Work at the former
Rite Aid on Grant Street and Auburn Avenue is underway as crews begin to expand
and renovate the store for a Save-A-Lot. The project was first announced in the
Buffalo News almost a full year ago. It has been vacant for nearly six years.
The expansion at the
rear adds approximately 1800 square feet to the building. Ellicott Development
received the approval for the project from the City of Buffalo in September
2011. At that time the Buffalo News reported that Planning Board member, Cynthia
A. Schawartz believed that the project would be good for the neighborhood
because it will, "remove and eyesore and provide a needed business in the
area."
During one of my
recent walks in the neighborhood surrounding the building, several neighbors
mentioned that there was a significant need for another grocery store in
addition to the much loved, Guercio and Sons just down the street. While this
use may not be the most creative or best use of the site, especially
considering the momentum on Grant Street in recent years, it seems it will be a
welcome addition none the less.
On the topic of reused Rite Aid's, I see that the abandoned Rite Aid on Sheridan that was the topic of Steel's recent post will soon become a Dollar General (or one of those dollar stores, anyway). I wonder if it is relocating from another location that will in turn become vacant.
You are correct - and the reuse of the building I would say would probably be considered sprawl under the context of that article. A fifty or sixty year old neighborhood getting a new Rite Aid on already developed land is not sprawl. I am not an advocate of sprawl by any means, but I found that particular example to be pretty poor. By no means were you paving paradise to put up a parking lot in this instance. And in general fashion, the natural reuse of the building has been undertaken - like flies on a carcass.
I think "sprawl" has two interrelated but separate definitions, and Steel was addressing both in his article. There is the "sprawl" which means building new developments on greenfields (especially when there is no increase in population to support the increase in developed acreage), and then there is "sprawl" as used to refer to any type of development that is oriented primarily towards the automobile.
The Rite Aid on Sheridan was more an example of the latter, both in terms of the nature of Sheridan Drive as a car-oriented highway and of the Rite Aid with its drive-through and big parking lot in front.
And there is also the somewhat related idea of the disposable nature of buildings, as Rite Aid abandoned one building to move across the street, rather than improving their existing building. This is sort of connected to the first definition of sprawl, where we throw away existing neighborhoods to build new ones.
I think these blurry definitions of sprawl often cause a lot of confusion in these discussions.
Exactly right not to mention taht there each corner of that intersetction contains a small building surrounded by very large parking lots fronting a road that is nearly impossible to cross on foot. To argue that it is not sprawl because it is in an established neighborhood is silly.
So let me get this straight. The new Rite Aid replaced a Oil Change which also had a large parking lot and essentially 3 or 4 drive thrus. The old Rite Aid prior to was a restaurant which burned but had the same approximate parking lot. This is not sprawl or original sprawl. Nor is this design unique to the neighborhood and you can look at the Andersons build probably in the 50s for illustration. It is part of the neighborhoods character and yes different but still nonetheless character. I will agree that I am not particular fond of new buildings today or that I find it sad that development today consists of pharmacies, coffee shops, er rooms or dollar stores, but like everything else they are cheaply made and this is the period of which we live in. They have reused an already commercially developed property; it is not as though it was previously a meadow on this corner or building a building without some sort of population mass.
It is all designed to be driven too. For the most part tt is all designed to be torn down in less than 2 decades. It is all wasteful, unsustainable and visually unattractive. It promotes social isolation and a society in which the common good is less important.
Have you noticed that there are a lot of vacant not very old Rite Aides around that are not too far from brand new Rite Aids. Often the old vacant and the new Rite Aids replaced very nice historic buildings.
Yes it is suburban and "driven to" but that is the character of the neighborhood. You could also walk to it- but culturally as a whole Americans are lazy. But as I point out via the original Anderson's which is almost as old as the neighborhood itself it is what distinguishes that neighborhood from say an old school city neighborhood. I would not classify this area as sprawl- 40-50 years ago maybe yes but not now. Back then it was pushing away from the city core, now it is more or less part of the core. This was more or less infill and actually probably a positive development at that corner. I can appreciate the surburban character as much as the city character in this instance - other developments not so much.
A better example of sprawl would in this same town was the building of the office retail space behind the "Airplane" park which essentially still remains vacant. There are plenty of spaces that these "new builds" could've been located within already commercialized areas within the town i.e. southern NF BLVD area which could have help rejuvenate this area.
