Shorter Esmonde
Donn Esmonde hates casinos, <a href="http://mobile.buffalonews.com/sectionfront/content/?content=62396008&type=P1&story=Casino%20cash%20gives%20Falls%20its%20future%20back" except when he doesn’t.
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Esmonde Demands Magic
And with these passages,
To me, it’s not about bragging rights, or to label schools as “good” or “bad.” It is not to prop up the wrongheaded notion that suburban teachers run laps around their city counterparts.
No, I like the rankings, which are based solely on test scores, for one reason – they confirm what education experts have said for decades: The biggest factor in how well kids do in school is not quality of teachers, variety of programs, class size, access to computers or how often pizza is served in the cafeteria. No, it’s socioeconomics.
Donn Esmonde (who is an Ass™) lays his anti-suburb prejudice bare with his dopey strawman argument. (Where have you ever read anyone write that suburban teachers are better than city teachers, much less that they “run laps around” them? Nowhere, you say? Me, neither.)
The city/suburbs performance divide underlines the grim reality of not just how racially segregated the region is, but – more to the point – how economically segregated it is. The median family income in towns housing the top five schools ranges from $84,155 (Aurora) to $98,914 (Clarence). Median family income in Buffalo? $36,700.
The researchers who wrote the Coleman Report would not be surprised. The landmark 1966 study concluded – with plenty of backup since – that the main factor in school performance is his how much money kids’ parents make and how educated they are. Period.
Yes, successful people with good educations place a high value on education and work hard to make sure their kids get a good one, too. But then, so do many poor people who want their kids to do better and have things that they themselves could never have. It’s a thing called social mobility – the American dream itself – and what do we make of these people who are low on the socioeconomic ladder, but want and demand better? And what of the teachers? Seems as if Esmonde takes a very complicated equation, dumbs it down, and denigrates teachers and poor families as hopelessly stuck.
Of course, a lot of people – including, sadly, test-obsessed state education officials – do not factor socioeconomics into test scores. If they did, they would – and should – grade on a demographic curve. Instead, they see the numbers as “proof” that high-ranking schools have better teachers, superior programs or some magic juju that spurs students. Teachers in tax-controversy Clarence are just the latest to use the rankings to justify $90,000-plus salaries, raises and nearly fully paid health care.
As a veteran columnist and journalist for the sole daily paper in town, one would expect Donn to write truthfully. Had he chosen to do so, or decided perhaps remotely to be accurate, he’d know that the teachers have almost completely stayed out of the tax controversy in Clarence. The teachers’ union has been, alas, too busy determining which members would need to lose their jobs in the wake of the defeat of the crisis budget, rather than engaging in a massive PR blitz to justify anything to anyone.
Simply put, Esmonde’s assertion that Clarence teachers have been making any argument at all in recent weeks is a baldfaced lie, and an insult to them. He also repeats his newfound tea partyism to denigrate the notion that a teacher with 30 – 40 years’ experience are entitled to make a good living with decent benefits. (Teachers in Clarence toil for 20 years before they even hit $50k per year). He is scapegoating people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the cause of the budget crisis in the first place. What a despicable and detestable liar.
I don’t want to diminish the good work that teachers do. But, for the most part, test scores are not about how good a particular school’s teachers are. Instead, they reflect the background of the kids they teach.
You just did, asshole. You should say these things to your teacher wife, to her face.
Doubt it? Then imagine this: Take all the kids from, say, Buffalo’s Burgard High and send them to Williamsville East for a year. Take the Williamsville East kids and send them to Burgard for a year. You don’t have to be a school superintendent to guess what would happen: Test scores at Burgard would skyrocket, test scores at Williamsville would nosedive.
It would not be because the Burgard teachers suddenly upped their game, or because the Williamsville teachers lost their touch. It would be about who is sitting at the desks.
That’s why regionalism guru David Rusk has long pushed for fairer housing policies, to ease the overload of poor families in inner cities. Everything from mandated mixed-income housing in the suburbs, to sprawl-reversing business tax breaks, fuels the economic integration that would level the field in classrooms across the region.
