February 1996 Table Of Contents

Buffalo Scoopers

Market Arcade lookin’ good

Patience is an admirable quality, paying off in preservation as well as life in general. Case in point is the Plymouth Methodist Church, now being restored after twenty years of desuetude. Add to the list the Market Arcade, a project which spanned three terms of the Griffin Administration and two years of the Masiello Administration.

The Arcade officially reopened to the public in December with a micro-brewery/restaurant being the main tenant thus far. Judging from the crowds, it seems off to a good start.
Now only if they would rebuild the Chippewa Market! It was the original reason the grand passage way of the Arcade was built between Main and Washington Streets.
We’ll be patient.

The parking crisis in our heads

Tips for cocktail conversation the next time you run into one of those delusional characters foaming at the mouth about how WE HAVE A PARKING CRISIS, WE NEED CHEAP PARKING OR DOWNTOWN WILL WITHER.

1) Giving downtown free parking and making it like a suburban office park with strip plazas would lessen its competitiveness vis-à-vis the suburbs. This may appear counter-intuitive, but – surprise – downtown is not at the geographical center of the auto-borne population. Without compensatory advantages that can exist only with market-driven parking rates, downtown would become just another, much smaller, node on the highway system.

2) Paying for parking is not a problem at all–Buffalonians by the tens of thousands gladly pay daytime rates to park at sporting events or concerts, where they have to spend still more on admission (as opposed to work – where they are paid) In fact, 80,000 people–60% more people than work in downtown Buffalo – pay to park on windswept tundra or broiling tarmac and walk the equivalent of at least three city blocks to get to their Rich Stadium seats for a three-hour visit.

3) The average car is parked 95% of the time. In other words, 95% of a driver’s time is spent as a pedestrian. To make 5% of a driver’s life easy, we make the other 95% a pain in the butt. For the last 50 years, traffic design and management has been devoted to automobile-based humans. So we have solid curbing being eliminated in favor of pavement striping, huge radii at street corners, etc. No wonder we have people driving on sidewalks.

Sprawl alert for Clarence Hollow and Lancaster landscape

The idea of a journey out to Clarence for antiques or Lancaster for a nursery will be lost should the spade work now being done by developers bear fruit. Using the controversial Tops warehouse project (still the subject of litigation) as their leading edge, developers have been making the rounds of elected officials, opinion leaders, and road builders to push for a new Thruway exit at Gunnville Road, which connects Clarence to Lancaster, and calling for the toll free zone to be moved back beyond this interchange. Growth is supposed to follow.

Well…no. Predatory sprawl is what follows. Optimistically, the local retail and real estate economy is in a steady state, and has been for some time. That means all new development comes at the expense of existing retail and housing sectors, i.e. the city and inner ring suburbs. So now we’re supposed to advocate killing ourselves?

Gorski pounding spikes into city coffin

Mark these words: somewhere in a fluorescent lighted bunker, someone is poring over ways to get that courthouse on the Skyway/Cathedral block if it kills them, or more to the point, downtown. The administration of County Executive Dennis Gorski and his acolytes in the County Legislature, instead of heeding the wishes of the people, continue scheming to co-opt opposition. Floating a sales-tax free zone downtown and a proposal to demolish the Art Deco police headquarters next to the Cathedral and build a courthouse there, are merely he latest gambits.

In both cases, the county would not be paying nearly the costs of the other two players (it would cost the city and state far more, in terms of taxes forfeited and construction costs). Further, acquiring a major building in the Joseph Ellicott Historic District and and demolishing it could prove time-consuming and expensive, if it could happen at all.

The willingness to build on the Police Headquarters site also gives the lie to all the hündedreck about how critical to court operations physical linkages to the jail are, which was the prime rationalization of picking the Skyway site in the first place. Also, a police headquarters does not begin to approach a courthouse in civic or economic importance, so suggesting one be built on Main Street is a mere sop. Besides, the county officials have been offered two free sites requiring no demolition: the former Bon-Ton, and the ‘South Fernbach’ site behind Main Place Mall. In addition, several feasible plans involving existing space have been offered. The public has pointed out the way to go; isn’t it time legislators skitter around and lead them?

–Tim Tielman

Sabres demo RR warehouse for parking

The Buffalo Sabres parking lagoon concept advances. As expected, the hockey club demolished the former Higgins complex just outside the eastern border of the Cobblestone District. Such a structure could easily have accommodated upwards of 100 vendors or several substantial bar/restaurants. Now, it will harbor only deadening asphalt. How this is supposed to help spin-off development is anybody’s guess.

Will the Sabres even erect street walls, as the Masiello Administration suggested last year for all downtown parking lots? Unlikely unless forced to do so. The Sabres plan to do the cheapest thing to shield the blight they have created: plant saplings. This should not be permitted for any number of historic and urban design reasons.

Removing graffiti from masonry

Possibly profiting from the horrendous conditions prevailing at Grant’s Tomb in upper Manhattan recently, the Preservation Assistance Division of the National Park Service has published a booklet on battling graffiti: Preservation Briefs 38: Removing Graffiti from Historic Masonry.

The guide provides methods of removing graffiti without damaging masonry and offers tips on preventing graffiti in the first place.

Get your copy from the Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954. Ask for GPO stock # 024-005-01158-7 and enclose $1.75 check or m.o.

