COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: A dog walker shows how to reverse blight
It all started with Barkley. Barkley is a cat-sized dog, white with chocolate-drop eyes and a 10,000- watt personality. He spends weekdays charming the staff at the law office of his owner, Fran Letro, in the downtown Dun Building. Like all dogs, Barkley needs walking. Julie Padak, a 29-year-old paralegal, usually got the job.
Padak took Barkley to the near-forgotten pocket parks behind Pearl Street. While marking his territory, the pint-sized pet padded through broken glass, chewed discarded cigarette butts, sniffed litter and strolled past graffiti-marred walls.
On the forgotten stretch between the Aud site and St. Joseph’s Cathedral, once-nice fountains, benches, cobblestones and pathways are marred by weeds, graffiti and empty beer bottles. Padak did not think that it was right— for Barkley or, worse, for Buffalo.
This is the byway between downtown and the spanking-new Erie Canal Harbor. It is the backyard of the landmark St. Paul’s Cathedral. A key stretch of the city should not look like a back alley.
“Everybody will walk through here to get to [the waterfront],” Padak said. “What are they going to think if it looks like this?”
We know what they will think. They will think that, for all of the hype, downtown still is a dump.
Julie Padak was idealistic—or naive —enough to believe that, if she told important people about the problem, they would help her fix it.
Perhaps amazingly, they have.
“Maybe when I’m 35, I’ll be jaded,” said Padak, a 5-foot-4 package of can-do charm and why-not attitude. “Right now, I think that the more credence the city gets, the better it is for all of us.”
She called Earl Ketry, managing partner of the nicely restored Pearl Street Grill&Brewery on the corner. Ketry had started on a cleanup but welcomed the contact.
“Julie just said, ‘Let’s go,’ ” Ketry said. “She has been an awesome gal and just great about reaching out.”
She called big-shot developer Rocco Termini, who did the upscale Webb Lofts next to the Dun Building. Termini agreed to help, connected with Ketry and called fellow developer Carl Paladino. All reached into their pockets.
“Julie is a fireball, I love her—and I hardly know her,” Termini said. “She just picked up the phone and called.”
Padak, Ketry and others spent recent Sunday mornings trimming trees, weeding and spreading mulch.
Padak called Burt Mirti, who runs the city’s anti-graffiti program. She called Jeff Brett, Buffalo’s one-man forestry department. She called Buffalo Place, which oversees the downtown pedestrian mall. She called anybody with a stake in the neighborhood that connects downtown to the waterfront.
This is what happened:
AmeriCorps volunteers, sent by the city, mowed grass and cleaned up trash. Graffiti was painted over. City workers killed weeds with herbicide and power-washed the underside of roadway off-ramps that crisscross the site. Buffalo Place lent a Bobcat and promised to bring planters. Coming soon are lights for the trees and new plantings.
“There are the bones of a good park here,” Padak said. “It just needed a little love.”
There is still a ways to go. But what once was lost is being reclaimed.
I cannot say for sure why it happened. I think that it was a mix of timing, location and the good faith of folks with a stake in the city—along with Padak’s gentle persuasion.
For whatever reason, in a city not known for attacking problems, Julie Padak got solutions.
“I am just a peon, a paralegal at a law office who picked up the phone,” Padak said. “That this could happen, it’s refreshing.”
She was out one day, just walking the dog.
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