Hypothetical. Theory presented as fact. Ignorance of the fact that (a) anyone can pay a cheap tuition and send their kids to any public district in NYS at any time; and (b) there was (may still be) a program whereby kids were bused from Buffalo into Amherst schools. I can’t find the name of the program, or whether it’s still going on, but there it is.
Sprawl – the bogeyman for everyone who willfully ignores that North and South Buffalo are little more than, respectively, Tonawanda and West Seneca that happen to be accidentally within city boundaries. Sprawl – the word people invoke to effectively demand a Maoist long march of families from the evil suburbs to the joyful city – just carry what you can and stay on the path, lest the comrade guard beat you with a bamboo shaft!
“Housing policy is school policy,” wrote Rusk in a still-relevant 2001 report on Erie County schools. Inner-city classrooms “cannot overcome the many problems and minimal home support many children bring to school … With 80 percent poor children, you aren’t going to ‘fix’ the Buffalo schools.”
There is no reason for suburban teachers to check the school rankings and feel smug. Just as there is no reason city teachers – of whom my wife is one, although not in a classroom – to feel defensive. But given what is at stake, I think there is every reason to understand what these test scores are really about.
Good to see Esmonde finally owning up to the source of his anti-suburb / anti-suburban school animus. But this entire column is based on a false premise of crowing teachers. Quite the contrary, I haven’t seen any crowing about much of any of it, anywhere.
Some places do. There is a growing national movement to economically integrate schools. Studies show that poorer kids do better when surrounded by Hollister-wearing classmates. The upscale kids, in return, get the diversity benefit – hugely touted as a selling point by colleges – of meeting kids from a different background. It works all around.
Check the school rankings, if you insist. But if you want to put any weight behind the numbers, I think you first have to level the playing field.
Esmonde doesn’t detail what the hell he’s talking about. Which is it – redistributing poor kids into rich schools and vice-versa, or a unified Erie County school district? Since more kids in wealthier towns tend to come from families that value education, we should better integrate them with kids who come from homes with no such value in schooling, and what will happen, precisely? The kids who come from homes where no one gives a shit will somehow magically excel?
If you present the problem as being one of fundamental socioeconomic divergence – whereby one population is rich, white, and cares about schools – and the other is poor, black, and doesn’t care about schools – what specific solution does Esmonde provide here, except to bus poor kids to rich districts and vice-versa? If the socioeconomic problem is so stark, shouldn’t we be talking about much, much more than a long bus ride? Aren’t there systemic, societal problems that go deeper than “sprawl” and ‘teachers are greedy’?
Socioeconomic factors matter, but the worst school district has the 2nd best high school. How can that be possible?
Well, it’s possible because socioeconomics are just part of a larger, more complicated equation – not the sine qua non of school or student success, as Esmonde suggests. That equation is made up by home makeup, parental education (which is the most significant factor in predicting a child’s educational achievement), parental values and expectations, but also good teachers and quality programs. Programs that kids who come from poor or middle-class homes need more than the richer kids whose families can afford private replacements.
A correspondent tells me that Amherst’s Windermere elementary school is a Title 1 poverty district, and 40% of kids there are ESL or in special education. Socioeconomics without parental involvement, however, aren’t a predictor of success, and that parental involvement is the bigger factor. By no means should anyone reduce or discard the importance that an inspiring teacher can have on a kid’s education and lifelong success. Without parental support, involvement, and valuing education, even the best teacher will fail.
Buffalo itself is segregated into families that care and families that don’t. Does Esmonde recommend kids who did poorly in school or have a track record of being absent more than present come in to City Honors to maintain the equality he demands from suburban districts? No, of course not – City Honors is the school for Buffalo’s elite and Esmonde would never dare to upset them or their suburb-in-the-city existence. He is one of them. Imagine if someone had suggested they simply arbitrarily mixed in some kids from Burgard at City Honors, as Esmonde recommends? Why not?
