Family Video, the largest privately held video chain in the United States, is coming to the corner of Hertel and Sterling avenues. On March 3, the video rental chain purchased two properties at 1488 and 1500 Hertel, previously occupied by Martino’s TV & Appliance. Family Video paid $537,500 for the one-story, 7,000 sq.ft. commercial building and adjacent parking lot.
On September 11 of last year, Family Video was in front of the City Planning Board seeking approval to demolish Martino’s existing building and construct a smaller, 4,850 sq.ft. store with a re-worked 28-car parking lot. Family Video looked at renovating the existing building but concluded that the building could not be reasonably rehabbed and proposed a new building within the same footprint as the Martino structure. The retailer headed back to the drawing board after receiving neighborhood feedback earlier in the week and comments from Planning Board members.
The project was approved by the Planning Board two weeks later after a few design tweaks including additional landscaping, changes to the Hertel Avenue façade (entry image) and a decision to use a darker brick. Fast forward to today and neighbors are starting to ask questions.
Surprisingly, their primary concern is not over the design or orientation of the one-story brick structure where the “front façade” faces the parking lot according to plans provided by Rochester architectural firm LandTech. Rather, some Sterling Avenue residents are not pleased with a new driveway connecting to their residential street.
Top: Sterling Avenue facade. Bottom: Parking lot ‘front’ facade.
“The plan is to demolish the building and rebuild a new building on the corner, which I don’t have a problem with,” says Susan Luciano, a Sterling Avenue resident. “However, my big issue is the fact that they plan to install parking lot access to Sterling.”
The Planning Board notifies residents within 400’ of a project of hearings. Luciano questions whether that is enough.
“What gets me is why would they only notify residents 400 ft. on Sterling, Wellington, Norwalk and Hertel and not the entire block of Sterling most affected?” asks Luciano. “Why was the new exit never mentioned in this notification? That is why no one took off from work to go to the meeting, they thought it was just about Martino’s being sold, which we knew.”
Luciano calls the City’s mailing regarding the Planning Board meeting an “uninformative notification.”
“The people who were notified had no idea what they were being informed of, except they are tearing down the old Martino’s building. It was never explained that they will be putting a commercial driveway on a residential street,” she says.
In conversations with Luciano, Marty Grunzwig, Land Use Controls Coordinator for the City of Buffalo, pointed out that there are other businesses that have driveways on a residential street. “I explained yes there were, but they were grandfathered in over 50 years ago,” says Luciano. “Their traffic is very light and hardly affects the side streets.”
“He went on to say that there is a great deal of traffic on Hertel and that is why they wanted to put it (the driveway) on Sterling. The traffic is because the City reduced the two lanes on Hertel to one lane, which is fine with us,” Luciano says. “However, why should we pay the price on our residential street?”
From the Planning Board meeting minutes:
Mr. Benezah (Family Video Regional Director) stated he had met with William Parke, Community Planner and a representative of the North Buffalo Good Neighbor Planning Alliance and he lives in the area and loved it, this is a vast improvement in the previous proposal, changes in doors, awnings, added more landscaping, darkened the color of the red, etc, the Board moved forward to a vote on this item.
A motion to approve the Design & Site Plan as presented was made by Ms. Schwartz, seconded by Mr. Manuele and carried.
It is unclear what can be done at this point, but Luciano is not giving up. She is circulating a petition, signed by 50 neighborhood residents thus far, and is arranging a meeting with Delaware District Councilmember Michael LoCurto. LoCurto has been responsive to Luciano’s concerns and expects to discuss the matter with the Office of Strategic Planning.
“We are the residents who pay taxes, don’t move out to the suburbs like everyone else and do everything we can to make North buffalo a great place to raise a family,” Luciano says.
Existing Martino’s site with no driveway access to Sterling.