fixBuffalo

Further Down Michigan...

Buffalo's near East Side shows continuing signs of rebirth with a new retail outlet for NAPA auto parts. A corner that has been dormant for decades has turned around in the past 3 weeks. It's now home to a company that has been here in the Buffalo area for 75 years. And while most new east side buisnesses such as Tops on Jefferson Avenue use that wonderfully creative suburban strip mall design, the folks at NAPA stayed with the old.

NAPA...My nomination for the Preservation community's corporate citizen of the year award!!!

click to enlarge

You can create a shopping list on-line by visisting NAPA-OnLine and get all your questions ready before stopping in. Give it a shot some evening before heading home and jumping on the 33 on your way home to Amherst and Clarence, and just stop by and pick up a few gallons of wiper fluid, dry-gas or a new set of jumper cables.

And don't worry about parking issues, you'll probably run into parents whose children attend two of Buffalo's charter schools, next door and across the street from the near east side's newest retail venture.

The bustling 1930's Buffalo street scene was designed by Blair Rusin. Check out the rest of his work here at ArtbyBlair.

Pretty cool place when you consider that most retail stores like this are pretty much "cookie-cutter" by design and use that clever concrete block for construction. In this case the NAPA design department decided to adaptively re-use an existing building that could easily have been knocked down. Here's what the Buffalo News had to say yesterday:

Napa stores are pretty much cookie cutter with everything predetermined, but this was the exact opposite. Everything had to be customized to fit into the space and around the pillars. It gives it a lot of character and a nostalgic feel," he said.

Another non-standard touch is the exterior wall mural that rises above the store on the adjoining building. Napa hired local artist Blair Rusin to come up with a 1930s scene of a bustling downtown Buffalo to give the site additional flair.

Read the rest of the Buffalo News story, here in the archives.

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