Real Estate April 27, 2009 12:01 AM

State Funding Sought for Rehab and Demo Projects

WCPerspective 22 1

The City of Buffalo is applying for $20 million in Restore New York funds. Funding would assist with the demolition of 650 vacant properties. The Restore New York's Communities Initiative aids in the demolition, deconstruction, rehabilitation and/or reconstruction of vacant, abandoned, condemned and surplus properties. Restore New York places a strong emphasis on projects in economically distressed communities. Funding for the third and final round of the program is $150 million, bringing the total amount of funding to $300 million.

Proposed demolitions are concentrated on the East Side:

City officials have come under criticism for not being more creative in previous Restore New York applications that have been heavy on demolitions and not a strategic effort to rehab and restore problematic properties in targeted neighborhoods. This year, the City is partnering with People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) Buffalo to rehabilitate seven houses on the West Side. Homes on Chenango, Massachusetts, West Utica and Winter Street are eyed for restoration.

Funding to assist in the redevelopment of vacant buildings is also on the City's aggressive wish list:

Avant - 200 Delaware Avenue
Uniland Development has been working to convert the former Thaddeus J. Dulski Federal Building into a state-of-the-art Mixed-Use facility. The Avant Building is in need of gap financing to complete the project.

Curtiss Building - 204-216 Franklin Street
Mark Croce proposes to rehabilitate and redevelop the historic landmark property known as the Curtiss Building into a fifty-seven (57) room high-end boutique hotel.

North Park Library - 2351 Delaware Avenue
The Buffalo and Erie Public Libraries was forced close the North Park Library in late-2008 due to structural problems. Funding is needed to address safety issues and comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure that this library can be re-opened to service library patrons in North Buffalo.

Former Fairfield Library - 1659 Amherst Street
Rehabilitation of the former Fairfield Library is proposed by the City of Buffalo for the purpose of saving this historic structure for future re-use. Potential developers have previously expressed interest in the building. The City of Buffalo must repair the foundation and structural damage and abate mold, asbestos and lead hazards to properly market the property for an adaptive reuse.

White Bros. Livery - Corner of Jersey and Richmond Street
Savarino Construction proposes to develop 12 apartments at the White's Livery site. The $3.4 million project is a historic rehabilitation of the 1889 structure that partially collapsed last year.

Darwin D. Martin House Restoration - 125 Jewett Parkway
Funding is requested to complete Phase V of the Martin House restoration which includes upgrading all mechanical, electrical and plumbing as well as interior plaster, detailed paint and extensive wood millwork.

Former KFC Site- 448 Elmwood Avenue
Demolition of former restaurant at Bryant and Elmwood to prepare for the construction of a three-story, mixed-use retail and residential building.

The Jeremiah Partnership, a collaboration of seven faith-based organizations committed to community development on the East Side, is proposing the following:

• 437 Broadway - Pentecostal Temple proposes to renovate the three-story building at the corner of Spring Street (photo above).

• 656 Genesee Street - Greater Refuge Temple proposes to renovate the two-story building (photo below).

• 921 East Delavan - Mt. Olive Baptist Church proposes to renovate 921 East Delavan located at the corner of Cambridge Street.

• 998 Broadway - True Bethel Baptist Church, proposes to rehabilitate/renovate the former K-Mart store at 998 Broadway for church offices, classrooms, a banquet hall and 2000-seat performing arts facility.

• 1373-1381 Main (aka 7 East Utica) - Bethesda Community Development Corporation proposes to rehabilitate the property at the southeast corner of Main Street and East Utica Street for use as a small business incubator and retail site.

• 1461 Main Street - Bethel Community Development Corporation proposes to renovate and house an Early Head Start program and additional Head Start classrooms.

With stiff competition, the City is likely to only get a fraction of requested funding.

View image

1 TrackBack

TrackBack URL: http://www.buffalorising.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1423

Demolition and Reuse Projects Funded from Buffalo Rising on September 5, 2009 9:50 AM

Buffalo is receiving $14.2 in state money under the Restore NY program. The funding will be used to demolish blighted structures and to assist in the redevelopment of several historic properties. Governor David A. Paterson today announced t... Read More

Comments

22 Comments Leave a comment

Pegger

April 27, 2009 1:54 AM

I am sure someone will explain to me how and why taxpayer dollars will be used to benefit private interests.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

distas

April 27, 2009 9:09 AM

Where can i find this map?

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Colin

April 27, 2009 10:28 AM

Weren't Ostrowski and Co. willing to take the Amherst Street Library off the city's hands already?

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

STEEL

April 27, 2009 2:16 PM

Pegger

Do you mean virtually every suburban development or are you just talking about these subsidized projects in the city?

