Odds and More Odds: Mayors and cities
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown [right] has it easy. He tells his police department to start telling the media -- and thus the public -- where crimes are being committed, just as we said he should. For awhile at 
least, the police will do the right thing and the media will back off.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick [left] spent Thursday night in jail, and on the front of 
newspapers and Web sites worldwide, ordered there for violating a don't-leave-town order issued by the judge in his perjury case. He's also facing an assault charge. The media will not back off.
Also, back on yesterday's subject of downtown areas being reborn:
* Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: A riverfront site at Tower City is the proposed location for Cleveland's new convention center and medical mart -- the project billed as the region's best shot at economic revival. The estimated $536 million cost is already $26 million over budget, and groundbreaking is a long way off. But in return for the public investment, backers say the development would create thousands of jobs and entrench the region as a top health-care hub.
* From the Virginian-Pilot in Virginia Beach: Two Oceanfront landholders are shopping around a half-billion-dollar concept to create a mixed-use village, complete with a light-rail station, on what is now the Colony Mobile Home Park. The developers call their idea Ocean Center and note it could be the resort area's equivalent to Town Center, the designed downtown that city officials hail as their jewel of redevelopment.
* Back here in Buffalo, this morning's Buffalo News has this: Buffalo Niagara Partnership President 
Andrew J. Rudnick [right] has a message for the folks at Forbes magazine who ranked Buffalo among America’s Top 10 “Fastest Dying Cities.” “I strongly beg to differ,” Rudnick said.
Rudnick made a list of things Buffalo has going for it: advanced manufacturing, agri-business and food processing, back office operations and financial services, along with life sciences and logistics.
What wasn't on that list is something positive that Buffalo has in common with Cleveland and Virginia Beach -- waterfront property.
--George Pyle/Editorial Writer
