COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Reversing a symbol of city’s decline
There are a lot of ways to embarrass yourself. You can trip on a shoelace. You can fall off a ladder. You can linger too long at the punch bowl at an office party.
There are a lot of ways for a community to embarrass itself. It can squander its waterfront. It can disdain its history and culture. It can let blight stand as its symbol.
That is why folks throughout the region should be glad about what is happening at Oak and Genesee streets. The corner is the first thing thousands of commuters see each morning as they glide into downtown off the Kensington Expressway. They work downtown. Many of them have an affection for the city. Downtown serves as a showcase for any region.
For the last two decades, what those people saw each morning, every morning, on the welcome-mat corner of Genesee and Oak were the vacant shells of a row of four-story brick buildings. The facades of the 19th century structures are grand. The insides are gutted. They stood as a symbol of a once-great city gone to seed: the grim gateway of downtown. For two decades, through three mayors, they were allowed to stay that way.
It should not have been. Soon, it will no longer be.
There is $12 million on the table to transform the empty shells into places for people to work and play. Developers last week bought the last two parcels on the street. The gateway buildings will soon be a symbol of what downtown is becoming, not what it was. A year from now, the communal embarrassment will be a communal asset.
I think we can all be happy about that.
“I feel privileged to work on this,” said Doug Swift of City View Construction Management, which is reviving the buildings. “We can take a symbol of Buffalo’s decline and reverse the symbolism.”
The best way to get somewhere is step by step. That is the downtown story. The downtown of today looks far different from the downtown of 10 years ago. No megacorporation relocated here. No megaproject came to pass. It was just one building after another, restored and revived. Empty place after empty place was turned into a place to live or work.
Through it all, the buildings on Genesee and Oak stood, staring vacantly at thousands of commuters from their windowless eyes. Longtime owner Willard Genrich sat on them for years but — to his credit — sealed the structures, saving them for revival.
Restoring old buildings is tough in Buffalo. The cost of rehab is high; the return in rent is low. This is not Manhattan, where people pay $2,000 a month for a closet-sized apartment. In Buffalo, you pour money into an old building, and it takes years to get it back in rent. Banks are shy with loans. Developers are wary. Vacant embarrassments such as the Genesee block linger — particularly when a succession of mayors fails to force nobody-home owners to either fix or sell prime buildings.
Embarrassments do not end by themselves. Thanks to Scot and Jessie Fisher, whose faith and money helped to seal this deal. Thanks to the Wendt Foundation, whose mission of community aid translated into a $7.75 million, low-interest loan. Without all of that, nothing happens.
Wednesday morning, developer Doug Swift stood next to the buildings his company will revive. A guy in his 20s walked past. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and carried a backpack. These buildings have been vacant for as long as he has been alive. Seeing the construction fence, he turned to Swift and asked, “Is somebody finally doing something with these things?”
“Yes,” Swift replied. “Somebody finally is.”