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Armchair MBA

April 27, 2009 3:00 PM

Good point. Love how some people find fault with govt spending in the name of improving the heart of wny but ignore the fact that the burbs have all been built with massive ammounts of public money as well. Want to talk govenment waste? Why should my tax dollars go to the ongoing improvements on Transit rd, I990, USRT219 or other country road ravaged by sprawl. Who pays for installing utilities, curbs as well as emergency services in these places? Add the handouts and tax breaks that suburban developers get for strip malls and other retailers. And dont get me started on the needless, publicly funded urban expressways that benifit the subburban commuter at the expence of the city.
If the free market is going to be used to guide all development in the region and govenment stays out of everything, than it should be done accross the county not just the city.

[ Reply ]

replied to STEEL

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

suburban_hillbilly

April 28, 2009 1:34 PM

pit...about 250,000 people live in Buffalo. About 1 million people live in the surrounding burbs. I think the spending/funding is proportional. What is the unemployment rate in Buffalo? If it's 10% (give or take), that adds to the total living off the public dime and not contributing to tax revenue. My point is that those in the burbs pay the bulk of the taxes (produce the most revenue) and therefore do and should reap most of the benefits. If Buffalo wants more money, Buffalo needs to attract business/residents from whom to collect taxes.

[ Reply ]

replied to Armchair MBA

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Armchair MBA

April 28, 2009 3:50 PM

MJW took the words out of my mouth.
My initial beef was with how some people view suburban develpment as a natural product of the open market yet view public investemt in the city is on par with communisim. I wanted to point out that without massive govenrment spending there would be no suburbs at least the same suburbs we know today.
I can understand how you would feel the suburban areas are entitled to a larger chunk of the public money because they are bigger. Just keep in mind that altough much of the regions wealth and population reside in the suburbs, the functional heart of the region is the City of Buffalo. How many of these suburban residents collect paychecks from employers located in Buffalo? If they work for employers located in the suburbs did those companies locate there to be in that individual town or did they want to be in "Greater Buffalo"? The truth is each of these suburbs are basicly neighborhoods of the central city not self sustaining entities. You cut any of these places out of the metro area and there is no reason for it to exist. Without Buffalo there is no WNY.

[ Reply ]

replied to suburban_hillbilly

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

suburban_hillbilly

April 28, 2009 4:05 PM

Good point. I agree that Buffalo is the center of the greater community. The City (or its leadership) doesn't do enough to draw those who work there, to live there as well. I genuinely want Buffalo to clean up and grow allowing it to generate more of its own revenue. The leadership in buffalo is less than competent when it comes to achieving this goal. I think the waterfront is a key piece to the puzzle. Life will grow around it. The East Side is a nightmare that no one wants to pay for.

[ Reply ]

replied to Armchair MBA

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Armchair MBA

April 27, 2009 3:02 PM

Strange that 99% of the demolition work is to be done East of Main st. No demolitions on the West Side?

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Eisenbart

April 27, 2009 6:53 PM

iluvpitbulls there's not much left there.

You can go to the City of Buffalos website and look for maps and search by parcel either land value or land use. Either result will show a sea of black east of Main St, which is no good.

I've made this map showing City owned properties for sale. Don't mind the long link.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=107252398664120578264.00044ce8c405580a904c0&ll=42.916584,-78.81609&spn=0.047898,0.153122&z=13

Or you can look at this homestead map which they are trying to get people to move to.

http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/files/1_2_1/city_departments/real_estate/HomesteadMap.pdf

Or you can go over Fix Buffalo Today and search for a post called mail undeliverable or something along those lines where he shows where mail wasn't able to be delivered.

Or you could drive through the neighborhoods and see for yourself. The west side is recoverable, while the east side is nearing close to a complete lost cause.

This mess is starting to roll into Kaisertown and Uni Heights at full force.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Andrew

April 27, 2009 7:34 PM

Great points. I think the city should be thinking about completely closing off entire neighborhoods in the east side. Shrink the city and shrink the money spent on public services. The west side is one million times more dense and stable that the east. not to mention that its about one third the size and has a much more promising future. Rehabilitate the west, start closing the east. sad but thats the way its gotta be

[ Reply ]

replied to Eisenbart

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Armchair MBA

April 28, 2009 3:15 PM

Sad but true. I noticed this when looking at the urban farm site on Wilson on google maps. Anything east of Fillmore is more grass than neighborhood. Decay has spread over much of the entire east side and its only a matter of time before it starts to look like a rural area. A friend of mine lives off Bailey near UB and they pretty much have to stay inside all day long for safety sake.
Dont worry aout Lovejoy though, at least the area of Lovejoy around Lovejoy st. This is one of the few positive examples of a neighborhood not tolerating crime. There are some pretty tough customers there who have stood up for their neighborhood instead of moving out. As a result the place has remained stable for years.

