Still Waiting After All These Years

Over the past few years I have written about this beautiful brick building on Buffalo's near East Side here, here, and here.  Somewhat related to these stories is a story that I wrote about this wooden house on the lower West Side.  

The structures are radically different from one another in size, form and location, but their remarkable similarities make them both worthy of attention in Buffalo's fight to rebuild from decades-long disinvestment. Both are significant parts of Buffalo's historic heritage and urban fabric and are rotting away with no apparent plan in place to save them.  Both are architecturally interesting and have played an important roll in the history of the city.  Both are in neighborhoods which are still densely built, but which have seen significant decline over the last 40 years.  Both neighborhoods, while troubled, are within just a block or two of vibrant and growing sections of the city.  They are also within neighborhoods seeing noticeable but spotty new investment.  One last significant similarity is the seeming lack of any plan by the city to take advantage of these withering assets as a means to leverage new development.  More on that later in the story.

The brick building is the St. Vincent's Orphanage School that was most recently used as part of the ECC City campus; it has been empty and rotting since the downtown campus opened in the 1980s.  Since my first story appeared, the building's beautiful roof eaves and brackets have been stripped away.  This was done shortly after portions of the eaves started dropping to the ground, most likely due to lack of maintenance.  

Some temporary-looking wrap has been applied to seal the tops of the masonry walls. This sadly has probably been the most investment this building has received in several generations.  Each year, this once beautiful building takes one more step in the demolition-by-neglect cycle.  Each year, more money will be needed to bring it back to life and, each year, its declining appearance makes it harder to appreciate what it can be.  This rotting building sits 1/2 block east of Main Street on an otherwise relatively tidy street of large Victorian houses.  It is directly adjacent to the successfully restored Squier Mansion and across the street form the ongoing restoration of the Packard building.  A few blocks away, sits the new Artspace project that has ignited new interest in the charming street called Coe Place.  Lindwood Avenue, where houses can routinely sell for upwards of half a million dollars, is just on the other side of Main Street.

This wooden house is an elegant but typical Buffalo mini-mansion that was once the home of well-known Buffalo retailer, M. J. Hens, of the now defunct Hens&Kelly Department Store chain. The house is at 288 Hudson Street, in a troubled but slowly reviving part of the historic Lower West Side, just east of Allentown and south of Kleinhans Music Hall, in a neighborhood densely packed with great buildings.  With a mixture of poverty and wealth, investment and abandonment in close proximity, buildings in this part of the city can trend toward extraordinary restoration or abandonment and decay based on who owns them.  Luckily, the neighborhood has a core group of residents who are devoted to saving it for future generations. Their tireless efforts have paid dividends in success stories like the restoration of this house highlighted here.  

Walk down St. Johns to take a look at what is possible with a building that was once scheduled for demolition.  Prepare to be amazed by what you see. The Hens house is not yet scheduled for demolition; it is in decent condition structurally, but is filled with debris and is starting to leak.  Each year brings it closer to a date with a landfill.  Once that happens, the fabric of this still mostly intact street will be ripped, and the people of WNY will lose another link to their past. Although you can allegedly buy this house from the city, there is no apparent effort being made to make it presentable, nor is there a sign in front indicating that it is for sale.   I could not find it on any Internet sales listings. Thus, year after year, it sits as Buffalo's infamous weather takes its toll.

I have written many times on the seeming lack of any strategic plan by the city to take advantage of its basic assets, in order to stem the tide of decline.  Important buildings like the two described here and the neighborhoods they are in are left to rot with little apparent effort to even enforce codes.  This complaint has also been a common theme at Fixbuffalo, a well-known blog, focusing on the problems and opportunities of the East Side.  Sure, these neighborhoods are troubled, finances are scarce, and the city population is still falling, but considers the point made most recently by BuffaloGeek who recently took up this subject.  

Geek's editorial clearly summarizes the problem; he basically says that city has been using a scattershot approach to demolition and reinvestment.  As policy is currently carried out, it seems that every neglected building can be a target for demolition no matter what its historic value or potential for revival.  Conversely every empty lot and vacated street can receive new investment (most commonly in the form of low cost suburban style house) with no consideration for the potential for long-term benefit.  The city receives a tremendous amount of grant money for these demolitions and new builds.  But, the money does not appear to be targeted in any strategic fashion. Think of dissolving a teaspoon of sugar in a gallon of water, versus a cup of water.  The sugar is too diluted in the large container, making no impact.  But in the small container it has a major influence.  Buffalo is wasting its resources.

While writing a recent story about my personal experiences as a young man working on the East Side, I needed some images.  I Googled some East Side street views showing the area in which I had worked with my father.  As I noted in that story, all but one of his properties have been torn down since his retirement.  The street views show that many of his former buildings, along with others, have been replaced with what can only be described as scatter-shot new houses in a suburban style.

These new houses represent millions of dollars (perhaps hundreds of millions) of government-subsidized investment and can be found all over distressed portions of the East and West Sides. The new houses are on double and triple-wide lots.  Where there was once a block with 10 to 15 houses, there now stand maybe 1 to 2 original houses and 3 new houses.  This type of new investment was intended to stabilize and rehabilitate distressed neighborhoods, but what it actually does is create a situation where the city has to continue the maintenance of streets that serve only a small fraction of the population they were designed for. 

What if instead of spending money on what amounts to "inner city sprawl" the city mothballed these empty streets or eliminated them all together and directed the money into neighborhoods that have real potential to grow and become attractive again?  Instead of spending scarce resources plowing and paving unneeded streets, why not concentrate that money where it will have real impact?  While Buffalo's population has declined by half, and many neighborhoods hold fewer than half the buildings they once did, the people remaining still need to maintain the same number of roads, sewers, water lines, and other infrastructure that was there at the height of the city's wealth.  The current strategy seems designed to "keep the status quo."  Each new subsidized single-family house built in the inner city on a suburban-sized lot locks the city into keeping a street that may not be necessary. 

The concept of subsidizing new construction in the city has validity.  These types of projects date back to the 1980s when several projects transformed portions of decimated city neighborhoods. By creating new attractive neighborhoods, the city could potentially create a critical mass of new wealth that can turn the tide of disinvestment.  The problem is that critical mass has become a forgotten part of the formula.  Instead of taking advantage of potential strengths such as the buildings highlighted here--creating attractive nodes within neighborhoods with a real chance for growth--the current mode of investment has been to scatter resources in a way not unlike a diluted spoonful of sugar in a gallon of water.  

The city now has a new planning commissioner.  From what I have read so far, he gets the concept of focusing limited resources to create critical mass and efficiency. The entrenched bureaucracy of a city like Buffalo can be a tough ship to turn, and Mike Kimelberg has his work cut out for him.

Let's hope the new commissioner has the ability and is given the tools to make that turn and put into place a real strategic plan for rebuilding the city. The following are a few concepts I would like to see included: