thursday may 8th 2008
Will County Executive Collins honor his promise?
Steve Stipanovich
Hopefully Buffalo Rising readers are aware of the proposed rehabilitation for the current Ontario Street Boat Launch in the city of Buffalo; the project is known as Black Rock Canal Park (BRCP). The County-owned land, that is in desperate need of repair and enhancements, is getting planning assistance from the local community. The Black Rock-Riverside Good Neighbors Planning Alliance (BRRGNPA) Land Use, Zoning and Urban Design (LUZUD) committee, has spent thousands of community volunteer hours to develop a plan and present it to every level of government, various community groups, businesses and waterfront users. Their award winning plans have been deemed so visionary that last year there was a commitment of $100,000 from the County and $50,000 from the City to fund a full feasibility study.
On the promise of the money, a request for proposals was issued, bids were received and a vendor was selected. The study is ready to go but there is a problem.
Last month BRRGNPA member Margaret S…
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queenseyes
With Memorial Day just around the corner, work on the Commercial Slip appears to be steady. Even though the Whipple Truss Bridge has not been opened to the public, there are really good vantage points that allow the curiosity seeker the ability to check out the developments. I think that people are going to be happy when they are finally allowed to walk through the Lloyd Street foundations (1840-1880 period) and on to the Central Wharf plaza (as seen in the first photo). The working buildings that once faced onto Lloyd had basement doors that led to the tow path along the Commercial Slip.
A walk through the foundations is literally a historic vantage point that gives the visitor an important sense of history and place. The second photo features land that was, at one point in time, found between Prime Street and the bulkhead along the river. Project planners tell me that thi…
wednesday may 7th 2008
Packard Building Sold
West Coast Perspective
Plans for converting the Packard Building at 1325 Main Street into 40 apartments and first floor commercial space have taken a step forward. White Plains-based Regan Development purchased the property today for $1.2 million from Cash Realty & Auctions. The three-story, 70,000 sq.ft. property is located at the corner of Riley Street, two blocks north of ArtSpace.
Anthony Swinnich
Back when video games were still in their infancy, developers relied on whichever computer system they were programming for to create any kind of audio for their games. Today's video games can sound like anything from an orchestra to a jazz band because the audio is pre-recorded and loaded onto a CD, eliminating the need to rely on the limited resources a primitive computer provides.
Those limited resources forced programmers to think carefully about what sort of music would play during their games, and there are beautiful compositions hidden in the bleeps and bloops because of this. These songs were so well written that many people feel a nostalgic connection with them today. Enter Armcannon – Buffalo's own video game rock maestros. This 5-piece outfit carefully splices many well-recognized video game tunes with elements of metal, jazz and straight-up rock to create a s…
Eli George
Buffalo Homecoming Weekend is sure to be busy for everyone in Buffalo. With a ton of different events going on, it may be hard to schedule what you’re going to do. If you would like to take a trip off the beaten path, you may want to check out the Market Arcade Theater. For a movie? Well, kind of.
The Buffalo Arts Council will be putting on the Rocky Horror Picture Show at 11:30pm on Friday June 27th and twice on Saturday June 28th, once at 10am and then a traditional midnight showing. It may seem a little early to report on something happening in June, but that’s because the council is looking for people to play the characters and there will be a sign up sheet this Saturday.
Celeste Lawson, Executive Director for the Buffalo Arts Council says, “We were looking to do Rocky Horror apart from that weekend, and then thought that weekend might be a fun time to do it because t…
buffalorising
Back in January, Eli George wrote an article about rising real estate in Buffalo. It was a fairly hotly debated issue, as many felt that the real estate was not on the rise, but was in fact just some rich person’s home up for sale. Others cited facts from USA Today and personal anecdotes to vouch for the rise in the market.
Now, CNN Money weighs in saying that Buffalo/Niagara Falls is one of the 10 fastest growing real estate markets. Even more interesting is the fact that some of the other ten on their list include Rochester and Syracuse. The rest are fairly spread out across the country, but it is really awesome that three cities all right in the general vicinity of one another all made the top ten list. For …
Christa Glennie Seychew
A little while ago I posted a story about a local musician vying for the attention of Anthony Bourdain's Travel Channel television series, “No Reservations”. For those of you who missed that story, here's the link, but we can sum it up by saying that Buffalo, thanks to Mr. Starr's fine work and the votes of many BR readers, came in among the top four finalists.
Though Buffalo and Mr. Starr didn't win the contest, producers of Mr. Bourdain's program were pleased with all of the finalists and have promised to include them in some way in an upcoming program. But most of you know that, since once Mr. Starr secured Buffalo's seat amongst the most serious contenders, major media outlets in the area picked the story up.
Letter to BRO
This morning my heart fluttered. I was watching WGRZ’s Day Break, as I so often do by default because my wife likes it, and I realized that those public organizations that perpetuate segregation need to be exposed and held accountable. For a while now, every time I watched that program, this tension would build in me; the kind of tension that feels almost like you wished Grand Theft Auto was real; and you were the main. And it would usually happen during Kevin O’Neil’s segment, “Celebrating Western New York”. First of all, he’s not funny…not in the least and second, Western New York to him is all things Polish, German and Irish, forget about everything and everyone else.
Most of the time, unless it’s for some holiday or specific recognition, most minority news of any sort begins with …
queenseyes
Unfortunately, in the year of '07, Buffalo lost a remarkable Falcon. That Falcon was irreplaceable. For a long time it looked as if Buffalo was going to lose another type of falcon as well (the endangered Peregrine kind). Well, if you've been following the progress of these birds that have made their home atop The Statler, then you know that they have been staging a comeback in recent years.
If you are unfamiliar with this terrific story, then you may want to head on over to the Buffalo Audubon Society's website. It is there that you will find The Falcon Cam - a camera that lets you see what these birds are up to at any given moment (click here to visit). The Buffalo Audubon Society has set up this official falcon website so that we might learn about the…
queenseyes
Monday evening Councilman Brian Davis called me to say that work was being started on clearing the Tower Shoreline Beach. When I asked him when, he said, "They're working late evening and night so as not to disturb visitors during the day." So last evening I though I might head over to check out the work in action, but unfortunately the work does not even get underway until after 10pm.
When I arrived at 8:30pm I discovered a large crane that was being used to remove the driftwood from the beach. There were also large rolling illumination spotlights so that the workers could light up the task before them. Brian told me that City Hall had located a contractor who was willing to come in and remove the wood for free. Apparently there is a price tag on the wood, and that made it attractive for someone to acqu…
