We’ve now had a year, enough time to absorb some thoughts about the lost hotel on Elmwood and Forest. On This Day a year later the saga has become veritable Buffalo history in the noteworthy non-making.
It’s enjoyable to write articles about the movers and shakers of Buffalo’s past, who seemed to colorfully hold degrees in things like butterfly science, law, architecture and banking (all in one person), take long summer trips with their huge families, and somehow still find time in lives that only reach about 60 years, to be able to build huge classical buildings, start new universities, write books, and live life unto memorable and historical acclaim.
Who were these Herculean people of Buffalo’s grand past? We’re their city’s progeny, yet we have to spend whole decades in our current lives trying to get undefineably-undermineable codes passed for projects, and Common Council haze-raze meetings sifted through media sponge techniques, which wring out the life of the very dream of a subject at hand.
We seem to sit back all too often whilst nit-picking inner circle city folks throw barbed wire in the paths of outside idea builders—a good example are those truly admirable reaches such as the former AM&A’s owner who came from Toronto with bucks, vision and a sincere dream, only to be hazed by the City’s Usual Suspects whose dumb as drumsticks techniques succeeded in squashing a potentially great thing. It’s hard to pinpoint the goblins and evildoers, for each group or individual seems unto their own sector fair and objective; but there’s a mad mix of sectors that needs jostling to a unified accord.
So then, what happened on June 3, 2006? Nothing.
On this day, June 3, 2006, dream dust was settling into the floor boards of City Hall from the day’s earlier Buffalo Common Council meeting on the subject of the Elmwood Forest Hotel. One day before’s delay effectively meant one day later’s death to the deal. Hotel idea? Current status: RIP.
But don’t blame the Council—they were merely the people’s forum. There were other wheels behind the scenes, powers that saw to an extension delay against Savarino’s development plans for an Elmwood Village Hotel on the corner of Elmwood and Forrest. It would have been a 72-room, $7 million dollar hotel designed by architect Karl Frizlen, of the Frizlen Group.
Karl Frizlen is the man who eagerly patriated Buffalo from his homeland Germany, whose efforts include splendid commercial architecture and community good (he selflessly designed and eagerly devloped the Bidwell weekend market among other contributions).
As Buffalo State grows, so does Elmwood and northern Buffalo, and this was to be a new age hotel gesture at an even wider future of the area. The construction of this needed hotel would require the demolition of at least five agreeable building owners’ less than important structures, all located currently at 1109-1121 Elmwood, where they house several shops and residents.
Then, boom! This property sect got caught in a web of historical deed clauses that just astound the modern view:
This area was once known as “Granger Estates,” and the property close clauses pre-empt any future discourse of development as then set forth in writing by then-owner Erastus Granger in the early 1800’s. Are you kidding? Read on.
The early 1800’s documents dictate that “no business establishment of any kind whatsoever shall ever be constructed on the property, and they shall forever be exclusively for residential use only. Also prohibited are barns, farms and stables.” That means the hotel is awash, and even the current businesses have to move!
Only a few people didn’t want to see this hotel raise from the ground up to a beautiful piece of new city growth. They’re not at fault, however. The Mayor’s certainly not at fault. Nor is the architect or the construction company. Nor is the Common Council! Not the neighbors, not the inspectors, and not even the lawyers. An old real estate deed and some lawyer’s fee-laiden eyes killed the confidence in the deal.
We have sectors and councils and boards and businesses that want to lead a new Buffalo. And none of these current “light bulbs” are at fault for our malaize—for it’s the very “light socket” itself (of this City’s methods for a reach for goals) that needs a revolution of mutual confident community inspection.
We have to work to be more determined and more confident… together. If we smile with a little more collective vision, the moving glacier of Toronto’s megalopolis will ask us to dance in their growth. Let’s sit up straight. Let’s dance together.
Bill Zimmermann
Bill runs Seven Seas Sailing school, and is a staunch waterfront activist. He is also heavily involved with preserving, maintaining, and promoting the South Buffalo Lighthouse. When Bill first started writing for Buffalo Rising, he wrote an article a day for 365 days - each article coincided with a significant historic event that happened in Buffalo on that same day.