Sycamore Village - Opening

I missed the opening. Nice garage!

update - 11/22/08
Don't miss the thread at SpeakupWNY about Sycamore Village - right here.

While I'd never begrudge anyone an affordable, clean and decent place to live - sometimes you just got to wonder where the priorities are, or in this case, where they've been. The point is this. Closer to the downtown core along so many blocks between Genesee and Broadway and west of Jefferson, there are neighborhoods that were started years ago with some of the most amazing residential urban infill we have in the city. There are streets lined with modest brick duplexes and singles. Houses that fit the city and streetscape and routinely sell in the $60-80K range. Between many of these houses are gaps that need to be filled to create the sort of urban density that could potentially attract retail and commercial development. Simple.

Instead, City planners leap frogged that area and built houses that are ostensibly designed to lure suburban residents to the city and in this case, away from the core and away from downtown. While cool houses like this - corner of Monroe and Sycamore - were demolished to make room for the first phase of these heavily subsidized new builds, it will be interesting to track what the new residents are leaving behind when they move to Sycamore Village. Many veteran observers have told me that new builds along William and Clinton Streets are directly linked back to areas of the city like Hamlin Park - a game of musical chairs. No doubt an interesting trend, where one part of the city grows at the expense of another.

Same Spot - Three Years
2006 • 2007 • 2008

The other long term issue that's looming has to do with environmental issues involving the site's remediation. For the first time I spent some time this afternoon in the Hickory Woods neighborhood, off Hopkins Street. In August I visited Love Canal. Twice in recent memory municipalities have pushed and marketed housing on contaminated sites. Any thoughts on what the story here at Sycamore Village might be in the years ahead?

The other issue is the immediate area's new build foreclosure history. I covered part of that disturbing trend here and here recently. New builds available for the second time around are selling for a fraction of their original sale price!

Lots of questions - why here, when the actual construction costs exceed $205,000/house - and no answers. Here's a flickr stream - Sycamore Village - with site construction pics.

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

UB 2020 and the City's East Side

I must confess, I've never understood if UB 2020 is supposed to be a time-stamp or some sort of vision statement. BuffaloRising recently linked to UB's Comprehensive plan - right here. Great comment stream! Anyway, while looking through the links on the B/R post I arrived here - Building UB - an amazing flickr series with links to many of UB's planning pics and sketches. There's a growing comment stream associated with every pic.

This pic, from the Downtown Campus set, depicts UB's future expansion just east of Main Street and immeadiatly south of the Artspace neighborhood. What's interesting here is the green shaded area just east of Michigan Avenue, between Goodrich and North streets. There are a number of existing structures here and after a first read through UB's website, I couldn't locate what's planned for this area.

click for larger image

Make sure to check out additional images here. Before the next Artspace Neighborhood Walk, I'll go over and check out a number of structures on that Michigan Avenue block. Really fascinating as the $40 million reconstruction of City Honors High School is adjacent to this site, on the other side of North Street.

Maybe by 2020 we'll see things right, 'till then things seem slightly blurry.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Bridge Construction - Update

Last week a fixBuffalo reader asked about the pedestrian bridge linking the new UB Bioinformatics building and Hauptman Woodward. While leaving one of my favorite spots on Ellicott Street the other day - Ulrich's - I saw a couple people walking along the bridge, for the first time!

I have no idea when the long awaited completion date is supposed to be. If anyone knows more about this project, please let us know. fixBuffalo readers may remember a short series of posts about this development - Bridge Contstruction, What's (Not) Up? - from earlier this year and last.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

City Honors Update - Day 106

The foundation for the new natatorium is taking shape on the former front lawn of City Honors. Construction workers were laying the foundation's forms this week.

Here's a peek inside the pool.

I'll be adding pics to this - City Honors - flickr series on a regular basis in the weeks and months ahead.

Check out the City Honors archive for additional information and previous posts.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Smart City This Weekend

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...

• Sometimes a city's influence goes beyond its borders well into the region. Our guests this week both work with this idea of the global influence of cities. Saskia Sassenis professor of sociology and a member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Her work focuses on globalization and global cities.
  

• We'll speak with Saskia about the idea of denationalization, and how it applies to urban spaces? We'll also speak with Richard Longworth, author of a new book called "Caught in the Middle, America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism." Richard will talk with us about globalization's impact on the American Midwest.

Listen to host Carol Colletta - list of additional stations/times - 7pm Sunday on WNED - 970 in Buffalo, NY. Past Shows are archived and the newsletter is published regularly.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Mid-Week Ask...

Once a week, I'll be asking fixBuffalo readers for additional advice and insight into what's happening in our shrinking city. If there are issues that intersect with cultural, economic and urban developments that are happening elsewhere that you think might be important for fixBuffalo readers to know about, please share.

This might include pics, links and stories that are happening across the country or on other parts of the planet that are important somehow to urban life; local or global material that you think other fixBuffalo readers might like to know - let me know. Going forward, think of this as an open forum of sorts about urban living. Thanks.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

1572 Jeffeson - Another Missed Opportunity

update 11/12/08...10:30am
I'd forgotten about this post over at
Buffalo Rising from 5/13/08 - Separated at Birth - that focused
on the plight of 1572 Jefferson.

While researching and writing about Lyth Cottage - see archive - two years ago, I noticed this amazing house at 1572 Jefferson. It was located just a few blocks from Canisius College and around the corner from Mayor Byron Brown's residence.

Last week it was demolished.

The City of Buffalo owned 1572 for the last two years. I've written about it - here recently and here in August 2006 and I've shown it to a handful of interested individuals. Here's an interior set of pics from one of the showings last September. While updating my Lyth Cottage pics - here - last week I was sort of stunned to see that it had disappeared, trucked to a landfill.

