Citizen Action - Where Do You Start?
The following is a response to a recent post posing the question about what to do with Main Street and some of the eyesores like the Main Place Mall. Nathan M. asks what can be done by the people who are looking for change, but may not know how to help. This week I was approached by a few of the University at Buffalo students who also wanted to know what they could do to help downtown Buffalo (see post). My thought is that these interested parties should be talking. With the research ability of UB and the passion and knowledge of the citizens, why not team up the resources? I would be willing to connect all of these people, though there may already be a group (there are many) that would like to orchestrate this action oriented think tank. Here's the
Regarding the 'Main Place Mall - What gives' article, Buffalo Rising has opened up many minds of citizens of Buffalo and how to make our city great again piece by piece, like low cost things such as sprucing up the Main Place Mall's exterior. My Buffalo friends and I were talking about the article and got thinking that it seemed right to perhaps plan a community meeting with the Mayor of Buffalo at City Hall or someplace centered enough. We are concerned citizens in whom would like to present these types of questions, like: What can we do to help Main Street in its continuing struggle? Though some projects have been created on Main Street in the past couple decades, much of the downtown Main Street core where the Metro Rail is, is quite old and vacant, and quite depressing. Places like the Main Place Mall, AM&A's department store and Warehouse, and many smaller abandoned structures, could use a spruce up.
How about some low-cost ideas to help these eyesores become more attractive to retail and commercial tenants and businesses? Things as simple as new landscaping or cleaning of windows or nice awnings with other low cost ideas to make our city attractive to visitors, citizens, retail and businesses. These are good questions that can be raised in front of our Mayor and local activists. In the end, we all want what is truly best for our fine city of Buffalo, and hope that Buffalo Rising could get involved in hosting or planning such a meeting. This would create a good article on BuffaloRising.com, and could get the local citizens involved in making our city great again. It is time for a change. Piece by piece, plan by plan, step by step, we can make the city we live in better, and in the right direction to become more attractive. It is things like this that are the key ingredients to make and maintain a city into the right and better direction. Hope you will consider this… I have faith in Buffalo's comeback. We just need to make things start happening in our lifetime and generations to come.
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GDC
Need to get new management at the Mall for starters. I know one of the store owners and she has had one hell of a time with these guys from just trying to get signage facing Main Street to extended hours all to be turned down. With such a stubborn management team who only cares about it's Office Workers, your beating a dead horse.
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AtwaterLouse
Natahan's intentions sound good, but the particular ideas not so much. Think about those one at a time, realistically.
"Places like the Main Place Mall, AM&A's department store and Warehouse, and many smaller abandoned structures, could use a spruce up."
AM&A's warehouse is under consideration by developer Rocco T. for residential conversion. Sprucing it up won't matter to his decisions.
AM&A's store building doesn't seem to be a desirable investment to potential buyers. It seems the perception is it would cost more to convert it to something useful than would be the likely return on investment of that use. If this goes on a lot longer, eventually it will be demolished. Even if its owners allows volunteer citizens to spruce it up (very doubtful they would), that won't make it more attractive to potential investors. It might be nice to imagine that it would but realistically it won't. There's building code issues with that building and City Hall has been slow for years about enforcement.
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AtwaterLouse
Regarding Main Place, if its owners have decided for whatever reasons to use it mostly for purposes other than retail at this point, so be it. It's their property. As long as they obey building codes and pay their taxes, I don't think City Hall has any legal authority to force them to spruce up or force them to allow citizen volunteers to touch their property. Also, nobody can legally force them to focus the building use more on retail if they've decided other uses are better.
About 'many smaller abandoned structures could use a spruce up', maybe if City Hall owns any then they could allow volunteer citizens to do it -- but there'd be liability issues, possibly city worker union complaints, who knows. For abandoned structures owned privately (most are), the city could provide name/address of owners so citizens could try contacting them and offer free sprucing up. Property ownership info can be found on the city's web site. Doubtful the offer would be accepted. Again, liability for one thing. Also the owners just might not want to deal with any hassles. But if anyone wants to contact property owners and offer sprucing services, they can give it a try and see what happens.
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newskylinebuffalo
More residential?...Don't we need more jobs first before the AM&A's gets turned into more residential lofts and living? Just a thought. Now... Where to get the jobs?
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phrank
These places aren't REQUIRED to clean up and spruce up their properties, so it's up to the public to put pressure for the owners to do it. They need to be convinced that it's better for everyone. How much would it have really cost for Richard Taylor to put holiday displays in the AM&A's windows? Or at least put some kind of posters or display advertising local attractions. I know it is just advertising, but the Artvoice billboard on the Eagle Street corner at least gives you something to look at.
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hashma
You know, Buffalo needs to look at a simple action my village of Kenmore uses on houses. If you have peeling paint (as an example) for more than a set amount of time (lets say 6 months to a year), you get a citation. If you fail to meet the requirements, the village will actually come by, paint your house for you and then bill you. I think little things like that keep the village looking nice and help to nip in the bud future problems.
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GDC
Why not just create a brand new mall at the former AM&A's. It's an idea that was thought about a few years back. Why not re-think it again. It really is a big enough building to fit multipal retailers one floor after another and could be really cool if done right.
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newskylinebuffalo
GDC- that would be incredible having a new mall there with multiple stories. Put a Macy's in there, whatever, with hopefully luring some big time retailers to this - the first ever seen in this region. Would be amazing if ever done - I haev often dreamed of it becominga new major department store/ Mall again.
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newskylinebuffalo
Perhaps the first 5 stories a mega mall, then the top ones for residential lofts!?
