fix buffalo today

Spotted water running down Northampton Street right across from the rear entrance to Artspace.
Water has been running for more than 10 days. On Saturday I pulled the plastic drain pipe out of the hole to see just how deep it was. Almost slipped in and quickly realized that the pipe is 10' long!!! Imagine if this hole was a few blocks over, perhaps somewhere on Elmwood.

Let's see how long it takes...

New book about what some of us do on-line, Rise of the Blogosphere [amazon] by Aaron Barlow. Great review from Firedoglake...

The Rise of the Blogosphere is a serious work of research, outlining the historical context for the emergence of blogs and citizen based journalism as part of the contemporary national conversation. Perhaps primarily targeted to students of journalism in formal training programs, it’s lessons nevertheless are relevant and interesting in their own right to anyone engaged in this blog world, either as a writer or as a reader and participant.

Rather than provide a more complete review or summary of such a meaty and engaging piece of work, I’d like to offer some snap summaries, impressions and questions for Aaron, especially with this particular community at Firedoglake in mind. But first, let me offer a quick sense of the sweep of... read the rest...

Check out Aaron's blog - One Flew East. He writes about his own book in this post, from May. Special thanks to Cynthia who writes that Barlow's book is now in the Central Library. Thanks Cynthia.

Saturday's Artspace Backyard Neighborhood tour found us checking out a City owned house here at 115 Northampton Street.
First wrote about this spot, just two blocks from Artspace, last September - right here. Aside from Coe Place, these two blocks of Northampton have some of the most interesting architecture and solid street scapes in the Midtown area. 94 Northampton is amazing and this house at 91 is beginning to get lots of love, too...

Tours every Saturday beginning at 11am and leaving from the Sonic Café across from Artspace.

Here's a video of the GRCO from Sean in Toronto. Sean is the creative impulse behind DK Photogroup. You'll remember their exhibit Orphaned that opened in Toronto last October. Buffalo's Artvoice covered the show - An Orphan of History.

While visiting St. Ann's Tuesday evening, found these places on the urban prairie right across the street.
Imagine a utility pole like this, broken on Allen, Elmwood or Hertel. Yet just 50' from Broadway here it is...

Checking out the daily stats, see that I've just gotten a few hits from - This old, old house.
New material all the time on their blog...

Reverend Stenhouse and his attorney didn't show this morning.

Ben Upshaw represented Bethel CDC. Judge Nowak adjourned proceedings 'till next week and reminded Ben that Reverend Stenhouse must show with an attorney as he's a named defendent in the four cases.

I spoke on behalf of the block club and area residents. I asked Judge Nowak to order Bethel CDC to immediately board and secure the property. After looking at the pix I shared with the court and realizing that there's been no progress on the properties since the initial inspection report, he directed the Mayor's Impact Team to board the four properties, cut the grass and issued an "Order to Vacate" for each property.

Will be staying with this story as it unfolds....

Just heard from "exiled" housing activist Dick Kern that 7 News WKBW picked up the story last night - right here.

In today's Buffalo News...
This isn't news to fixBuffalo readers. I've been reporting on Rev. Stenhouse's properties that surround the newly renovated Performing Arts HS for the past year. They continue to be in deplorable condition, wide open and rat infested. On my way down town this morning a number of neighbors said they were planning to tell Judge Nowak just how bad the houses really are...

In another development just heard that Rev. Stenhouse's Bethel CDC has just applied for City loans to re-hab 121 Woodlawn Avenue. It was rehabbed less than five years ago and for the past three years has been stripped and left wide open. Wrote about it recently - right here. It's what students at the newly renovated Performing Arts HS see when they look out the window.

Here's the link to additional information about Rev. Stenhouse's properties and a video from earlier this year.

Aside from the obvious problems with the building code violations and the deep irony that a control board member controls the largest collection of blighted property surrounding the City's newest school - the other issue of course surrounding Bethels's lack of stewardship include the possible conflict of interest where a control board member is seeking funds from an entity he actually controls. Not to mention the fact that the "rental registry" fees have not been paid and at least one of these four properties is on the October auction list.

If you haven't seen the Queen City Farm film by John Paget, check it out!
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From a recent press conference...
I've been keeping tabs on the warehouse next to the Washington Market and catch up with the crew on occasion during lunch time. Make time soon some Sunday to check it out...amazing finds!

