Jonathan Danes, longest-serving UB Council member and prominent advocate in an initiative that catalyzed the university’s integration into downtown Buffalo, passed away Sunday at 72.
Dandes was appointed to the UB Council in 1994, serving more than 30 years throughout five terms. He also served one term as the president of the UB Alumni Association, from 1996 to 1998.
UB was not the only place where Dandes made his mark. The president of Rich Baseball Operations from 2001 to 2018, he managed multiple baseball teams including Buffalo’s Bisons. Other jobs on Dandes’s docket consisted of chairperson positions for Shea’s Performing Arts Center, the Buffalo Zoological Society, the Erie County Medical Center and tourism agency Visit Buffalo-Niagara.
UB President Satish Tripathi told The Spectrum Thursday that he could call Dandes anytime.
“Although he had 20 other jobs to do, he was always available,” Tripathi said on a call with The Spectrum. “It’s so critical to get people’s opinions and thoughts on things that one wants to do.”
Dandes played a prominent role in getting the UB 2020 bill passed in 2011: a robust economic and educational plan that would integrate UB more into Buffalo. Under the initiative, the university relocated its medical campus back to downtown Buffalo through the construction of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and realignment of medical education with regional hospitals.
“The promise of UB 2020 is substantial: tens of thousands of jobs, badly needed public and private investment in downtown Buffalo,” Dandes wrote in a 2010 op-ed published in the Buffalo News. “The act is practical and timely. It is a no-cost, high-impact economic development initiative that the Legislature can move forward immediately.”
Tripathi said Dandes was “someone who knew what our goals were.”
“He called Buffalo his home, Western New York his home, and dedicated his entire life to the betterment of Western New York,” Tripathi told The Spectrum.
Discussions are underway about ways to formally honor Dandes’s legacy, according to Tripathi.
UB council members are appointed to seven-year terms by the current governor.
Because Dandes has just passed away, “it is too soon to speculate” who will take the vacant spot on UB Council, university spokesperson John Della Contrada told The Spectrum over email.
Nadia Bangaroo is the assistant news editor and can be reached at nadia.bangaroo@ubspectrum.com.
Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
