Construction Watch: 363 E. Ferry Street

Yes! THAT is the appropriate density for the East Side. No more suburban, West Seneca-esque crap.

Yeah, not too bad. Could certainly be much worse. Hopefully there is some brick on it. I would love to see some other urban housing plans used in other cities for residential housing. I'm not talking about lofts or condos or apartment buildings. I'm talking about individual houses that are not aimed at lower incomes. Wouldn't that be awesome. Anybody working on any or know of anything interesting out there?

The tags at the bottom of this post do not work. Searching for Second Chance Ministries does bring up quite a bit of Second Chance Ministries elsewhere though! They are faith-based, BIG, growing, and how many other rental properties connections do they include?

A respectable development. Hopefully this project will help stabilize Hamlin Park's southern boundary along East Ferry Street.

$225K a unit for a simple townhome? As a nation we are spending ourselves into financial ruin but at the same time there does not seem to be a national effort to control home building costs. Over the last 10 years home building materials have skyrocketed at a rate that is not even close to wage increases. The increased pricing is usually blamed on the increase in natural disasters over the last 10 years and of course oil but at some point these prices need to be controlled. These should be $150K units but that will not happen without subsidies which is an entirely separate problem.

225k each? holy s___.
I've always seen these housing project going up in different areas of the city. I may not know all the details but why is no one spending this kind of money rehabilitating the city's old stock of run down homes and infilling decimated city blocks? Aerial pictures of Buffalo's east and lower west sides are quite depressing.

These look good. They have a decent urban form. The cost does seem a little steep. Non-profits and Government agencies always seem to overpay.

The form looks a bit more graceful in the photos than the renderings - a rarity. The gables are a bit more steeply pitched with windows in the peaks. That slight, additional vertical emphasis definitely adds a lot overall.

"will be a women's facility." Does this sound like discrimination to anyone?

Refurbishing a building is much harder to budget then building a new one. I think this is one of many reasons it rarely happens. Also the upkeep for spread out homes is much harder than a centralized one. There may be mandated minimum room sizes like section 8 requires that make it hard to use old properties. While the upfront cost is inflated over the life of the property it should be much cheaper. T would seem like you could bid out I need 6 homes and we’ll take bids dollars and it has to be done in this location you could bid this projects out and possible get those refurbished homes. Just a thought.

Why do these projects seem to look like...wel...like "The Projects?"

Back in 2009 TBN ran an article about Rev. Richard Stenhouse and seven other pastors joining forces in community development. But I believe it was Rev. Stenhouse who back in the 1970s or further back built a beautiful church and several lovely "suburban style" houses in an area where Traditional Magnet School and (this is going even further back) Offerman Stadium used to be. Rev. Stenhouse had a faith-based connection to those still-standing houses. About that time several cheaply built skimpy "suburban style" houses were also built in a different area and near downtown Buffalo but I don't think any of those are still standing. So, I think Rev. Stenhouse might have been the first faith-based pastor to start a faith-based community in Buffalo in the 20th centure, but I believe those houses have live-in and mortgage-paying taxpayers who may attend his church?

More recently, wasn't it Rev. Stenhouse and his Jeremiah project that was going to start rent-to-own housing involving rent-for-10-to-30-years-before-starting-mortgaged-ownership proceedings that should have and may have fizzled out? (Mayor Brown was involved with that idea and he should have solid knowledge of all such plans.)

The 2009 TBN article lists eight pastors. Rev. Darius Pridgeon was one of them. Now, in 2012, it is beginning to be newsworthy that Rev. Pridgeon is branching out into his own church's faith-based housing projections.

The Muslim community at Broadway and Fillmore Ave. had a started-up housing project in their Mosque's community that is not in the news anymore. I think the idea was for people of all faiths to buy and renovate or build privately-owned homes in the area of that Mosque?

But, although they are well-established in other states, in Buffalo proper, the faith-based Second Chance Community Development Corporation ministries and their many other contacts are prospering well but are not much known to the general public in and around this Buffalo yet. What 2CM is not going to do though is set up houses that would be owner-occupied.

If any people would know about 2CM and the latest housing endeavours (aside from the architecture-only plans) in Buffalo it would be the above-mentioned faith-based leaders.