Buffalo Rising Online

I luv it, A multi-use building and restoration to a corner not too many think about. Very Exciting news.

cool use for the building -

if it's purpose is historical and educational, it should be a 501 (c)( 3) and pays no property tax, correct?

Will be nice to see lights on and a fresh look to this corner. Corner buildings are the most important buildings on a block. without them the city feels broken and gap tooth.

It'd be nice if Mohawk could be opened, but the Belesario's gated parking lot also blocks Mohawk. Thanks Paladino and Buffalo!

OTB needs to go. They are an awfull neighbor. Papers flying around, people loitering, they jamb up the street parking illegally (although my friend Fran from Parking Enforcement tickets them when he is there) They drink, urinate on the Burger King Building or between parked cars, they approach my staff as they are walking to work and overall do not belong.

My congrats to Richard and Carima, they should be the focus.......welcome to the neighborhood!

Great news. I'm excited to see this project happen.

I think OTB is the worst neighbor one can have. I've watched a drunk lady explosive vomit all over the side walk last week at about noon. It was clearly all beer. I've seen on several occasions patrons of the OTB pissin all over the neighboring business several times.

The city should crack down on the people frequenting this joint. Do the legit businesses and the poeple who are investing good money in this neighborhood a favor.

Sorry I wasnt sure on where I could submit, but love the article and think its key for Buffalo NEW URBANISM

This trend, according to Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, stems not only from changing demographics but also from a major shift in the way an increasing number of Americans -- especially younger generations -- want to live and work.

"The American dream is absolutely changing," he told CNN.

This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything -- from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls "drivable sub-urbanism" -- a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the Second World War and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable sub-urban landscape.

But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor for the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s. He says it is being driven by generations moulded by television shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends," where city life is shown as being cool again -- a thing to flock to, rather than flee.

"The image of the city was once something to be left behind," said Leinberger.

Changing demographics are also fueling new demands as the number of households with children continues to decline. By the end of the next decade, the number of single-person households in the United States will amost equal those with kids, Leinberger said.

And aging baby boomers are looking for a more urban lifestyle as they downsize from large homes in the suburbs to more compact town houses in more densely built locations.

Recent market research indicates that up to 40 percent of households surveyed in selected metropolitan areas want to live in walkable urban areas, said Leinberger. The desire is also substantiated by real estate prices for urban residential space, which are 40 to 200 percent higher than in traditional suburban neighborhoods -- this price variation can be found both in cities and small communities equipped with walkable infrastructure, he said.

The result is an oversupply of depreciating suburban housing and a pent-up demand for walkable urban space, which is unlikely to be met for a number of years. That's mainly, according to Leinberger, because the built environment changes very slowly; and also because governmental policies and zoning laws are largely prohibitive to the construction of complicated high-density developments.

But as the market catches up to the demand for more mixed use communities, the United States could see a notable structural transformation in the way its population lives -- Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, estimates, for example, that half of the real-estate development built by 2025 will not have existed in 2000.

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.

The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.

"What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe," said Nelson. "There will probably be ten people living in one house."

In Shaun Yandell's neighborhood, this has already started to happen. Houses once filled with single families are now rented out by low-income tenants. Yandell speculates that they're coming from nearby Sacramento, where the downtown is undergoing substantial gentrification, or perhaps from some other area where prices have gotten too high. He isn't really sure.

But one thing Yandell is sure about is that he isn't going to leave his sunny suburban neighborhood unless he has to, and if that happens, he says he would only want to move to another one just like it.

"It's the American dream, you know," he said. "The American dream."

A nice step in the right direction.

While I don't know either way are we so sure these people causing problems near the OTB are patron or just taking advantage of a non-used out of the way public 'park'

Somehow I think the same crowd of people whole linger here whether or not there was an OTB. The urban design of that space just asks for people on the fringe or loiter and make a mess.

I'm hoping for Mohawk and Main Streets to re-open too. I was looking at first floor spaces for my business at the newly renovated building at Main/Mohawk but with the street blocked off and the same beggers running that space, I wont even call the number for the place till the area is improved.

sbrof........come and hang out anytime.............of course we have the usual "charactors", but this is where I come to work every day. Buffalo Place does a great job an we could not expect anything more from them......it's just the nature of the beast......

Nice to see the building finally put to a new use -- my 80s-something father is always amazed to see that the building has stiil retained its old business sign after it closed in what he guessed was 1982 -- over 25 years ago.