Following the completion and dedication of the new Federal Courthouse on Niagara Square, Congressman Brian Higgins is requesting action for the Dillon Courthouse. Higgins has asked the U.S. government's landlord agency to move quickly to transition the former federal Dillon Courthouse for future use. In a letter to the U.S. General Services Administration, Higgins points out, a back-fill plan for the Dillon Courthouse would include the U.S Bankruptcy Court, the US Trustees, the Federal Defender the US Tax Court, and other federal offices. Unfortunately no progress has been made in this direction.
"Niagara Square is home to the Dillon Courthouse, the new U.S. Courthouse, the Statler, City Hall and the gateway to the Buffalo Convention Center, representing a magnificent coming together of Buffalo's history and future," said Higgins. "We are pressing to make sure that federal bureaucrats understand that swift action on a reuse plan for a structure that sits at the epicenter of Downtown Buffalo is not only their responsibility but critically important to our community and economy."
The Dillon Courthouse was constructed through the funds provided by the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932. President Franklin D. Roosevelt actually laid the cornerstone in 1936 because he recognized the important partnership between the federal government local officials in creating public works to move forward and rebuild the economy after the Great Depression.
The building is a
contributing structure in the Joseph Ellicott National Register Historic
District. It was renamed in 1987 for Michael J. Dillon, a longtime Internal
Revenue Service employee who was killed in the line of duty.
Below is Congressman Higgins' letter:
Dear Administrator Tangherlini
I write today out of concern for the future of the former Dillon federal courthouse located on historic Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo. Now that the new federal courthouse has been completed - with its impressive beacon adding dimension to Buffalo's skyline - progress on renovating the former Dillon courthouse must commence. It would be a tragedy if the General Services Administration made an investment in one part of Niagara Square while seemingly disinvesting in another federal government owned building just across the street.
It has been my longstanding understanding that a back fill plan for the former Dillon federal courthouse exists and that the building would house the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the U.S. Trustees, the Federal Defender and the U.S. Tax Court upon completion. Indeed your agency has long indicated this back fill plans as fact. Yet, no demonstrable progress on this plan has been made public as of yet. I strongly urge you to proceed expeditiously with this plan to ensure the full utilization of this historic federal structure.
Please respond as soon as possible. We look forward to working with you on the successful transition of the Dillon courthouse so that both the new and old courthouses can achieve their proper and full use.
Sincerely,
BRIAN HIGGINS
Member of Congress
Here's a reuse idea: relocate city courts into the building for property owners who don't maintain their properties, demolish historic structures through neglect, or try to circumvent the preservation board with midnight demolitions.
The current city court building isn't at all visually inspiring and could be kept for criminal and civil cases. For matters of property maintenance and historic relevance, move the cases into a building with a little bit of history and grandeur to oversee the proceedings.
I'm curious about something. Do you guys think Buffalo's Housing/Building Court Judge Nowak for all those years was incompetent or uncaring, and perhaps if he had operated out of a more historic court building then he would have - done what differently for example?
It always seemed inconsistent to me how Nowak was often and widely praised by progressives as I recall (before he moved up the ladder to a higher court), and yet there's this ongoing impression that his court was useless. Seems contradictory. Now is it being suggested, even tongue in cheek, that he would have done better if the court building in which he presided was different?
What should Nowak have done differently, and why is it that he (and his successor) didn't and don't? Incompetence? Corruption? Indifference?
Or is it possible that building code law enforcement is just very limited in how much it can overcome the supply-demand imbalance, no matter what kind of building the court operated from?
Just asking.
(nobody should shut up about anything, btw, lol)
I don't know enough about Judge Nowak to comment, but I believe the current problems are everything you mentioned and more.
If the problem has been indifference, then the obvious solution is for the city to be more active in property violation matters. Make it easier for owners, preservationists and neighbors to find out their rights and responsibilities, file claims and permits, and voice their concerns and requests. I'm sure there is an office for that buried deep within City Hall, but it is obviously underutilized and quite likely guarded by ribbons of red tape.
If incompetence is at issue, then providing city clerks, residents, and even judges with appropriate council can only be a step in the right direction. Many discussed how the cigar store demolition could go ahead without review by the preservation board. Perhaps these 'accidents' could be averted by having the permitting offices, judges chambers, records and preservation board review offices all under one roof.
Corruption is always a difficult matter to curtail, but again, taking these proceedings out of dungeonous courtrooms and hidden offices and placing them in a space that is open and accessible to ALL residents, property owners, review boards would add a level of transparency to expose back room dealings.
Above all, I would say that a major factor is simple ignorance. Residents don't know what to do when their neighbor's roof is about to cave in. Property owners are unaware of the proper channels involved with proper permitting. Judges act by the rules of law books without the advice of historians or residents. Preservationists are stymied by deals that occur out of their sight or in offices and courtrooms without their knowledge.
