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| Civic knights of Roundtable stand by Albany Albany-- Founder Paul Bray and myriad participants celebrate 25 years of lunch, discourse By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer Times Union First published: Monday, May 10, 2004 It was 1979 when Paul Bray, a 36-year-old lawyer who had returned to his hometown after living in Boston and New York City, decided people should talk about life in Albany. Little did he know he was starting the city's longest-running civic conversation. Some relationships don't hold up for 25 years, the way Bray and the Albany Roundtable have. Interests change, or time and distance take their toll. But Bray and a group of like-minded volunteers have kept the monthly luncheon lecture series timely and eclectic, a forum where bankers and bureaucrats can rub elbows with artists and authors while hearing experts discuss urban planning, politics, culture, technology and business. If there is one thing that has been constant, it is Bray's passion and belief that city life matters, and that vitality is best fertilized by bringing people together to share ideas. The concept is reflected in a term Bray used during an interview to describe the Roundtable: "It's a kind of constructed venturi," which for the non-engineers, is a tapered tube used to mix fuel. "The people at the Roundtable are the people who believe in cities," said Assemblyman Jack McEneny a native of Albany, a lifelong Democrat and arguably its leading local historian. "Paul started this up at a time when there was a political tension in the city, the rise of the neighborhood associations and the era of Rockefeller Republicans. And from tension there was progress." The 60-year-old bespectacled Bray runs his "venturi" each month in a conference room in the Federal Building, part of the State University of New York Plaza, on Broadway at the foot of State Street. The cost of a buffet lunch is $12 per person, with the conversation free. Bray will be the main speaker at the next Roundtable on Wednesday, when he will reminisce for the group's anniversary. An attorney, he retired from the Legislative Bill Drafting Commission, but keeps busy as a teacher, consultant and columnist. Speakers so far this year have included Albany Medical Center President James Barba, city schools Superintendent Michael Johnson and architect Tom Birdsey of the downtown firm of Einhorn Yaffee Prescott. By design, the Roundtable has no prearranged seating or even a head table. "We want to encourage people to talk with anybody, without setting some people apart," Bray said. One of its first guests was then-Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, who opined in 1980 that the city center was undergoing a "renaissance," driven in part by high gasoline prices. His appearance spawned the mayor's annual State of the City address each January. Bray said the Roundtable doesn't have a political agenda. City department heads under Corning and his successor, Thomas M. Whalen III, often attended the luncheons, but have steered clear in the current administration. Some of that frosty relationship may be because Bray criticized two of Mayor Jerry Jennings' visions -- the downtown convention center and the redevelopment of the W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus. Bray said the convention center will seal itself and its visitors off from city streets, and do little to make downtown more livable. Several years ago, he wrote in a column for the Times Union that Jennings had a "my way or the highway" mentality. Jennings is honorary chairman of the Roundtable, but a spokesman from his office said the mayor was too busy this week to comment. Desfosses, president of the Common Council, who has been attending the luncheons nearly from the beginning, said, "Paul has become well-established as a proponent of respectful, human-oriented urban planning. He may have said some things that irritate people, but he speaks his mind." Some who may disagree with Bray think his standards of what a city should or could be are too high. "Paul thinks there is a perfect world out there," said John Egan, who was recently tapped as chairman of a state corporation responsible for redeveloping the Harriman state office complex into a tech park. "But that's healthy. He's been an important factor in this city and provided a forum for public discourse." On Wednesday, Egan will honor him with the Roundtable's own Good Patroon Award. Rather than reusing the Harriman campus' existing buildings and roads, Bray would have the site re-engineered to connect with the neighborhood. Bray lives across from the campus on Brevator Street and is an avid walker. From his perspective, pedestrians are an important component of urban life. It's his openness for ideas, popular or not, that has made Bray's Roundtable a fixture, said Elizabeth Griffin, director of the Historic Albany Foundation and member of the Roundtable board of directors. "You don't have to be a special interest to be welcomed there," she said. "The Roundtable is a real mix, it's brought together people who might not normally meet. And that's a benefit to everyone." Bray said he's had some high-profile guests, but so far, just one appearance by a governor. That was in the late 1980s, when Mario Cuomo's office called a week before the luncheon to say he wanted to speak. For the first and so far only time, he said, he bumped his scheduled speaker, the president of Albany Medical Center, to accommodate Cuomo. There are other speakers Bray would love to land, including Neil Golub, president and CEO of the Price Chopper supermarket chain, and executives from Pyramid Crossgates, which built and owns Crossgates Mall in the Pine Bush. After 25 years, Bray still has some frustrations about Albany. He wants the city to develop more areas where people can meet, eat, play and shop, on a smaller scale that encourages walking and public transit. He favors the small over the "transformational" projects favored by the mayor. "Albany has good 'bones' " in its historic architecture and neighborhoods, Bray said, but too often acts like "an underachieving student" in using those assets. He recalled with frustration of a city decision in 2001 to rebury a Colonial-era rum distillery to avoid delaying construction of a parking garage. "If people had half a civic brain, that would not have been done," Bray said. "There may have been an immediate gain, but a much bigger loss." Such candor might alienate some, but Bray said the Roundtable allows all points of view. "I think that it has stayed true to the original vision." |
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