While there are a number of exciting rehab projects at various states of completion here in Cold Springs and Buffalo's Midtown, there's a rapidly dwindling inventory of vacant city owned houses that remain ripe for rehab. Recently we've lost two significant city owned houses that I'd previously written about and shown - 115 Northampton and 93 Riley Street. Both of those houses were significant for various reasons but most importantly they were located with in the footprint of the Artspace neighborhood. Two places, like 1572, that should have been moth-balled. While demolition is final, properly mothballing significant houses like these buys time for the market to catch up.

Please join me next Saturday for a walk around Artspace - here's the post - and see for yourself what's happening over here in this emerging neighborhood.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Neighborhood Walk

Four fixBuffalo readers joined me this morning on the regularly scheduled Artspace neighborhood walk. We saw a number of really cool rehab projects in the neighborhood. Click into this flickr stream - Walking Artspace - for the latest pics.

While we were waiting for everyone to gather at the Sonic Cafe, we were joined by a local real estate broker who shared the exciting news that Artspace may be looking for another location, just a block away - right here.

If you're interested in what's happening over on Coe Place and around the Artspace neighborhood, please join me in two weeks - here's the schedule.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Around Artspace this Saturday

The next neigborhood walk is scheduled for this Saturday. I'll be sharing some recent insights about homesteading success stories in the neighborhood. If Coe Place, Artspace or some of the streets just East of Main Street have captured your attention recently come on over and spend an hour learning about this emerging neighborhood.

Here's this Fall's slide show. Or see all the pics at once - Walking around Artspace on flickr.

Here's the schedule for the rest of 2008, rain or shine. Meet-up is at the Sonice Cafe at 9am right across from Artspace. Here's the map.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

City Honors - Update

While walking around the construction site at City Honors the other day, I noticed that the first of two new structures, the new natatorium, is slowly taking shape on the what was once the school's front lawn. This 40m renovation project is part of the larger one billion dollar Joint School Reconstruction Project, the largest construction project in the City's history - ever.

LPCiminelli is the lead developer for the city wide project. They're keeping track of progress at City Honors - here. I'll be adding pics to this - City Honors - flickr series on a regular basis in the weeks and months ahead.

If you're a current City Honors student or graduate I'd like to know your thoughts about this project.

Check out the City Honors archive for additional information.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Partners Newsletter

Here's the latest e-newsletter - October 2008 - from George Grasser and Partners for a Livable Western New York. I've archived previous issues here.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Inviting Buffalo

The Buffalo 'sphere has taken shape over the past few years and reflects growing integration and non-heirarchical ways of reaching and connecting people. While Buffalo Rising and the family of blogs under the WNYmedia.net banner continue to set the pace, there a number of unexpected and welcome surprises that surface. I mentioned Buffalo Ideas last month and have just learned about Inviting Buffalo. The newest addition to the local 'sphere comes from City Hall and is maintained by the Department of Economic Development.

A recent post features a news item from Buffalo First.

Buffalo First will distribute a Local Coupon Book mid-November. The book’s purpose is to root more dollars in the local economy (one dollar spent locally gets re-spent three times more than if it were spent at a chain), make local purchasing more affordable and educate the public about making more responsible purchasing decisions - read the rest.

This is about the coolest thing I've seen from City Hall. No comments yet in any of the posts. So, check it out and add it to your daily list of local sites.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Neighborhood Planning Summit

I had the opportunity yesterday to talk with Elizabeth Huckabone, President of Belmont Shelter, about a number of issues impacting the immediate neighborhood around Artspace. I'd stopped in to check out the various displays that were being set up for tomorrow evening's neighborhood summit meeting - details here.

10/22/08...update and follow-up
Check out a series of posts in Inviting Buffalo dated October 17th and labeled
'the future of housing' to see what the evening's conversations included.

I encourage everyone who is interested in the area that's historicially known as the Hamlin Park, Cold Springs and Masten Park to attend this important and unique meeting. A number of City officials, BERC and LISC as well as Rev. Stenhouse will be addressing a number of important issues that are crucial to this neighborhood's longterm revival.

If you haven't already read - Midtown: Poised for Renaissance, I encourage you to become familiar with it before attending tomorrow evening's neighborhood meeting. Here, Chris Hawley writes:

Coe Place is the most historically and urbanistically significant street in the Midtown neighborhood. At one time a brick pedestrian pathway, converted to a residential street by a quixotic nineteenth-century skating rink operator, Coe Place is a charming, very narrow street, originally no more than fifteen feet wide, lined with a collection of close-knit Queen Anne-style houses whose singular attributes are unmatched anywhere else in Buffalo.

Here a few additional pics of yesterday's planning posters. Make sure to check out the neighborhood's Cultural Assets that Chuck LaChiusa and the Landmark Society have compiled.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Bailed - Buffalo Reacts

I received the following video this week as a local response to the Wall Street bailout and the mortage foreclosure crisis.

I'd like to know what you think and how fixBuffalo readers view the current financial crisis. How will this impact exisiting demographic trends in the future?

Video credit - Michela and Eric.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood

Around Artspace

I met a few fixBuffalo readers on Saturday for another walk around the Artspace neighborhood. We stopped here on Coe Place and admired the renovation that's happening on one of the East side's most unique streets.

After examining the rapidly deteriorating St. Vincent's Orphan Home on the corner of Ellicott and Riley, we ended the hour long walk behind Artspace talking about the project's impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

I'll keep track of my Saturday morning pics - Walking around Artspace - and update this series every two weeks.

Here's the schedule for the rest of 2008, rain or shine. Meet-up is at the Sonice Cafe at 9am right across from Artspace. Here's the map.

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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • fixBuffalo flickr
Creative Class • Shrinking Cities • Saturdays in the neighborhood