Today in your Trail Mix:
Welcome to Marketplace's new Wealth & Poverty desk. Yesterday they brought us two moving portraits of what it's like to be part of the working poor.
Binghamton is growing a loft culture.
New York NOW looks at Kodak's rise and fall.
The governor softens his stance on pension reform.
Downtowns
Lofts are slowing creeping into Binghamton's downtown, creating a vertical neighborhood of young professionals (Press & Sun-Bulletin).
The Senecas are accepting applications for grants to improve the landscape around its Buffalo casino (Chris Caya, WNED).
Rochester is owed $22 million by the owners of a former downtown department store (Brian Sharp, Democrat and Chronicle).
And a downtown hotel owes $700,000 (Brian Sharp, Democrat and Chronicle).
Binghamton's conference center hotel will become a DoubleTree this year (My-Ly Nguyen, Press & Sun-Bulletin).
Drilling
Pennsylvanians concerned about contaminated drinking water say the EPA forges mistrust when it fails to disclose problems at drilling sites (AP).
Joe Nocera opines in The New York Times that fracking would be more safely regulated at the state, rather than federal, level.
A drilling company lawyer appeared on Capital Tonight to talk about two high profile losses in suits challenging municipal fracking bans [VIDEO] (Michael Johnson, State of Politics).
Business
New York NOW this week looked at the rise and fall of Kodak.
Meanwhile, Kodak is asking a bankruptcy court for permission to stop providing medical insurance to retirees over 65 who are Medicaid-eligible (Zack Seward, WXXI/Innovation Trail).
Don't Google Corning - you'll just get a bunch of inaccurate information (Larry Wilson, Star-Gazette).
Not only is a new operator going to be running boat tours at Niagara Falls, but it wants an exclusive contract - booting out the Maid of the Mist (Charlie Specht, Buffalo News).
Three Xerox retirees are using their project management skills to help manage care for the elderly (Zack Seward, WXXI/Innovation Trail).
New York lost 300 farms last year, according to the USDA (Eric Anderson, The Buzz).
National Grid picked up half the $3 million bill for new energy efficient lighting at a Ford plant outside of Buffalo (Mike Desmond, WNED).
Government
The governor now says he's open to changes to his pension reform proposal, including ditching a 401(k) option (Karen DeWitt, New York State Public Radio).
The Onondaga Nation is taking its case for reclaiming native land to Washington, D.C. (Glenn Coin, Post-Standard).
A Buffalo congressman is questioning how closing a western New York postal facility and sending the mail to Rochester instead will save more than $28 million dollars (Jerry Zremski, Buffalo News).
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