[ Reply ]

replied to Eisenbart

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

dblplusgood

April 27, 2009 8:39 PM

pork is pork... bring home the bacon for daddy!

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

sonyactivision

April 27, 2009 11:43 PM

Exactly, dblplusgood. Why should everyone else get to demolish their cities while Buffalo just sits by? Time for "A Very Special Extreme Makeover: East Side Buffalo Edition" featuring bulldozers, strollers with balloons tied to them, and anxious neighborhood activists scrambling to complete grant applications for vinyl victorian 'demonstration housing projects' in time for the November sweeps.

[ Reply ]

replied to dblplusgood

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Pegger

April 28, 2009 2:12 AM

Steel,

All of them.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Eisenbart

April 28, 2009 1:45 PM

Reader123 I can't tell if you are simply naive or just plan retarded.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

MJ Worthington

April 28, 2009 2:24 PM

It's the just the mentality of living in a non-regionalized metro area, picking the best part of it, and then pretending that all of society's costs have nothing to do with you.

It's a beautiful system. And once where you live starts to get old and tired you can just pickup an move the next town over and keep the "members only" benefits ;)

Buffalo is a mtero area and all the little fiefdoms mean little in the big picture (but mean so much in our individual "my poop don't stink" realms.) Amherst, etc did not pop up all by themselves in the middle of nowhere. If so Albion would have 100k+ people, no poverty, and be rated the #1 safe place to live. These places don't exist. Society has its costs. You can have an invisible line around the beter sections of it and pat yourself on the back but it does not remove the realities we must deal with.

We ride a single wave of metro investment/disinvestment. No individual municipal line will stop it. We will all pay on some gov't tax level to subsidize not only all the new stuff to make our new outward development function but also to subsidize the mess we left behind. And so it goes...and so it goes...

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

whatever

April 28, 2009 5:40 PM

Although more and more taxpayer money can be, and is, and will be, used for buildings in Buffalo like the bunch listed above in the BR article, that doesn't create new private sector activity or new permanent jobs.
-
It just shifts around the declining amounts already here. For example suppose a few of those buildings are rehabbed using taxpayer money and attract businesses to occupy them. Those businesses will leave behind other buildings for the next list like this a few years down the road. Generally, the total number of businesses, jobs, and residents won't grow as a result of that kind of taxpayer spending.
-
In some rare cases that shifting around can be positive. Usually though, it just shifts money around for mostly political reasons.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Pegger

April 30, 2009 2:11 AM

Reader 123: There is very little waterfont left. Look at what the state did (with the Thruway) and the city allowed (with all those condos and townhouses on the most prime real estate). That leaves only the vacant land south of downtown which will have to be used as some kind of attraction destination as it is so peripheral.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

suburban_hillbilly

April 30, 2009 9:41 AM

Pegger: The outer harbor. Check out an aerial view on Google maps. There are acres of open land ripe for development. It is true that current placement of I190 was a horrible idea that robbed the West Side of it's waterfront. We have an opportunity with the outer harbor.

[ Reply ]

replied to Pegger

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

Armchair MBA

April 30, 2009 10:43 AM

The key word is HAD the opportunity in S. Buffalo to remove both the skyway and eleveted rt 5 to create waterfront development and a true regional attraction. Sadly the skyway was given a new lease on life with the decision to demolish then rebuild the elevated, destructive portion of rt 5. The projects biggest cheerleader is none other than BH the congressman who can do no wrong in many peoples eyes. What Higgy has given his native S. Buffalo is 30-50 years or more of a scoarched earth waterfront and a downtown inner harbor with "danger falling debris" signs. No development will occour next to a obstructive high speed freeway. Dont look for a whole lot to happen along the outer harborfront in our lifetime.

[ Reply ]

replied to suburban_hillbilly

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )

suburban_hillbilly

May 1, 2009 3:47 PM

Agree to disagree. The right development will draw people willing to hop off the Furhman Blvd exit of the Skyway/Rt5 and head to a worthwhile destination. The Galleria Mall is growing like a brain tumor in Chernobyl with the I90 right on top of it. I agree that the best case scenario is an at grade blvd but the expressway isn't the great wall of China. It has exits and underpasses making the outer harbor accessible in a slightly inconvenient round about way. It is an obstacle, not a barrier. Good signage and and thoughtfull development will make it manageable and successful. If my mega millions ticket is a winner I may just build my golf course down there.

[ Reply ]

Score: 0 ( 0 votes )