There is a way. It involves you giving them some of your money.
My Plan to Revitalize Downtown Buffalo
The City has failed downtown. Developers and landlords have failed too. There will be no magic bullet that will save Main Street in Downtown Buffalo except this:
Commercial Squatting – You have a business idea? Take it down town, pick an empty store front and open up. F- City Hall, F- the Development Agencies, F-Licenses. Just do it. No rent, no fees, no sales tax, just do it!
Is thier anyway the owners can renovate this building? The exterior is looking (for years) worn out and not very inviting.
GDC, have you been to the Colored Musician's Club? It's incredible that they're still there at all considering that it seems to be off the entertainment radar screen of western New Yorkers. It's a true treasure with astounding talent playing regularly. The jazz festival is a great marketing idea.
If you go to the website there is amazing footage of the past regarding all of that and YES the Church on Michigan was indeed part of the Underground Railroad to this day - that is Harriet Tubman Way right there. If you get a hold of George at the Club I am sure he can tell you of that - the number is on the website above. You can also go to the Greater Niagara Visitors and Convention Bureau website under African American History and it will give you all of the info you need about that too.
http://www.visitbuffaloniagara.com/visitors/african/
Donating to such causes will answer renovation questions - it is our city we do need to support the history as much as we possibly can. They archive it - it needs to be preserved.
I remember having a long-ago convesation about this particular club with a black man who was a member of the club since his youth. Later he was a city school bus aide in Buffalo. He also talked about the church across the street as having been a part of the underground railroad.
His emotions and memories about his Club were high; higher than my young white self's ability to even began to grasp.
I searched through pictures online but I don't recognize him. He was elderly when we talked. His name is on the tip of my memory but it won't pop up. He lived on a street off of Broadway--big white church on the corner--several blocks away from his Club.
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