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In Gothams Shadow
Chapter 11
Different Strokes
As the new millennium began, central New York seemed different. Metropolitan Utica had lost more than twenty thousand residents between 1980 and 2000, and the racial and ethnic balance had changed. More than 36 thousand whites had left the region during that time, whereas the area gained almost fifteen thousand blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The black population had nearly doubled during those twenty years, the Latino population grew by 182 percent, and the Asian American population grew by 287 percent (Lewis Mumford Center 2001). Otsego County gained slightly more than a thousand residents; with a population of 61,676, the county contained more residents than Utica (60,651) for the first time since the 1890 census (Shupe et al. 1987). But the biggest change was not to be found in census records.
Noblesse Oblige Residents of Cooperstown may be surprised to learn that tourism is not the largest employer in the area; rather, it is Bassett Hospital. Located three blocks from downtown, the hospital had little impact on the character of Main Street shopping and restaurants as most employees could easily travel to and from work without going downtown. The result was that tourism became the most visual element of Cooperstown’s economy, with the hospital acting in the background. Beneath the high visual impact of tourism and the economic generator of the hospital, many residents perceived the common thread holding the village economy together:
"Look, I don’t care if they say the hospital is bigger. It may be, but baseball is what you see. But there’s really no difference between the two: they’re run by
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the same crowd. The engine behind Cooperstown is the Clarks— you want to understand Cooperstown, you have to untangle their web first."
With a family fortune rooted in Singer Sewing Machines, the Clark family has had a tremendous impact on the fortunes of Cooperstown through two major mediums: Leatherstocking Corporation and the Clark Foundation.
Leatherstocking Corporation was the “for-profit” segment of the local Clark empire. Headquartered in New York, the corporation ran the historic Otesaga Hotel, the Cooper Inn, as well as numerous smaller functions throughout the village.
Larger and more pervasive was the Clark Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the family. The Clark Foundation, as of 2000, held assets of about $450 million. Also headquartered in New York City, the foundation spent about $8 million in the Cooperstown area during 2000, including about $4 million spent performing such community functions as operating the Clark Sports Center (a health and fitness center), the Clark Scholarship Program (for local college students), and a beautification program for the village. In addition, the foundation has been influential in the creation and financing of Bassett Hospital, the New York State Historical Association, and the Baseball Hall of Fame. The family also owned, in conjunction with other local families, a greenbelt of undeveloped land that completely surrounded the village.
In the Clark fortune was found a form of elite patronage that helped to link the community to outside sources of capital and talent. Such patronage was uncommon among rural communities, and for this Cooperstown was quite unique. It was through the continued efforts of the Clarks that Cooperstown was able to gain some of the unique institutions that enabled the village to prosper even as the region suffered: the Baseball Hall of Fame, the New York State Historical Association, and Bassett Hospital. As Cooperstown faced the trends of upscaling and agricultural decline, these institutions helped to keep the village afloat. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the rise of Bassett Healthcare.
A Modern Health Care System Bassett Hospital was named after Mary Imogene Bassett, a local physician who counted Edward Severin Clark as one of her patients. Popular belief suggests that Clark had heard of Bassett’s desire for a good lab facility in the village, “and granted her wish, building not only a laboratory, but a fully-equipped 100-bed fieldstone hospital building” (Bassett Healthcare 2001). The Clarks were heavily involved
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in the success of the hospital throughout the years, turning it into one of the better-known rural hospitals in the country. The hospital also started education and research facilities, and by the 1980s was advertising its affiliation with Columbia University.
In 1988, O’Connor Hospital of Delhi, more than forty miles from Cooperstown, merged with Bassett Hospital. In time, Schoharie County Hospital in Cobleskill also merged with Bassett and the enlarged health care system opened nineteen outpatient clinics. The mergers and new clinics made the Bassett system the largest in the region, stretching over eighty miles. The expansion helped to bring new patients to the Bassett system by moving into new markets. A Bassett employee commented in 1999:
"We’re a small, rural hospital, and there are, you know, only so many patients here in town. And you go out into the country, and there aren’t any of those old country doctors who run clinics out of their homes. You know, like old Doctor Baker over in Hartwick . . . she had an office in front of her kitchen. There aren’t any of those anymore, so Bassett needs to fill in the gaps. Luckily it works for all of us."
