despite the natural pressure to keep things just the way they are. Is your community a pro-housing community?

IN NEW YORK’S NORTH COUNTRY, a small but growing number of advocates is supporting factory-built homes as the future of Adirondack housing. It is rather an amalgamation of concepts being floated in the Northeast, loosely tied together by the idea of factory-built housing, which has cost, logistic and efficiency advantages over stick-built, the term assigned to typical construction where materials are delivered to the job site, and contractors seemingly spend half their time waiting for deliveries and running back and forth to Lowe’s.

IN THE HUDSON VALLEY, The New York Times reports, the housing “challenges are acute … fair market rents (a value calculated annually by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to gauge housing markets) have increased by as much as 45 percent in some places since 2019, according to a report published last year by Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, a nonprofit group.”

In addition, Upstate New York communities need a hospitable culture that appeals to young professionals, including social, arts-related and recreational activities, opportunities for single people to meet other single people, and organizations that welcome their willingness to invest and get connected. To help in this effort, the Center for Economic Growth in Albany launched CapNY to help young professionals discover all the broader region has to offer.

The memories are still so sweet and reassuring. Forty-four years ago, America surprised itself and the world when a young team of U.S. hockey players beat the four-time Gold Medal winning Soviet Union team in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid and went on to beat Finland for the Gold. The victory came at the height of the Cold War, and America, in depleted spirit, relished it. Now, Lake Placid awaits word on whether it will be chosen to host the 2026 Olympic sliding competition. (Nancie Battaglia/LPOOC)

THE BIDEN PARDON: On the evening of March 21, 1864, a fight broke out in an Army camp in Virginia between Joseph J. Robinette and John J. Alexander, when Alexander overheard Robinette say something about him to a cook. Robinette was a Virginia hotelier and a civilian employee of the Union army, hired to serve as a veterinary surgeon. Alexander was the larger and stronger man, but during a drunken brawl, Robinette inflicted several cuts with a pocketknife. He claimed self-defense but was convicted on several charges and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Three Army officers protested the conviction as unfair, and President Lincoln took notice. How a pardon connects the 16^th and 46^th President.

NEW HAVEN TO THE NFL: Yale has sent the world future presidents and poets, physicians and actors, and this year may send the NFL one of its most interesting draft picks in years. Kiran Amegadjie, 22, winner of All-Ivy honors, is on track to be a top-100 pick next month. In May, he expects to graduate with a degree in political science. Amegadjie’s father grew up in the West African nation of Togo and played soccer in college in France. His mother is from Cameroon in Central Africa. “Amegadjie possesses (light feet, long arms, and coordinated  movements)  plus explosiveness and a resolute mentality, hence scouts spending more time than usual on Yale’s campus last fall,” says The Athletic.

TEA, DEAR?  Far be it from us to be the killjoys during an otherwise pleasant winter weekend, but this myth-busting news is worth considering. For years, many toasted the idea that alcohol, especially red wine, had health benefits. (After all, no less an authority than Morley Safer of “60 Minutes” said it was so.) But now the healthful halo is slipping off. “Today, more and more research shows that even one drink per day can increase your chances of developing conditions like high blood pressure and an irregular heart rhythm, both of which can lead to stroke, heart failure or other health consequences,” a researcher told The New York Times. “And alcohol’s links to cancer are clear … the W.H.O. and other health agencies have said, regardless of whether you’re drinking wine, beer or liquor.”

CUE THE LORAX: In the end, trees will save us. Forests along the East Coast were cleared as the colonists established farms to feed their families and the new nation. Now, researchers at Indiana University and elsewhere say the reforestation of those former farmlands and the recovery of other forests in the eastern United States have slowed global warming, at least in the southeastern United States.  Scientists have long been puzzled by an anomalous “warming hole” over parts of the Southeast where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend. Thank the trees.

THAT SINKING FEELING: It’s happening in parts of Boston, New York City, Charleston, and Miami. Land along the Atlantic coast is slowly sinking. Natural underground aquifers extend from New Jersey to Florida, providing drinking water, irrigation and water used in manufacturing. These aquifers are recharged by regular rainfall, but it’s not enough to keep up with the water that’s being pumped out for drinking, irrigation, and industrial uses. As the aquifers are pumped, the soils above are collapsing. Cities like Boston which were built on drained marshlands or fill are especially vulnerable.

HE NEEDS A LIFT: Eddie Ryan served three tours in Iraq and was shot in the head. Fellow Marines saved his life. This spring, he’d like to reunite with some of them in Florida. But he needs a special vehicle to get there.  

GOT BACK! Shortly after he became the Beatles’ bassist in 1961, Paul McCartney purchased a Hofner 500/1 guitar on which he played “Twist and Shout” and “She Loves You” and other hits on the Beatles’ first two albums. Then suddenly, in the early 1970s, his beloved bass turned up missing, apparently stolen from the back of a van. Now, the bass has been found in the town of Hastings, in southeast England, in the attic of a home once owned by a man who had been a suspect. It’s not the first famous musical instrument to disappear.

BASIL SEGGOS, the longest-serving Commissioner of Environmental Conservation in New York history, will step down after state budget negotiations are completed this spring. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed Seggos in 2015. He is a member of the U.S. Army Reserve and has made several trips to help in Ukraine.

