fixBuffalo

Common Council members Wednesday criticized the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo for its plan to close a number of city churches and schools, some of the lawmakers contending that it abandons city neighborhoods and appears “to have the whiff of ethnic cleansing.”

• Since the opening of Millennium Park in Chicago, parks have become the hottest urban amenity. But Char Miller, director of urban studies at Trinity University reminds us that this is the second golden age of parks. Bold civic visions in the 19th century gave us the great parks we enjoy today. We'll find out what we can learn from that earlier era that can lead to better parks for cities today.

• And we'll talk to Ben Shields who is tracking the elusive sports fan and how urban entertainment marketers can find their audience. Ben is co-author of The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace and he is a frequent media commentator and speaker on the sports marketing industry.

• Innovation is now viewed as America's economic salvation. Every urban leader is trying to figure out how to get more of it. And they couldn't find a better adviser than Richard Lester. As founding director of the Industrial Performance Center at MIT, Richard has led major studies of regional innovation performance and he co-authored Innovation - The Missing Dimension on sources of creativity and innovation.

• Also with us is innovator and serial entrepreneur Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar. Today, the hourly rental service has 50,000 users in 10 cities. With her latest company, GoLoco, Robin hopes to jumpstart ride sharing in America.

Received dozens of faxes, emails and phone calls this morning about a story breaking in Business First. Jim Pitts, former Buffalo common council member and Executive Director of Norstar has announced his intentions and desire to buy and rehab the most neglected City of Buffalo owned historic local landmark, the Woodlawn Row Houses.

When James Pitts walks around East Side Buffalo streets such as Woodlawn Avenue and Emerson Place, he doesn't see ramshackle, abandoned houses. He sees opportunity and hope. read the rest...

fixBuffalo readers already know that this set of row houses sits diagonally across from the front door of the new Performing Arts HS, ready to open this September [map].

"This," he said while walking down Woodlawn Avenue, "Is my hometown."

Pitts also wants to build homes and encourage small business development, using the September opening of the Buffalo Academy for the Visual & Performing Arts along Woodlawn Avenue as the focal point. The $30 million school, located where Woodlawn Junior High School once stood and before that, Offermann Stadium, is designed to encourage private sector development in the surrounding neighborhood.

Pitts wants to lead that charge.

"Since the school's project began, we've all heard how one of the side benefits was the encouragement of neighborhood developments," Pitts said. "Well, I want this to be an example of what can happen."

Very interesting...Rev. Stenhouse from Bethel CDC, one block away from the Woodlawn Row Houses, is the designated planning agency for this neighborhood and simultaneously owns the largest collection of blighted property surrounding the the new home of Performing Arts HS. Yet no mention of Rev. Stenhouse in the Business First article.

I've praised Rev. Stenhouse - Getting it Done in Masten - and have weighed in with criticism - Boarding Control - over his lack of stewardship and neglect, steps away from his door. Remember he's also the Secretary/Treasurer of Buffalo's very own control board. No Housing Court Rev. Stenhouse. Ever wonder why?

Excellent news for the City's near East side, especially as Performing Arts HS opens in less than 75 days!

• A new study from Americans for the Arts claims that each year in America the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166 billion in economic activity. Our guests this week are leading efforts to make sure their cities get a big piece of that action.

• We'll talk to Vincent Kitch about Austin's strategies to promote film and music, Ginger White about Denver's programs to support art and space for artists, and Jair Lynch in Washington about his attempts to develop artist housing. Plus, we'll find out how arts organizations are finding new audiences from Surale Phillips.

• Vincent Kitch is Cultural Arts Program Manager for the City of Austin. Ginger White is Senior Economic Development Specialist for the City of Denver's Office of Cultural Affairs. Jair Lynch heads Jair Lynch Companies, a development firm in Washington, D.C. And Surale Phillips is President of Decision Support Partners in Bozeman, Montana

A state government association released a report on New York’s demographic trends Wednesday in an effort to raise the level of urgency about the population losses suffered throughout the state.

The policy brief issued by the New York State Association of Counties, an association of the state’s 62 counties, is an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates released earlier this year. The numbers are sobering.

The Empire State saw its population grow just 1.7 percent since the start of the decade, compared with the national rate of 6.4 percent.