The key isn’t money – the key is whether the family values education as a path to lifetime success. Because what we’re talking about is social mobility and improving upon one’s family history, and to that end, Esmonde gives up on the poor from uneducated households and assigns to them a lifetime of failure and misery that could only be alleviated if you move them in with rich white people. What a cop-out. What a capitulation.
My God, Donn Esmonde is an Ass.™
Donny’s Style Manual #1: Non-Sequitur Tielman Invocation
I have absolutely nothing negative whatsoever to say about Bernice Radle and Jason Wilson. I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the Buffalo Young Preservationists, who are fighting for what they believe in, (even if I occasionally disagree with them).
There are a lot of so-called activists in town who are opaque about what they actually do for money, but at least Radle and Wilson have proper jobs, on the books, and try to save buildings and neighborhoods in their spare time. Not only that, but they hold degrees and jobs that have something to do with planning and preservation.
To my mind, Radle and Wilson have infinitely more educational and professional bona fides to talk about planning and preservation matters than the guy who runs a protectioneering racket. After all, neither Bernice nor Jason have taken developers to court, but excepted the ones who hire them as “consultants”.
Donny Kissinger
Only the severely deluded would agree that it’s a good idea for Buffalo and New York to enlist Donn Esmonde to mediate a high-stakes dispute between the State of New York and the governments of Canada and Ontario. What would we do without his measured tone and earnest concern? For starters, we’d probably have a bridge by now. After advocating for a signature crossing 13 years ago, Esmonde has spent his time since then criticizing everything about Peace Bridge expansion.
Actually, today’s column is one, long concern troll.
Esmonde assigns every stitch of blame for the current fight over the bureaucracy and management of the bridge to Governor Cuomo and the American members. As if it doesn’t take two sides to maintain an unreasonable squabble, and as if the Canadians hadn’t had their share of bad behavior – including One saying sexist things against a female American bridge official.
Back in 2000, Esmonde was on the side of the New Millenium Group and the people in Buffalo who demanded not a twin span, but a signature bridge – a bridge that would stand out and be not only functional, but beautiful. The Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority (PBA) had decided in 1994 that it would build a companion span. Twenty years later, there is still the one steel bridge, and the American plaza still looks like an unwelcoming toll plaza. I wonder how Esmonde feels, writing about the same topic he did in 1997? Yet after pimping the signature span in 2000, he went to denigrating waterfront champion Congressman Brian Higgins in 2008.
When a bridge fell into Lake Champlain, Albany undertook an audit and review of other bridges. It deemed the steel Peace Bridge structure unsafe.
Why did Donn Esmonde support the lawsuit to bring about a “signature bridge”, and now supports people threatening lawsuits to block construction of the signature bridge?
Which is it, Donn? “Better bridge” or no bridge?
Well, it’s “no bridge“. Esmonde has spent the last decade lauding anyone with a white beard and a lawyer. We don’t need any peace bridge expansion, he now says.
After 20 years of plans, a new Peace Bridge will remain unbuilt — pragmatically, I think, in light of declining traffic and questionable economic boost.
Esmonde calls for the PBA to fix itself, and fast – to de-escalate the fight. But why do we need a separate authority for the Peace Bridge, on the one hand; and the Niagara County crossings on the other? Couldn’t the entire thing be made “lighter, quicker, cheaper” if we only had one authority for all the crossings? Is there something special about the Peace Bridge? Is there something inadequate about the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission that it couldn’t expand and change its name to “Niagara Frontier Bridge Commission” or something?
Donn Esmonde usually becomes verbally turgid over the phrase emphasized in the preceding paragraph. But after almost 20 years of waiting for increased Peace Bridge capacity, Esmonde says we shouldn’t rush these things. What?
And our own little Kissinger – how diplomatic has been towards the Canadians? How about this column he wrote just 2 years ago, expressing how “disillusioned” he was by Canadians down here for a hockey tournament, (what else?), and some drunken brawls (of course).