But as the expansion worked for Bassett and some of the communities served, some of the new clinics were placed in locations that directly competed with other health care systems. In nearby Oneonta, the A. O. Fox Hospital found that it had new competition as Bassett opened two new clinics, Bassett Healthcare Oneonta and Bassett Healthcare Oneonta Specialty Services, in the city. A mere twenty miles apart, the two hospitals had always competed for patients from the towns in between, but the new clinics in the city, “meant that all of a sudden we had to worry about losing Oneonta patients as well,” as one Oneonta physician commented.
Bassett also expanded into metropolitan Utica by building a new clinic in the eastern suburb of Herkimer, directly next door to a clinic owned by the Mohawk Valley Network,1 a coalition of hospitals in the metropolitan area centered in Utica. Despite Bassett billing itself as a “rural healthcare system,” some area residents perceived the move as an attempt to attract new customers:
"They have a clinic in Richfield Springs [twelve miles south of Herkimer]— that’s rural. Here in Herkimer, there’s Little Falls Hospital five miles up the road, Mohawk Valley Hospital just two or three miles up in Ilion, all the hospitals in Utica. They’re only fifteen miles away. I think Bassett just can’t find enough patients in Cooperstown so they’re raiding Herkimer."
It was over cardiac care that Utica and Cooperstown would finally meet.
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The three Utica hospitals had applied for permission from the State Health Department to begin cardiac care numerous times throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Health Department rejected the applications, citing interhospital competition and questioning the ability of the program to perform the required five hundred surgeries per year. It took the cooperation of the hospitals and the 1994 election of George Pataki as governor for Utica to finally receive a cardiac unit at Saint Elizabeth Medical Center. The Mohawk Valley Heart Institute was a collaborative effort between the hospitals. The first surgery was performed in 1997 (SEMC 2001). It thus came as a surprise when Bassett Hospital announced plans to open a clinic in Cooperstown.
Hospitals in Binghamton, Schenectady, and Utica all opposed the plan. Not only would Bassett cut into the patient base of the three urban hospitals, but also the ability of Bassett to perform the required five hundred surgeries per year was in doubt. The strongest opposition came from the Mohawk Valley Heart Institute, which sent a letter to the Health Department criticizing the plan on a number of points (DS, 8 Dec. 2000). Bassett responded that the required five hundred surgeries placed an undue burden on rural hospitals, especially given that eleven of the state’s thirty-four programs did not meet the criteria. In a letter to the State Health Department, Otsego County Chamber of Commerce President Rob Robinson asked, “Why should rural residents of Otsego and surrounding counties be deprived of convenient access to angioplasty and cardiac surgery, which is routinely and conveniently available to our urban counterparts?” In December 2000, Bassett’s application was approved.
The significance of the conflict was not in the development of a cardiac care unit in Cooperstown as much as it symbolized the differences between the two communities. But in some ways, it showed the similarities as well.
Non Noblesse Oblige By 2000, Utica once again seemed to have a relatively stable political structure. Moderate Republicans controlled the city and the county alike, and the area’s Congressional representative, Sherwood Boehlert, was a typical example. In 2000, Boehlert generally voted for moderately conservative economic policies and moderately liberal social policies. He supported expanded free trade agreements such as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Yet he also received a rating of 70 percent from the League of Conservation Voters, 100 percent from both Planned Parenthood and
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the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League (NARAL), and voted with the pro–gun control Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence fourteen of sixteen times. Such a record is indicative of neither a right wing conservative nor any significant liberal tendencies. As one Utica resident commented:
"Boehlert isn’t one of those Nazis that seem to have taken over his party—he seems to represent New York Republicans pretty well. You look at guys like Newt Gingrich, a family values guy who dumped his wife on her deathbed, and you know that Boehlert ain’t like that. But he’s no liberal either."
When challenged by both Democratic and Conservative Party opponents in 2000, Boehlert won by dividing the opposing vote. A Cooperstown resident commented:
"He’s right down the middle. He’s sane: he’s for choice and gun control, but he’s not for high taxes and lots of welfare."
In Utica politics, the two parties seemed very similar. In fact, Ed Hanna, mayor during much of the 1990s, had been an Independent, a Democrat, and a Republican during his administration. But despite a more stable political structure, area leaders inherited a metropolitan area that had lost much of its population and prestige during the previous three decades, and many business leaders were unwilling to invest in the city.