Smart City is a weekly, hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life, the people, places, ideas and trends shaping cities. Host Carol Coletta talks with national and international public policy experts, elected officials, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others for a penetrating discussion of urban issues.

This weekend...

What would you be willing to do to put 2.6 billion extra dollars into your local economy each year? Would you be willing to drive 4 fewer miles a day?

• That's what Portlanders are doing, and it's paying big dividends for their city. Joe Cortright, economist with Impresa Consulting, will tell us about the calculations he's made that produce Portland's Green Dividend.

• We'll also find out from Jon Herrmann and Josh Sevin about Philadelphia's comprehensive program to attract top college students...introduce them to the city while in school and hang on to them once they graduate. Jon heads Campus Philly, an organization that promotes active involvement of students with the city's social, civic, and professional communities. Josh is the Manager of Knowledge Industry Initiatives for Philadelphia's Department of Commerce.

Our subjects are Portland's Green Dividend and strategies to build Philadelphia's talent pool this week on Smart City.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Tour d'Neglect - 2007 • Woodlawn Row Houses • faq • my flickr
the creativity exchange • CEOs for Cities

Regular fixBuffalo reader just gave me the heads-up about the following story on NPR this morning - Smaller is Better for Youngstown.

I've been following the Youngstown story for the past few months and the inspiring work of Mayor Jay Williams, recently here - Visiting Youngstown - with links to a May 3rd Wall Street Journal front page story. __________________________________________________________________________

Spent some time on City's Halls third floor on Friday. Learned that Rev. Richard Stenhouse and Bethel CDC are scheduled to appear in front of Housing Court Judge Henry Nowak at 930am next Wednesday July 25th.

You can track Housing Court cases, here. After a sign-in, simply enter "Stenhouse" and you will quickly see that all four properties on Michigan Avenue 1518, 1516, 1512 and 1504 which are located directly across the street from new home of Performing Arts HS are in court.

That's right the Treasurer of Buffalo's Control Board is a named defendant in Housing Court along with the Community Development Corporation he represents as Executive Director, Bethel CDC.

Also learned that the Rental Registration fees have not been paid for these four properties as required by a new local ordinance.

I'll be covering this story...click through the background - Boarding Control - and don't forget to check out the video from this past January, right here!

Here's what the four places looked like last week - Spot the Violations!

Once upon a time...I thought the Joint School Reconstruction Project, the largest construction project in the City's history, was supposed to help eleviate the sort of devestation that we see around newly renovated schools here in Buffalo.

The Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo plans to build a smaller facility in the Northtowns more in line with the needs of today’s aging, shrinking Jewish community.

Competing synagogues that once recruited members from one another are talking about ways to combine programs and operations and collectively reach out to unaffiliated Jews.

At the end of June, the American Jewish Committee stopped providing professional staff for its Western New York chapter, citing the need to redeploy those resources to cities with much larger Jewish populations.

The local Jewish community is adjusting to dramatically reduced numbers read the rest...

fixBuffalo readers may recall that I first visited Beth Jacob two years ago - right here. Last fall I compared Beth Jacob to Rich View Memorial Cemetery lost somewhere in Toronto, here.

While waiting for my tour to start and settling into my first peanut stick and medium double/double Saturday morning at the Sonic Café, I read through the weekend WSJ piece on blogging - Happy Blogiversary - by one of my favorite feature writers at the journal, Tunku Varadarajan.

Notwithstanding the words of Tom Wolfe, who puts an elegant boot, below, into the corpus of bloggers, there are many more people today who would read blogs than disparage them.

The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one's way through the morning's newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 -- and a fair few folk over that age -- now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today's bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion.

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger read the rest...

If you're interested in pushing things further consider Blog World in Vegas, November 7-9, 2007. There's a recent report about the Israeli Blogging Conference, called Blogference held earlier this month in Herzliya, Israel. Amazing line-up, right here that included Pittsburgh based freelance video producer, Justin Kownacki. His Something to be Desired, is way worth checking out.

Still love Alex Halavis, former Dean of the Buffalo Blogosphere, when he discusses the claim...

...the average blogger was a 14-year old girl blogging about her cats...

Post and links to that discussion about a Pew Internet report - right here, from last July.