A friend of preservation ‘retires’

Preservation Coalition president Susan McCartney was asked to speak at retiring County Legislator Joan Bozer’s final session last December. Following are her prepared remarks.
Joan Bozer is one of Buffalo’s Great Women. Her commitment to historic preservation, the City of Buffalo, and her constituents has been of the highest order. Over the past 20 years Joan has had a huge impact on the protection of Buffalo’s irreplaceable landmarks, neighborhoods, parks, and streetscapes.

After several successes–saving the magnificent Old Post Office (now ECC) and working to save the mansions on Delaware Avenue, Joan decided that preservation had to break new ground. She wanted to light a fire, and she knew you can’t make a fire with one log. So she recruited, inspired, encouraged, begged, and charmed a small band of people to get involved, and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County was formed. She sought a movement, and a movement is what she got.

Along the way she inspired the creation of downtown Buffalo’s most significant piece of planning and preservation legislation: the Joseph Ellicott Historic District. The laws that shape this ordinance will have impact on an issue facing us today–the future courthouse. Joan was also a champion and advocate of saving the beautiful St. Mary of Sorrows church, now the Martin Luther King, Jr. Urban Life Center. She is a lioness fighting to ensure the economic and architectural survival of Buffalo’s internationally recognized masterpieces: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House, H.H. Richardson’s Buffalo State Hospital, and the Saarinens’ Kleinhans Music Hall.

Joan’s feet may be planted in the present, but her eyes are fixed deeply into the future. Her initiatives epitomized the motto ‘long term gain, not short term benefit.’ Expediency was never her way, nor was the collecting and dispensing political chits. This could take some resolve, and her courage has inspired me. I believe–hope–Joan’s example can lend all of us the courage necessary to truly work on behalf of this beautiful place and its citizens.

This just in: our favorite hardship case, ADM, posts $3.12 billion quarter


The Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) reports revenues of over $3 billion dollars in its first fiscal quarter ended September 30.

Gas pains avoided in Cobblestone

A potentially noxious situation was avoided by means of a fireside chat in blacksmith Ed Rudnick’s office in the Cobblestone District. National Fuel Gas last fall suddenly appeared on Illinois Street installing pipes and meter installations on the outside of the buildings. They had not filed plans with the City Preservation Board.

The Preservation Coalition, working with the Preservation Board (the two are not related), National Fuel, and Mr. Rudnicki arrived at a compromise in which meter installations not already completed would be placed in the mid-block alley, with underground lines running a bit inside Rudnicki’s property line.

While proposals have been made to turn this alley into a “Cobblestone Alley,” the Illinois Street landscape is clearly more important. (This is not to suggest all manner of non-conforming junk be put into the alley.)

Tim Tielman represented the Preservation coalition, while the Preservation Board was primarily represented by Tom Leary.

Bennett murals by Rowe in good shape

A teacher at Bennett High School has sent a letter to the Preservation Coalition detailing the school’s William Rowe murals. There are nine panels, each about six feet high. Two are about 17 feet wide, while the rest are about seven feet wide. In fine fettle considering 60 years of exposure, they reportedly could use some cleaning and touch-up.

Meanwhile, the Coalition received a call from an individual purporting to be with Sisters Hospital, reporting that the Hospital had removed a Rowe mural from a building of the former Marine Hospital campus it shamefully demolished last November.

Murals expressly commissioned for buildings obviously have more integrity and value in situ. But architectural vandals will look for expatiation wherever it can be found.

Legislature may move back to County Hall


In a resolution offered by Legislator Crystal Peoples (the only sitting legislator to vote against the skyway site for a new courthouse), county court functions would be in renovated space in Old County Hall, its annex, and leased space in private buildings nearby. The legislature would also return to Old County Hall and occupy the chambers formerly occupied by the Board of Supervisors.

The present legislative chambers, in the 1960s annex, have a vaguely sinister feel to their blandness, like a James-Bondian SMERSH conference center. The antechambers (the space is so badly designed they are actually the forechambers) and legislative offices are even worse, a nightmare of cheesy partitions, linoleum, and fluorescent glare.

One doesn’t have to give a fig about the people who populate the place (although one should) – the citizens deserve better for themselves. One would feel a lot more comfortable and a bit more confident in one’s status as a Citizen with the chambers in dignified surroundings, down the hall from the office where Grover Cleveland put into practice his oath that “a public office is a public trust.”

Abandoned retail ‘boxes’ litter cityscape

Automobile-based retail is changing at warp speed, as can be seen by the abandonment of first-generation free-standing drugstores for even bigger, more auto-dependent ‘boxes.’

Big boxes – 100,000 square foot supermarkets, 10-14,000 square foot drugstores – are Trojan horses in traditional city or village settings. Once in, they sap a community in two major ways: destroying traditional streets and architectural pleasantries and robbing the community of a leadership class (owner operators), one that is particularly sensitive to the patterns of day-to-day life. This, in turn, weakens the capacity, and the rationale, against further box blight.

Cities and villages need to change zoning codes –not by simply mandating yew-lined parking lots – but to protect the small properties and retail spaces that enable walkable, pleasant cities to exist. They are the last bastion of locally-based retail business and innovation. They are amenities that make nearby housing attractive.