In 2001, there had not been a major building project in downtown Utica in twenty years. Some existing landmark buildings, such as the sixteen-story Adirondack Bank Building and the fifteen-story Hotel Utica, had been completely refurbished. A few new parks had been built on the sites of buildings that had burned. But overall, numerous brown fields dotted downtown and many buildings needed a facelift. While it was undeniable that some progress had been made, it was apparent that Utica could no longer count on the local elite to revitalize the city.
Part of the problem Utica was experiencing was that many of the institutions that had been headquartered in Utica were now headquartered elsewhere. For instance, of the nine banks in the central business district in 2001, only four were headquartered in the city. Of the four largest banks, Charter One, FleetBoston, Key Bank, and HSBC, all were headquartered outside of New York State. Mergers between banks that had been based in Utica and subsequently taken over built three of these: Charter One, FleetBoston, and HSBC. For instance, Charter One’s local branches had once been owned by Corn Hill Savings and Loan. HSBC, when it was Marine Midland, maintained a regional
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headquarters in the city. FleetBoston had grown, in part, from Oneida National Bank. Of these, only FleetBoston maintained a significant level of administrative functions in Utica. Corporate concentration was not solely to blame for the lack of investment in the city center. Of the largest non-financial companies, only one (ConMed Corporation) is headquartered in the central business district. Some residents see this as the heart of the problem in the city:
"Look, most companies don’t even think of Utica. Utica National [Insurance] uses the name, but they’re in New Hartford. Utica Corporation—they’re in Whitesboro. Oneida Research—Whitesboro. Metropolitan—Oriskany. And you know, it’s a shame. If some of these companies would just say, “I’ll go downtown,” and all do it together, Utica could be something. But they just don’t care."
In July 2001, boosters of Utica received gratifying news. Two local companies, Utica National Insurance and polling firm Zogby International were competing for the same downtown lot. Located only two blocks west of Genesee Street, the vacant lot comprised an entire city block placed between the city’s two downtown hotels. Upon discovery of the competition, Utica National dropped its plans for a new downtown building, leaving just Zogby International. Zogby planned a $10.5 million office complex complete with “a world-class atrium benefiting a global corporation based in Downtown Utica” (Zogby International, 25 July 2001).
Zogby International had been founded by native Utican John Zogby. His polling firm had grown dramatically, and by the late 1990s Zogby was a staple figure on the cable news stations. In this regard, both John Zogby and the firm he grew were exactly what economic development officials in cities all over America hope for: a local entrepreneur who starts small and stays local. It thus came as some surprise a month later when Zogby announced that the company was also negotiating with the Oneida Indian Nation, whose reservation was about twenty miles west of Utica, for land on which to build the new headquarters. For some local residents, the news was not surprising:
"Zogby’s doing what all Utica boys do when they get successful: they leave. And why not? This place is a slum... I’d leave, too, if I made it big. Who can blame John?"
A New Hartford resident also commented:
"It’s just part of the business cycle. Start your business, get big, and move your shit somewhere else. It was nice seeing “Utica” on MSNBC, but you knew it
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couldn’t last. Utica’s not big enough to keep these guys, and they’re too big, or they think they are, to help out their hometowns."
Even as many local residents were split as to why Zogby might leave the city, the Utica Observer-Dispatch placed any blame firmly on the city:
"Talks ran into some kind of snag toward the end of summer, however, and Zogby now says he’s considering other options including on tax-free Oneida Indian Nation land, or even outside the Mohawk Valley. . . . If the city cannot keep a successful company spawned here by a native son, what hope is there that it can attract and keep other significant companies? You can bet The Associated Press, which sends news stories worldwide, would quickly visit and write a story about “another blow to the decaying city of Utica,” or something like that. That certainly is not the publicity Utica wants or needs." (OD, 14 Oct. 2001)
Indeed, such a story had already been written a month earlier, appearing among other places in the Boston Globe (BG, 7 Sept. 2001). Despite intentions to begin construction in December 2001, the location of the ten story building that Zogby himself called “the signature building for a genuine downtown (Utica) renaissance” (BG, 7 Sept. 2001) was still in doubt in the middle of 2002.
