GENESEE COUNTY/Citizens hold signs in protest of GCEDC’s intent to seek lead agency status for data center project

By Mike Pettinella
For Video News Service

With about a half-dozen people opposed to the siting of a data center at Western New York Science & Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park looking on, Genesee County Economic Development Center directors on Thursday unanimously approved a resolution declaring the GCEDC’s intent to act as lead agency for Project Double Reed’s state environmental quality review application.

In a statement issued after the brief meeting at the IDA office on MedTech Drive, GCEDC Board Chairman Peter Zeliff said, “These actions start the process of an environmental review of the application under the auspices of a previous General Environmental Impact Statement that covers all development impacts at STAMP.”

“We have acted as lead agency on SEQR for all development related to STAMP since its inception,” Zeliff said, “and as such the GCEDC is in the best position to investigate all potential impacts associated with Project Double Reed’s SEQR application, including making decisions regarding any mitigation measures.”

Zeliff added that the GCEDC has yet to receive a formal application from STREAM U.S. Data Centers, the real estate firm handling the proposal to build a 500-megawatt, 2.2-million-square foot, three-structure data center at STAMP.

Video of meeting-12.18.25

The resolution was introduced by GCEDC President/Chief Executive Officer Mark Masse, who then turned to Matt Fitzgerald, attorney for GCEDC, for further elaboration.

“This is the first step in the SEQR process for any application that comes into the STAMP site, so it doesn’t commit the board to any course of action going forward,” he said. “It’s just starting the environmental review.”

Minutes before the full board meeting, the resolution had been approved by the agency’s STAMP committee.

Following Fitzgerald’s comments, Director Craig Yunker responded to letters and emails sent to the board that accused individual directors of financially benefitting from the placement of a data center at STAMP.

“We’ve received inputs, including allegations … that board members on this issue are lining our own pockets. I find this to be not only ill-informed and untrue, but insulting and almost libelous,” he said. “We operate under what’s in the best interest of the community. And for allegations that we are lining are pockets is (are) insulting.”

Yunker said he was “proud of the way the board makes decisions for the benefit of the community, and I’m insulted by the allegations and emails that we are receiving.”

STREAM Data submitted renderings

Prior to the meeting, Kim Allen, a longtime Oakfield resident, said she opposes the building of a data center and also the location of STAMP due to its impact upon the wildlife in the area.

“Number one, the environment, conservation and all of our birds that migrate through there,” she said, speaking of the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge in the towns of Alabama and Shelby, a place that she and family often visit. “For example, how often to you get to see an eagle go straight down from a tree, plunge into the water and come back up with a big bass and fly off or see a thousand trumpeter swans and the noise that they make.”

Allen said she has seen the disruption of the natural flow at the wildlife refuge over the years and blames it on activity at STAMP.

“I already can see different species that we used to have not coming through right now,” she said, adding that she wasn’t against industrial development but against the location of STAMP near the wildlife refuge and the Tonawanda Seneca Nation reservation.

STREAM Data submitted renderings

Masse responded to that charge by stating that STAMP is a half mile from the wildlife refuge, and that there wasn’t any opposition when the decision was made in 2008-2009 to build off Crosby Road in the town of Alabama.

“We did a two-year public process. The Nation did not send any comments or complaints at the time about the project. We sent a survey out to the town and 67 percent of the town was in favor of the STAMP project moving forward,” he said.

“And because of that, the town has been able to provide water to 94 percent of its residents that they would have been unable to do without the STAMP project. People were all for it back in 2010 and 2012 when the town board unanimously approved the zoning agreement to change the zoning.”

STREAM Data submitted renderings