Buffalo and WNY Regional Land Bank - Part I
3 Comments Published by fixBuffalo on 3/26/2012 at 9:12 AM.
Demone Smith, Masten District Councilmember, submitted the following resolution authorizing the creation of a regional land bank. The resolution was unanimously approved by the Common Council last Tuesday. Erie County is on board, so are the Cities of Lackawanna, Niagara Falls and Tonawanda. Michael Clarke, Executive Director of LISC-Buffalo, told me in a conversation this morning, "...this is a very strong cooperative agreement and an important step forward in dealing with abandonment and vacancy on a regional level."
The resolution is part of an application that the City and County are submitting to New York State later this week. New York State's Empire State Development issued the request for proposals. According to Michael Clarke the strong inter-municipal cooperation spelled out in the resolution for the Buffalo Niagara Land Improvement Corporation is something that Albany expected. LISC-Buffalo have been at the leading edge of the policy development in dealing with these issues. Six years ago LISC-Buffalo published Blueprint Buffalo (2006) which helped set the stage for this critically important policy shift.
See: Getting Smarter about Decline, November 2006____________________________________________________________________________________
The Buffalo Erie Niagara Land Improvement Corp., or BENLIC for short?
I think the name should be changed!
I vote to call the land bank the Holland Land Company. Pretty soon all the land will be vacant and we'll be able to give it back to the Dutch.
There has been a plethora of individuals suggesting landbanking since the procedure was initiated by Youngstown, Ohio.
Fortunately, for Youngstown, they have a Mayor with enough sense and foresight to have initiated such a program in the first place.
Unfortunately, the nuts running Buffalo could either care less or are so wrapped-up in their own self-image they have failed to notice that Buffalo has an over abundance of homes.
Demolishing individual homes just replaces one eye sore with another; intelligently select an entire neighborhood, such as any running perpendicular to Broadway, and begin landbanking.
But I guess you need a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning with a corresponding income of six-figures to propose such a program or just be a buddy of the Buffalo political system.