Demo Watch: Allentown and Medical Campus Edition

wow i forgot about this project. what an enormous win for main st. the design fits in nicely with the new building going up down the street.

I'm not a fan of a parking lot/driveway on ALLEN ST, but then again, it is a PALADINO project so we should be thankful the entire complex is'nt being torn down or better yet, not being filled up with ex felons, a heap office or other public assistance programs.

Color me stupid but the sketch….

The sketch is the north face of the building and we are looking south or perhaps “standing on Allen Street looking south”?

Or am I confused?

Ellicott sure moves fast when they want to...

I would think this is an excellent point, we provide new legislation to further regulate development and add another obstacle, thus making it more difficult for developers to develop but soothing the souls of a vocal minority that are trying to do the right thing but are unknowingly impeding progress.

The only thing that impedes developers progress is not enough public funds to get their hands on!

I can't recall anything about what sat at these sites previously, nor whether there was ever any merit in keeping them. But I think these two examples should be an example to developers: if you actually have active plans to put something BETTER in place of an existing structure, you won't get a lot of problems from preservationists.

It's only when you tear down something important and replace it with a piece of crap -or worse, replace it with nothing- that the community will try to block you from doing so.

Allowing a developer to demo a building (I don't care what it looks like, it still maintains an urban density) for a parking lot for residences on the city's most intact and vibrant urban street - when that developer owns more than enough covered parking directly across the street that isn't used during evening and overnight hours - is irresponsible and just blatantly shooting the city in the foot.

The city absolutely should have demanded better of the site plan in this case. Sometimes "it's better than what was there" is just not good enough. This is one of the most in demand locations in WNY - it deserves better than a parking lot as it's most prominent feature.

Dear burbsarenotbuffalo and Lego1981 you clearly have the Buffalo Preservation Board and the Allentown Association confused. The Association is a big block club, we run AllenWest and Secrets of Allentown, we do beautification projects and community advocacy. The Preservtion Board is a City Hall appointed board that directs all of the major building projects in all of the cities preservation districts. Thank you, Andrew Eisenhardt - Executive Director Allentown Association

The Allentown Village society asked us 14 years ago to start Allen West. We do welcome neighbors to join in with garage sales. We contract with Shamrock Security who provides 8 NYS certified officers at all times at a cost of nearly $3,500 for the both days.

As far as the Allentown Athletix site we did weigh in and provide historic photos to the Preservation Baord and voiced our concerns at 2 different meetings. We also met with the architects of the project three times to discuss options that they did implement to make the site more historically correct.

At the Cloister site some of the neighbors voiced minor objections. The architect for the project is our board treasurer and to avoid any conflict of interest recused himself from any discussions or votes that we took. We mediated a new design that the neighbors, the land owner, and the Preservation Board is happy with. The project is going forward.