How sad (but commendable effort) that we have to look to ourselves to try to promote economic development.
Here's a short list of agencies/companies/city or county offices charged with promoting economic development in EC and/or WNY:
ECIDA
Buffalo Niagara Enterprise
Buffalo Niagara Partnership
The Economic Development Corporation of Erie County/Division of Planning and Economic Development
The Workforce Development and Training Division
Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp
Buffalo BioSciences
Empire State Development Corporation
Buffalo Place Inc
New Millennium Group of the Western New York, Inc
UB Regional Institute
Erie-Niagara Regional Partnership
Western New York Technology Development Center, Inc. now Insyte
And this doesn't even cover city/town agencies like Town of Tonawanda Development Corp, Economic Development Alliance , local IDA's or the niche agencies like the Film Commission.
Some of these agencies are made up of volunteers, some are UB affiliated, some are paid positions. It just looks to me like too many cooks in the kitchen. It also seems to go beyond just rolling all the local IDA's into 1 IDA.
I'm certainly not brilliant enough to offer a solution, but I would like to hear other views on this situation. Maybe there is something that binds all these agencies together that I can't see?