I will not argue or disagree that these pharmacies or modern structures are not a horrible design or cheap in comparison to old craftmanship. It is sad that we lose old buildings but that is more or less poor planning and/or owner perogative; we do have property rights in the country whether you like it or not. The disposable nature is emblematic of the society in which we live - disposable this disposable that; just one of many issues this generation faces.
Sprawl has nothing to do with where it is built or how long it has been there. It has to do with how it is built. As quaint as Andersons is it is sprawl. It was built for people to drive to. Sheridan is a f#cking 8 lane road that is an ugly pit designed for cars and against people. The buildings are designed cheaply to gain attention at high speed. If you park in front of one business you can't go to another one unless you get back in your car and drive to it, even if it is directly next door. The fact that buildings on this street are now pandering after low level retail like dollar stores tells you a lot about what continued sprawl further out into the farms is starting to do to this older suburban sprawl area.
Nope, it seems many if not most are re-used….
steel>"Have you noticed that there are a lot of vacant not very old Rite Aides around that are not too far from brand new Rite Aids."
This one in the article in where Save-a-Lot will open, plus others at Sheridan-Colvin, Grant-Forest, Elmwood-Virginia, … those were all once Rite Aids being reused.
And if we want to add a former Walgreens, there's the one on Delaware (near a car dealer) which is reused by another business who moved from a storefront near Kenmore's town hall. Then another tenant - some kind of wedding business - now rents that other storefront.
If any of those were aided by IDA-type handouts, I'd be against that funding like I'm against it always. But the moves themselves and various building improvements using private sector funding is all fine. According to the commenter in the other thread, the Sheridan-Colvin move of Rite Aid did not receive any IDA-type handouts.
steel>"It is all wasteful, unsustainable and visually unattractive."
If it's money from the various private sector businesses involved, they've decided it isn't wasteful/unsustainable (relative to the customer spending they project to occur in them). Perhaps if owners and stockholders of those businesses examined what you spend on they'd feel some is "wasteful" in their opinion. Everyone's entitled to opinions of how other people spend their own private $, but those type of busybody opinions shouldn't matter. Visually unattractive is subjective - as we've see with the Allen St graffiti-panined building argument. Most buildings have ordinary-average appearances, by definition.
impossible to cross on foot? ever hear of a cross walk? your too elevated on your high horse to see down to fround level. Sheridan is much easier to cross (if done properly) than many streets in NYC.
js>"And there is also the somewhat related idea of the disposable nature of buildings, as Rite Aid abandoned one building to move across the street, rather than improving their existing building."
Rite Aid no more "abandoned" its former building at Sheridan-Colvin than did for example Blue Cross when they "abandoned" their former building on Main St instead of "improving their existing building" - the one which shortly thereafter Canisius College bought and reused.
A businesses (or anybody) has every right to move out of a building at some point and, if they want to, build a new building. Or move into an existing building, which in turn might have been formerly occupied by a business who moved out of it only because they built a new building somewhere else. As you and others have noted, another business reportedly will soon be reusing that former Rite Aid building at Sheridan-Colvin. I doubt that the previous site had enough room to add a drive-thru which can be good for elderly pharmacy customers, among others, so they couldn't have done the improvement there even if they wanted. Another likely downside would have been a time period while the store would need to be closed for rehabbing- thus inconveniencing customers compared to how they did it staying continuously open.
(And since another business came along and filled that anyway, how would it have been any better if that business instead had built a new building on the other side of Colvin? Either way, it's one new building plus one modified building. If I didn't know better, I'd say it's almost as if some people just like to complain about how some other people decide to spend their own private $)
js - and about this, apparently not, no.
js>"I wonder if it is relocating from another location that will in turn become vacant"
The commenter in that other thread said the new tenant of the Sheridan-Colvin ex Rite Aid will be Dollar Tree … and according to their website store locator, the nearest currently is 2 miles away http://goo.gl/maps/WoM0r
So it seems a new additional location, not a move.
But even if it was a move, some other business would probably then move into that one on Delaware. These streets Delaware and Sheridan seem very popular for a lot of businesses and customers despite (or more likely, because of - lol) their friendliness to cars & parking.
It doesn't appear to be a move anyway, however.