The episode highlighted the inability of the city to fix the problems left by years of inactivity. Zogby International, as one of the city’s premier businesses, offered to invest in downtown in order to help revitalize the urban core as well as provide the company room for expansion. Although Zogby announced the project in late July, it was not until September 12 that the city’s Urban Renewal Agency approved an option for sale to the company.
Zogby had reason to question why it took the city a month and a half before approving= even the most basic element of the project. But Zogby International also showed a disheartening impatience with the city, reminding city leaders and residents alike that Utica was of secondary importance to the company. A spokesman for the Oneida Nation commented, “Zogby is a high-profile, international business. They could operate anywhere. What’s important is that these jobs will stay in Central New York” (BG, 7 Sept. 2001). The president of the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce similarly remarked, “We are the Mohawk Valley chamber so our position is that Verona is better than South Carolina. As long as he stays in our region, the residents here will have their jobs.” Zogby could leave, area residents knew it, and no matter the outcome the episode reminded the community of its vulnerability. In the end, Zogby remained loyal to his
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hometown: in late 2002, the company announced plans to move temporarily into an old textile mill in anticipation of its new downtown headquarters.
Power Structures The significance of the Zogby affair contrasts sharply with both the involvement of the Clark family and other village elites in Cooperstown and the Elefante political machine of years before.
In Cooperstown, the potential existed for new projects to be acted upon reasonably quickly if village leaders approved. As one area resident commented:
'I don’t think there’s any doubt that an expansion at the Hall of Fame or at (Bassett) Hospital would have any real problems. People would just sit down, choose a design, and it would get through in a few months and probably get built within a year or two."
This reality contrasts with the image of sluggishness the village acquired after a proposed Pizza Hut was stalled and ultimately defeated in the late 1980s. However, it is true that other major projects had passed fairly easily, such as a new Clark Sports Center just outside the village, a recent expansion of the Hall of Fame, and a new clinic building at Bassett Hospital. While all three projects had detractors, they also were passed without the fierce opposition that faced Pizza Hut. Indeed, many of the controversies around development issues during the 1990s were not in the village at all, but rather in the surrounding townships where political power is not as concentrated. Cooperstown thus enjoyed a political and economic efficiency not experienced in Utica since the days of the Elefante political machine.
There were other parallels among the power structures in Cooperstown, Utica, and the old Elefante machine. Many of the complaints lodged against the political machine in Utica revolved around a lack of democracy in the city. One city resident commented, “They did their thing, and when the deal was done they’d tell us about it.” Many Cooperstown residents made similar comments:
" Basically, what the Clarks want, they get. Want a lowered speed limit somewhere, they get it. Want to expand the Hall of Fame, it happens. And no one ever thinks to say, “Hey, build a parking garage with that thing.” I don’t think it’s a matter of actual corruption, though; just a matter of not wanting to step on anyone’s toes."
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But such a perceived lack of participation was not limited to the concentrations of power experienced in contemporary Cooperstown or 1950s Utica. Even with the relatively less concentrated power structure of metropolitan Utica in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, some area residents perceived a lack of consultation:
"I remember even during the late eighties when the Common Council just couldn’t agree on anything, it was about them. It was the politicians fighting with each other—they didn’t actually represent anybody in those debates except their own special interests."
The sin city scandals of the late 1950s weakened the political machine, and this created a vacuum in the city as the machine controlled Common Council and both Republican and Reform Democrat mayors struggled for power (Ehrenhalt 1992). Some in Cooperstown worried about a similar fate in their future:
"Jayne Clark isn’t going to be alive forever, and I’m not sure that there’s anyone to take her place. She’s been awful good to the town, and I don’t know if someone new would take care of Cooperstown the same way. The Clark Foundation might decide that its money is better spent in the city [New York], or the flowers on Main Street should be done by the village."
The political structure in Cooperstown was one that was concerned with the local community, and in this way was also similar to the concerns of the Elefante political machine. A former Utica resident suggested:
"Say what you will, but those guys got things done back then. They created the colleges, brought new jobs, and helped make the city look decent. They wanted to make sure that the city didn’t fall apart. They [the politicians] don’t seem as concerned about Utica anymore."
In contrast, the past twenty years demonstrated a remarkably low level of commitment to downtown Utica. The city constructed a business park on the outskirts of the city where some downtown businesses could move, ostensibly because “it kept those taxes in the city—that’s the most important concern.” The city also failed to utilize development opportunities to their best advantage. When ordered to construct a handicapped accessible courtroom, for instance, the city chose to merely add to the decades-old courthouse rather than construct a new one in a location that could spur further development.