As small as this courthouse is, it is still too large to house a single judge's chamber. However, the building could be put to good use by transforming it into a one-stop warehouse for all the issues that are increasingly coming to the forefront for this city. Permitting offices, record-keeping spaces, review areas for historical and preservation boards, even comprehensive workspace for the 311 staff and property inspectors.
Currently, I doubt that a majority of city residents would even know where to start if they have an issue to deal with. As beautiful as City Hall is, it can be a maze in which to find resolution for simple matters such as graffiti or building records. Streamlining these matters to the Dillon building would make it easier and more effective for everyone involved. Not to mention, it would also be an opportunity for the city to show that it is being proactive about both the city's past and our future.
The fact that it would be located in a repurposed but historic and stylish structure (rather than the windowless concrete bunker of the city court building) is simply a nice touch.
deaner - We can agree to disagree. I'd suggest there's more cost effective ways (better signs, etc) to improve the difficulty of how-to-find various offices in City Hall, and I don't see any reason to think the main root causes of demo-by neglect would be reduced by whether legal proceedings happen in "dungeonous" rooms of the City Court building or anywhere else.
It's difficult for me to believe that if anybody called 311 and asked which office # in City Hall is for these kind of issues that they wouldn't be given an accurate reply. When I've called 311 about other things, it's been answered by people who try to be helpful.
If having a "one stop" desk for these issues has merit as you suggest (and I'm not saying it doesn't), it could easily be done in City Hall itself.
If I'm not mistaken there's already a lot of vacant office space in City Hall, so shifting functions across Niagara Sq to another building thus making even more vacant space in City Hall just wouldn't sound like a smart use of the city budget. Plus there'd be more ongoing city budget costs for security, maintenance, utilities, etc, in an extra building for a judge and support staff away from City Court.
I actually do agree with you to a large part. I don't know the current logistics or space demands within City Hall or the other court buildings. Certainly, if Higgins believes that the bankruptcy and tax courts are overcrowded, then those should receive priority over the city's property management offices (and you are probably quite right that City Hall has no lack for office space, regardless of their efficiency in the existing building).
The unfortunate part is that the Federal government is already under considerable scrutiny for owning and maintaining empty and underused buildings. Washington has less interest in keeping this building open than Buffalo does. With their investment in the new courthouse and not-unrecent downsizing of Federal offices to a smaller building, they don't exactly have much real reason to do anything with the Dillion except mothball or abandon it. In a sense, they are not far from some of the absentee landlords that could be kept in check with an improved property and preservation process.
Unless there is a sincere demand for additional court or government space, ANY entity that moves into the Dillon will be backfill which creates empty space somewhere else. Sure, I'd rather have that cost billed to DC than to WNY, but City Hall has more to gain by utilizing the building and more to lose by sitting across the street from an empty derelict that the Feds could care less about.
Hey, if this building was ideally suited for conversion into apartments or a hotel or whatever, then I'd say go for it! If it was a faceless edifice that was ripe for reskinning and turning into a food court, then that would be cool too. I'm sure that there are a dozen potential uses that /could/ by moved in, but I'm just pointing out one that has a visible need and would seem to be an appropriate fit.
If cost effectiveness is the ONLY consideration, and if empty buildings didn't affect their surroundings, then it would be an easy decision to simply let it sit empty like we let happen to the Statler or the Central Terminal. Maybe someone else will save it in a couple decades, maybe it would make a fine parking lot. But the city's lack of investment of funds and attention is a good part of why City Hall no longer fills the space available to it.
There was an report in all the news outlets not long ago about how Housing Court issues judgments for property violations, but then those fines were not being pursued by city government. There are something like $22 million of unpaid housing court judgments because City Hall apparently didn't even know they were legally entitled to collect on the judgments.
js, There's skepticism about that report, as discussed last month in this BR post last month about that report. See comments from Bini and Ben in that.
In that thread I suggested adding fines to property tax bills for which there's already collection mechanisms including foreclosures. Ben argued with me that many of those unpaid fines aren't legitimate at all for various reasons, and shouldn't even be collected.
There's reasons property fines are very difficult to collect regardless of what strategies the city govt tries. For example, property owners who are out of town and/or using complex legal structures of ownership. Also the relatively few inspectors, DA's, etc compared to the city's number of old decaying buildings.
Still, on balance I think I'd favor more aggressively trying to collect the fines even despite Ben's objections which no doubt have merit.
However - as with Deaner's idea of moving city offices or courtrooms - I wouldn't predict that more aggressively collecting fines would have noticeable net impact on reducing how much demo-by-neglect happens. For some buildings and owners it might motivate more repairs, but for others it might have an opposite effect in motivating faster full demo or abandonment. Ultimately the dominant factor in how much demo-by-neglect happens is supply vs demand imbalance of old buildings.