The CCIDA Board received the Choose CHQ 2025 Annual Report at its meeting Tuesday.
Economic Development Deputy County Executive and CCIDA CEO Mark Geise said while 2025 didn’t have project investments in the hundreds of millions like in 2023 and 2024, the IDA has already seen investments that exceed 2025 in the first two months of 2026, “My colleagues across the state, we met in Albany a couple of weeks ago for the EDC conference. And they’re all feeling that sort of headwind right now as well. There’s some trepidation, cautiousness, whatever you want to call it out there, but, you know, we had a solid year.”
Of the top ten economic development accomplishments for 2025, Geise said only nine of them actually made it to the authorization stage. He said these nine projects will provide an investment of nearly $85 million in Chautauqua County. These projects would also result in the retention of 243 jobs, the creation of 639 temporary construction jobs, and 39 permanent jobs. Projects that involve PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) will result in $4.85 million in new revenue for taxing jurisdictions over the terms of the PILOTs, which Geise said wouldn’t have been realized had these projects not moved forward…