The city also failed to invest in its own infrastructure so that it could compete with other cities: there is no convention center in the city,
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although there is one in suburban New Hartford, the hockey arena dates to the 1950s and the Mohawk Valley Edge, the main economic development agency for the metropolitan area, did not even list downtown Utica as a potential development site on its website (Mohawk Valley Edge 2001). Some projects had been completed, the redevelopment of the sixteen-story Adirondack Bank Building and the fifteenstory Hotel Utica two blocks away the most notable, but with the exception of Zogby International Utica’s business community was by and large disinterested in the urban core. Although some area political and business leaders professed to be concerned with the fate of Utica, actions suggested a complete lack of regard or even understanding for the symbolic center of the metropolitan area. Given the differences in political structure, it is not surprising that a casual walk through Cooperstown provided a more delightful urban experience than a walk through downtown Utica. Cooperstown’s elites remained committed to a healthy Cooperstown.
The help given Cooperstown carries some disadvantages. The extensive holdings of Clark-affiliated institutions are often nonprofit. The Baseball Hall of Fame, Bassett Hospital, and the Clark Foundation were very large property owners in the area, but due to their nonprofit status paid no taxes. As a result, the local solid waste management authority introduced a “user fee” that was applied to nonprofits as well. One local official commented:
"They do a lot of good for the area. But there’s a cost. Every time Clark gets a piece of property, it seems to come off the tax rolls a few days later. So we have all this property that no one’s paying taxes on, and we have to push it all on other taxpayers."
Many of the community institutions were also highly dependent upon Clark patronage. One resident, having recently moved to the area, commented:
"You know, there are some things that communities just build on their own. Here, it seems like the Clarks do everything. You know, like a gym—in a lot of places, the school makes it, or there’s a Y [YMCA], and the community holds bake sales to keep it going. Or the swim team—other places, it’s called the name of the town, but here, it’s the “Clark Sharks.” I mean, it’s nice that they support the town like this, but I don’t know if anyone here realizes that in other places the community itself makes these things happen."
In the midst of such privilege, some residents (certainly not all) perceived that it limited the community’s ability to create its own institutions.
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Different Folks The political structure of metropolitan Utica had changed dramatically since World War II, whereas that of Cooperstown had simply gained new actors in a fairly stable regime. The elites of each community reacted to external conditions that affected the local community, and in doing so created the conditions under which they would react to future conditions. Cooperstown’s elite was able to build on the successes of previous decisions regarding the village’s infrastructure and economy. As the village was comparatively small, local leaders did not demand nor require the types of public and private investment to keep the village competitive.
Utica, in contrast, won much more public and private investment than Cooperstown, but it was not sufficient to compete effectively against similar cities both in the northeast and around the nation. For instance, Utica received an arterial highway, but it paled in comparison to the modern expressway system won by metropolitan Binghamton, a smaller city seventy-five miles south. Indeed, the major expressway between Utica and Rome was not even scheduled for completion until 2003. As a result, Utica has had trouble maintaining symbols of major city significance. In 2001, the professional hockey team declared bankruptcy midseason, and the owner of the professional baseball team announced that he was negotiating the sale of the team to business concerns in Pittsfield, Massachusetts—a metropolitan area considerably smaller than Utica.
To compare Cooperstown and Utica is to compare apples and oranges. Cooperstown appears healthier because the area no longer competes for institutions today found primarily in urban settings. Cooperstown does not seek to develop new shopping centers, business parks, and housing developments. Many local residents have recognized that Cooperstown, a community that today includes the village and numerous surrounding villages such as Hartwick, cannot compete on the terms demanded by urban society.
The case of Bassett Hospital notwithstanding, the area attracts tourists because it has attempted to preserve its landscape and recreate itself in an image of small town America that urban residents long to relive. By its sheer size, Utica is too large to be a rural tourist town, but performs its function as a retail center quite well. It is doubtful that any one family could ever exert the kind of power over the city’s affairs that the Clarks exercise in Cooperstown, but the complexities of governing a diverse and widespread metropolitan area require a more complex form of governance anyway. It is with these characteristics that central New York enters the future.
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