Bass Pro's highly-touted promi

Then-Mayor Anthony M. Masiello started the Bass Pro cheer.

"They only open one store in a given region," Masiello said. "And if they select Buffalo, we would have the only Bass Pro Shops outlet in the Northeast."

That was in 2001.

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Then the years passed -- more years than it took NASA to meet John F. Kennedy's challenge to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth.

No matter. Bass Pro was to be the centerpiece of the Erie Canal Harbor makeover, the magnet for more stores and hordes of visitors.

"When Bass Pro comes to town, they don't just open a store -- they change that town," then-Gov. George E. Pataki said three years later.

The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. was willing to subsidize the Bass Pro prize by $35 million. County government borrowed $14 million for new infrastructure.

When Memorial Auditorium, the beloved site of sports history proved ill-suited to house the new store, it was razed at public expense so Bass Pro could have a shovel-ready canvas just steps from Lake Erie.

Seven months into 2010, Bass Pro still had not signed a binding agreement. Then Friday, their longtime suitors from Buffalo announced the store would not be coming after all.

Over the decade, Bass Pro's biggest fish talked of how excited they were to land a store here.

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"Every time I come here and see the Aud, I get excited all over again," Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris said in November 2004.

"We are excited about the vision of a redeveloped historic Erie Canal district in Buffalo," said Bass Pro President Jim Hagale.

Bass Pro remains "very excited about Buffalo," company spokesman Larry Whitely said in July 2005.

Buffalo fit with their strategy, they said.

"We've got this little red map that our folks do that shows the intensity -- where there's a big gathering and concentration of people who love the outdoors," Morris once explained. That map apparently showed plenty of potential customers.

But Bass Pro also liked Toledo and opened a store there. Bass Pro liked Auburn, just 130 miles from Buffalo, and opened a store there, too.

With Bass Pro selling fishing rods in Toronto and Harrisburg, Pa., a store on Buffalo's beckoning waterfront wouldn't be unique anymore.

The general public harbored doubts that Bass Pro was coming -- or that it would be worth the investment.

The elected leaders asked the citizenry to have faith.

"You know in your blood when a deal is going to happen," then- Gov. Eliot Spitzer said in 2007. "This is real. This is happening. This is done."

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When a third governor, David A. Paterson, expressed public doubts in a moment of confusion, the harbor corporation tried to tamp down on public expressions of concern and criticism.

"The more that we, as a community, continue to question Bass Pro's motives and their desire to locate in Canal Replica Watches
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