Twenty-nine of the state’s 62 counties lost population since 2000 — 28 of them from upstate. And no other county in the state lost more people during that period than Erie County — a loss of 28,875, or an average loss of 4,800 people a year. Read the rest...

Here's the link to the full report (.pdf). The Population Shuffle.

Wonder if anyone in the Erie County Comptrollers office has already contacted the Dr. Warren Brown at Cornell University. From the above study on page 11.

If you believe that your population estimates are inaccurate, you should contact New York's population estimates liasison:

Dr. Warren Brown
Program on Applied Demographics
Cornell University
607-255-8399
Wab4@cornell.edu

The owners of Transfiguration Church, a vacant and deteriorating East Side landmark, are under pressure from city officials to better secure the sprawling property.

The Eastern European Gothic- style church at Sycamore and Mills streets, which opened in 1896, is one of only four remaining in Buffalo built before 1900. It was abandoned 14 years ago by the Catholic Diocese and purchased in 1994 for $7,000 by Paul Francis Associates, a nonprofit organization operated by Buffalo attorney William Trezevant and his mother, Paula Nowak...read the rest...

Transfiguration Church - Interior

Here's the flickr slide show: Inside Transfiguration.

The Transfiguration Church, three miles from Elmwood, was first written for Housing Court on March 13, 1997. In the last 8 years Transfiguration has journeyed through Housing Court 61 times and the file, case #869/97 has seen four seperate Housing Court judges. Judge Broderick passed the file to Judge Devlin who tossed it to Common Council President David Franczyk's brother and finally Judge Fiorella issued a warrant for Pauline Nowak [no relation to Judge Nowak] on September 25, 2002. She's an officer of Paul Francis Associates, Inc., the party that bought the crumbling church from Bishop Mansell in October, 1995.

Here's that post from December 2005 - Sign of Things to Come - contains pertinent background information regarding the Dept. of Inspections attempts to nab the perp. You won't want to miss this lovely e-mail exchange between said local attorney, William Trezevant and moi.

I've sat down with Bill Trezevant twice in the past few weeks. On both occasions the conversation was tense. Bill seems to be subscribing to the falacious notion that hope is still a plan. Perhaps he's just looking for the easy way out and would rather see the City demolish the church and have Paul Francis Associates Inc. billed for the major six figure demolition expense. Presumably the corporation will go belly-up and Bill Trezevant and his mother Pauline Nowak - there's still an active Housing Court warrant for her arrest - will most probably skate.

Bill has systematically stonewalled and steadfastly refuses to answer questions regarding the church, his plans and possible scenerios that could save some of the art and architectural detail that remains here, in his care. He plays the victim card and at one point while sitting down with a Preservation Board member and myself Bill refused to take responsibility for properly securing the structure. He claimed it was a matter for the corporation to consider.

Also heard from a reliable source that Bill Trezevant's mother walked into Housing Court recently and walked out again, despite the active warrant for her arrest.

Suggestions?

Headed over to Sycamore and Mills, just East of Fillmore to see if he's done anything to secure the church structure since the Buffalo News article appeared more than 48 hours ago.

• Religion has become a sort of battleground in America for some of the nation's most divisive issues. Buzz Thomas is attempting to cool the heat and shed light on what keeps us at odds in his new book from St. Martin's Press, Ten Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs His Job). As head of the Niswonger Foundation, Buzz is also deeply involved in turning around schools in some of Tennessee's rural and most poverty stricken counties.

• We will also talk about reconnecting Massachusetts' gateway cities with Brookings policy director Mark Muro and MASS, Inc. president John Schneider. Prior to joining Brookings, Mark was a senior policy analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University, staff writer for Boston Globe, and editorial writer for the Arizona Daily Star. Before joining MASS Inc. John directed a regional planning and economic development partnership in the state's high tech corridor which facilitated public-private collaborations on sustainable development issues.

• What makes cities successful? It's a question we ask every week here on Smart City. And this week we have two authorities from the University of Chicago to address that topic - one with a very local view and the other with a global outlook.

• Sean Safford has studied the decline of Rust Belt cities and found that particular kinds of social networks were key to a city's ability to renew.Saskia Sassen has studied global cities and concluded that corporate headquarters are less important to a city than are globe-trotting consultants.