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urbansoul
NEWSKYLINEBUFFALO: I have a job and will be going on the waiting list with Rocco for the AM&A's lofts. There are many more in my shoes as well. We DO have jobs................ ...........it's more like "where are hje lofts." They're all rented. Bring them on!
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MRodgers
"For abandoned structures owned privately (most are), the city could provide name/address of owners so citizens could try contacting them and offer free sprucing up. Property ownership info can be found on the city's web site. Doubtful the offer would be accepted. Again, liability for one thing. Also the owners just might not want to deal with any hassles. But if anyone wants to contact property owners and offer sprucing services, they can give it a try and see what happens. "
Atwater and others - get these privately owned properties into Housing Court and an "Order to Vacate" placed on them. The Order allows active neighbors to work on the grounds to keep it up. Then you can compile the list of things done along with the hours to present to the court, even via your Liaison, and find a new owner to present to the court, showing the community has identified someone who would care about the property. Sometimes the current owner will sell to get out of the court, although they are still liable for the charges and repair unless that could be part of the sale deal.
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buffalostan
I think it would help to get a Targets or Ikea in there somehows or down at the Tain Station. Hey you need to put up article about the great pic for VP by John McCann shes a beautiful woman to make a great leader.
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newskylinebuffalo
Urban soul, I am aware that we do need lofts, but many are just way too expensive - and I can't get a cheap loft because they are all out of my price range or filled up. So i'm not against more downtown lofts and living at all, just don't want more expensive lofts. I would love to move closer to the heart of downtown, but am stuck in a lonely home on a depressing, high traffic street. Would love to get a loft soon as you do, and my post was just a little overexaggeration on residential issues. And there is a great demand for these spaces.
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newskylinebuffalo
We should creat a new above ground pedestrian bridge connecting from AM&A's to Main Place Mall, and have the Main Place Mall have a Target and grocercy store, while AM&A's is a new Mall with multiple stories - much more attractive than Main Place - (with lofts on the upper floors of the Department Store) and we have a new Main Street Shopping District that could spark some activity all the way down to the New CanalSide Bass Pro and other retail corporations coming to the waterfront of lower Main Street. That wouuld also spark activity on Main Street up to the mall. Then we have a new Regional Shopping District downtown, for people in Buffalo, Canada, Rochester, Northwest Pennsylvania, and more. It could be the Retail Center of the Nation! As they presume about the Bass Pro Development.
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csc77
I think that we need to kill two birds with one stone, and move the Broadway Market into the Main Place Mall.
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MRodgers
csc77, interesting concept. Only one issue - would the vendors be able to afford the rents?
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GDF81
I think you can all say we have "passion" for buffalo simply by the fact that we are wasting our time (not that I think its a waste of time but you know what I mean) posting on a site about buffalo, weather it be a opinions on buffalo fashion or the ideas for the disaster known as main st. I am just not convinced of anything when I see not one of our elected officials giving any feed back on this site (prove me wrong if if they have posted here). Would it take more than 10 minutes for a councilman or a person in public works to give us any idea of what the hell they are doing.. why is everything have to be some sort of investigation into the truth of the inner working of buffalo, we speculate alot on this site alot as "GDC" pointed out because we just do not know where anything is going yet we would like to know so we can start a good discussion on the plans. No press conference needed!! We all want to do something but I would like to be given a road map by ONE of OUR elected city officials that can maybe give me direction. I do not think we need to be spending anymore time on talking about things that will never happen when we can be exchanging ideas on what is happening for sure...It really gets me mad that some of these elected officials that are all about Buffalo do not even come on to this site to give us an update...
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siloman02
Eyes, as I was riding along Main Street today I reflected on your past posts. Then I came upon the "deforested" section where our "future" downtown is being procreated. Such a waste!! Instead of removing trees, adjust the design. That does not imply I think traffic on Main is good. I don't. How about some small steps like a site for buskers at Fountain Plaza where there is already a nice, small footprint. As success mounts, it can expand. Please inform us as to meetings, I volunteer!
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csc77
MRodgers-In a recent B'News article, one tenant was quoted as paying $14.25/sq ft, though I have no idea how this compares to the Main Place mall, but...the City of Buffalo is already paying half of the Broadway Market's utility bill, in addition to other grants/loans/subsidies, so I would hope that there would be assistance available. Hell, our brilliant city seems to subsidize just about everyone, even the excruciatingly wealthy, so why not stick with the status quo?
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csc77
MRodgers-In a recent B'News article, one tenant was quoted as paying $14.25/sq ft, though I have no idea how this compares to the Main Place mall, but...the City of Buffalo is already paying half of the Broadway Market's utility bill, in addition to other grants/loans/subsidies, so I would hope that there would be assistance available. Hell, our brilliant city seems to subsidize just about everyone, even the excruciatingly wealthy, so why not stick with the status quo?
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DTDL
Why not start by cleaning up some of the public areas downtown. Take the park on the corner of Franklin and W Swan St (behind the Dunn Building). It's a great little park with a fountain and a lot of potential, but it's overrun with weeds. I don't think its been tended to at all this summer. A little cleanup and landscaping, maybe some lights in or around the fountain, would go a long way to making this an attractive and useable space. Nasty looking, dark corners make people avoid downtown. Well cared for, bright and attractive corners get people talking. Who is responsible for cleaning this up? How can we get them to fix it? Can we fix it ourselves? A group of volunteers could pull the weeds, lay some mulch and plant some flowers in a weekend for a couple hundred bucks and then move on to the next corner. Fix 10 of these things and you’ve made a very noticeable impact on the downtown neighborhood.
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sonyactivision
It's better for now for Buffalo to focus on commercial and residential along Main St. and let retail occur organically. Too many attempts to create retail environments in center cities have failed in the past. Jobs and habitats should come first; the retailers always follow, never lead.
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