MICKEY BARRETO had made his home in Manhattan’s iconic New Yorker Hotel since 2018 by exploiting a little-known section of New York City’s Rent Stabilization Code, which grants tenants who live in individual rooms in buildings built prior to 1969 the right to request a six-month lease. A court fight ensued, Barreto won, and stayed for six years. Then for some reason he made the mistake of presenting himself as not just a tenant but the owner of The New Yorker.

LIFE TIME may have an alternative to the continuing tug-of-war over remote work. As employees have grown tired of ear buds and Starbucks, some are now showing increased interest in cooler accommodations. Enter health club operator Life Time with 150 locations in wealthy suburbs across the United States. They are catering to white-collar workers with a new “athletic country club” workspaces featuring high-end, family friendly fitness facilities, including juice bars and spas.

RICK ZACCARIA was the Town Supervisor in the central New York community of Van Buren – or so he thought. He was appointed to the job last summer and then elected in November. But Zaccaria never signed the oath of office within the required 30-day limit, as required by state law. The Van Buren Town Board could have appointed him but decided not to do that. The deputy supervisor has taken over.

TESS COLLINS is an Albany institution, the former owner of the legendary Lark Tavern and since 2010 McGeary’s Pub across from the Palace Theater in Downtown Albany. She started working in her father’s Lansingburgh diner at age 5, and with more than 40 years in the restaurant and bar business, she’s the “reigning queen of Albany nightlife,” according to The Times Union’s Steve Barnes. Now, she says, she’s looking for something smaller, a quiet neighborhood place to call her own.

ZARZ: Joseph W. Zarzynski is well known in New York’s Capital Region for his work beneath the surface of Lake George. As a recreational diver, he studied a fleet of boats the British sank in the lake in 1758 as a method of storing them before a planned attack on the French the following year. Not all of the boats were recovered back then, leaving the preserved hulls for divers to find in the 20^th century. From 1987 until 2011, Zarzynski directed Bateaux Below, a nonprofit that mapped dozens of Lake George shipwrecks.  In 1990, he led the team that used a Klein sidescan sonar to discover the 1758 Land Tortoise radeau, a floating gun battery from the French and Indian War. Well known as Zarz, his interest in underwater archeology began in Scotland, and now he is a fellow with the venerable Royal Geographical Society. RGS was founded in 1830 and has counted among its many prestigious members Charles Darwin and Robert Falcon Scott, an Antarctica explorer.

CHARLES G. DRIESELL coached Division I men’s college basketball for more than four decades and is the only coach to win 100 or more games with four different programs. Lefty, as everyone knew him, was a colorful and charismatic coach who arrived at the University of Maryland from Davidson in 1969, promising to turn the Terrapins into the “UCLA of the East.” Though he had great teams at Maryland, he never fulfilled that promise. A great storyteller with a deep Southern drawl, he was once asked by a columnist what made him such a successful recruiter. “Bill,” he said, “when I get in the living rooms and start talkin’ to mommas, the honey just pours out my mouth.” He was pushed out in 1986 following the death of his star player, Len Bias, but went on to lead both James Madison and Georgia State to NCAA Tournament appearances and was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018. He was 92.

ROBERT MOSER was a decorated New York City Police Department detective who earned a Gold Shield working in the 46th Precinct, known as the "Alamo," which Time Magazine once called "The Most Dangerous Square Mile in America." On those mean streets, he led a high-profile Robbery Alert Team and was among the first detectives to work side-by-side on under-cover details with women and African American officers. When he retired, he sought a quieter life in Queensbury, closer to the Adirondacks and a family camp in Schroon Lake. One day in retirement reverie, he passed a neighbor’s home and noticed a plant swinging in the window of an upstairs bedroom when no one was supposed to be home. At the rear of the house, he surprised two burglars. He was 81.

“We are going to make their life hell.”
— Carmello Mantello, the first woman to serve as Mayor of Troy, announcing her plans for a city-wide crackdown on criminals to improve quality of life in the Collar City.

PERMANENT TATTS: A Northeast Ohio-based company stationed out of a funeral home offers a unique service to the bereaved: Post-mortem tattoo preservation. They remove the skin, preserve it and frame it for families. The business is part of a broader history of preserving dead body parts. Some Southeast Mexican cultures' bone washing rituals date back to the time of the Mayans, Victorians created mementos from loved ones’ hair, and even post-mortem tattoo preservation is traced to 19th century Japan.

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Principal Authors: Mark Behan and Leigh Hornbeck.

Sincere thanks to our contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Troy Burns, Kristy Miller, Leigh Hornbeck, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, Nancie Battaglia, and Luke Dow.

FACING OUT is what we do. We help companies, organizations and individuals work effectively with their most important external audiences – their customers, their shareholders, their communities, the government and the news media.  www.behancommunications.com

Facing Out features news and other nuggets that caught our eye, and that we thought might be of value to you, our friends and business associates. Some items are good news about our clients and friends, others are stories that we hope will leave you a bit more informed or entertained than you were five minutes ago. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback. 

Let’s make it a conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com