Shock and Awe on Koons Avenue - One Year Later

I revisited the 300 block of Koons Avenue the other day. fixBuffalo readers may remember this post - Shock and Awe on Koons Avenue - from last March. Well, the devestation is worse. A year later, three more houses have been added to the mix of miasma and malfeasance. Last year 15 of the 31 houses were in various states of abandonment and vacancy, today the new number is 18.

click image to enlarge

60% of a block is headed at some point to the landfill, so what? Well this block as you may recall is right next door to the newly renovated Harvey Austin School. Here's the map.

This is the view from the front the school's front lawn, looking towards Koons.

And a close up of what students see looking out the front window.

Double checking ownership information for this block of Koons - 300/357 - I noticed something an interesting development since last year. I've compared both sets of property ownership information - here - for March 2007 and March 2008. Where as the City of Buffalo owned five properties last year, the number has more than doubled to 11 since I posted Shock and Awe.

While residents of North Tonawanda are rightly shocked and upset about the recent tragic assult on a young school child - abducted and assulted in a vacant house near the school - residents of Buffalo are silent about this block of Koons Avenue, right next to the newly renovated Harvey Austin School.

So it goes...

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