Regional Institute Marks 10 Years of Playing Major Role in Decision-Making

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- When a coalition of small municipalities from southern Erie County wanted to develop a plan to increase tourism in seven towns and villages, it turned to the Regional Institute at the University at Buffalo.

With the UB Regional Institute's guidance, the Southtowns Community Enhancement Coalition won two grants from New York State's Quality Communities program. The first grant produced an assessment of the coalition's current tourism assets and the second is funding creation of a strategic action plan for tourism development in the towns of Brant, Eden, Evans and North Collins, and the villages Angola, Farnham and North Collins.

The two grant applications, and the reports they've generated, were prepared by the Regional Institute, which also has coordinated public town-hall forums to help the coalition receive community input and buy-in for its planning.

The coalition's towns and villages hope to soon launch the new plan, leveraging complementary and existing opportunities in agritourism and heritage tourism, and pursuing new opportunities as well.

"We still have a long way to go to reach our tourism goals, but we wouldn't have got this far without UB's Regional Institute," said Lori Szewczyk, coalition coordinator and director of community development for the Town of Evans. "The institute invested its expertise right from the start and was confident we could make the project happen.

"So far the project has paid off very well for all the communities involved," Szewczyk added. "We fully intend to partner with the institute on future tourism initiatives and help our communities understand why it's important to support tourism in our area."

As the Regional Institute celebrates its 10th anniversary this month and sets a course for the future, its work with the Southtowns coalition is just one example of how the institute helps decision-makers better understand the challenges and opportunities facing Western New York and better develop the region's considerable assets.

The Regional Institute's impact and influence on regional decision-making has grown substantially over the past 10 years.

The institute's work with the Southtowns coalition, for example, is central not only to the Southtowns' economic growth, but to the broader picture of tourism development in Western New York, explained Kathryn A. Foster, director of the Regional Institute.

"In addition to our own research initiatives shedding light on complex regional issues, our projects with community partners like the Southtowns coalition have helped to guide change and support progress in areas ranging from regional governance and economic and tourism development to smart growth, public-service delivery and planning," Foster said.

"The institute has worked hard over the past decade to meet its mission as a university-based research and policy center; our goal is to frame challenging issues with reliable analysis to inform regional policy-making," she added.

In doing its work, the Regional Institute, a unit of the UB Law School, also is playing a major role in expanding and enhancing UB's strategic strength in civic engagement and public policy in conjunction with the goals of UB 2020. As well, the institute's planned move from the South Campus to the recently purchased M. Wile Co. building in downtown Buffalo will reinforce its commitment to being a visible resource and partner in advancing regional prosperity, Foster noted.

Over the years, the Regional Institute's most visible -- and its signature -- endeavor has been the State of the Region project, a founding initiative of the institute. The project, which transitioned in 2005 to an online format to better serve the region, is a widely used resource for reliable information on key issues affecting the region.

Since first launched in 1999, the State of the Region project's engagement with more than 200 community members has helped establish the institute's place in the region and signaled it was serious about being a valuable community resource, according to Paul Hogan, senior program officer for the John R. Oishei Foundation.

Hogan has worked with the Regional Institute on several foundation-sponsored initiatives, including the State of the Region project, the Buffalo Niagara Cultural Tourism Initiative and the Regional Knowledge Network, which will achieve full build-out in 2008 and provide online access to maps, resources and data critical to understanding issues affecting the binational Buffalo-Niagara region.

"The institute's State of the Region project was the first real attempt at pulling together into a single place data from many sources on many different aspects of life in Western New York," Hogan explained. "The report became an invaluable resource for many people and organizations for that reason.

"A large part of the institute's success has resulted from its decision to involve people from front-line community organizations," Hogan added. "By bringing together community leaders in a way that had never been done, the institute is able to determine what issues are truly important to our region."

Hogan, along with the Community Health Foundation of Western & Central New York, currently is partnering with the Regional Institute on the Reaching for Excellence project to engage the community in setting health care priorities for Western New York.

"For a region to determine what factors are impacting quality of life, it must have some way to measure what is measurable," he explained. "Using this information, community leaders can develop a strategy to manage what has been measured.

"The institute provides invaluable insight into what actually is happening in our region, as opposed to what everyone thinks may be happening in our region."

The Policy Brief series is among the institute's recent efforts to provide decision-makers with data and analysis of timely regional issues. Since its launch in August 2006, 10 issues of the Policy Brief -- addressing issues ranging from population decline to parks funding to regional identity -- have been released in a very accessible format, with much community acclaim. In late 2005, the institute also initiated Region's Edge, a research program on cross-border issues for the binational Buffalo-Niagara region.

Now in its 10th anniversary year, the institute appropriately is taking on the issue of "change," Foster noted. "We're addressing how has the region changed, how has the institute changed and how have we supported change," she said.

The institute's recent Symposium on Change challenged the notion that "nothing ever changes around here," she added. At the symposium, keynote panelists discussed change at the economic, social and organizational levels, and the institute released results from a survey of regional residents to assess change at the personal level -- in finances, politics, health and education, for example.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State University of New York. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.