Whatever happened to the polite, humble, rule-respecting folks we thought we knew? Where were the civic-minded citizens who dutifully wait at the street corner when the traffic light is red, even when no cars are coming? Wherever you are, we want you back…
…I talked to workers at a downtown bar/restaurant that will remain nameless, to protect the place’s cross-border business. By tournament’s end, they had disdain for all things emblazoned with a Maple Leaf. The main complaint, and this is not new, is a lot of Canadian hockey fans are awful tippers.
“They would have a few beers and leave like a quarter or 50 cents,” said one bartender, who for job security reasons asked that his name not be used. “Servers said they were getting two-dollar tips on a $25 check.”
OK, chronically bad tipping is not cause for a diplomatic crisis. But multiply it by a few thousand visitors, and you leave behind a lot of irritation.
Donn Esmonde as diplomat. I’ve honestly never heard anything so ridiculous.
This is part of an ongoing AV Daily series, “Donn Esmonde is an Ass“
Donny And The Great Concrete Elevator
Donn Esmonde just loves the grain elevators, and he loves people who love what he loves. Those crumbling concrete gravestones to a long-gone industrial time might be big and ugly, but by gosh they tell a story.
Something about it. Photo by Chris Smith via Flickr
These things matter.
Esmonde skips through his paean to placemaking, extolling the wondrous things that nostalgia can bring – a buyer for a peeling behemoth on Lake Erie an outfit called FFZ Holdings bought at auction June 7th for just $475,000.
True, they are more beast than beauty, comparatively closer to mastodons than to mermaids. Yet to this Buffalo transplant, they always seemed like concrete dinosaurs, rising from the scrub brush along the Buffalo River plain like frozen-in-time fossils. Their inert mass stamped Buffalo’s broad-shouldered identity and shouted “sense of place” in an increasingly homogenized world. What was not to like?
For decades, [grain elevator aficionado Lorraine] Pierro has been their fiercest champion. “This is our history,” she said. “It seems like there is a new appreciation and recognition of them.”
FFZ Holdings is located at the same 26 Mississippi Avenue address as Savarino Companies, and it was named as a co-developer of some apartments on Ohio Street in the remnants of the “Erie Freight House”. Remember how receptive Esmonde’s friends in the preservation community were to the Savarino-proposed demolition of the freight house? I wonder how much taxpayers will be on the hook with various and sundry incentives and corporate welfare schemes to renovate Mr. Esmonde’s beloved concrete monstrosities.
Is there a similar preservation movement in Europe to preserve Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks because “sense of place” and historical significance?
Maybe more people could learn about the historic freight houses of the Erie Canal and the reasons why grain elevators are important if schools weren’t being starved into oblivion by alleged school reformer tea party hacks such as the ones Donn Esmonde now promotes.
This is part of a new, ongoing AV Daily series, Donn Esmonde is an Ass. Email us ways Donn Esmonde is an ass here.
Canalside 2016: Visualizing Lawns and Toilets
Canalside is unfinished. Like Benjamin West’s portrait of the American delegation to the 1783 Peace of Paris, the parts that are done are great, but it remains in a sort of perpetual limbo. A recent Buffalo News article underscores how the current “lighter, quicker, cheaper” fetish has left us with a Canalside that fails to live up to its potential as a year-round attraction. The blame for that runs wide and deep, and the project is held back to this day because of it.
To examine Canalside today, we ought to do so within its recent historical context, and the insufferably political one-step-forward, two-steps-back progress on the Inner Harbor. This brings us, inevitably, to Bass Pro.
Like so many things we Buffalonians pay attention to, the Bass Pro story enjoyed quite the arc from hope to joke. When Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello and Governor George Pataki ironically donned camouflage and pre-Trump red caps to make the big announce in 2004, fully 12 years ago, Canalside didn’t exist and the whole area was asphalt and weeds.
New Buffalo
In July, Buffalo News columnist and public school opponent Donn Esmonde opined that the “demise of Bass Pro was [the] turning point for New Buffalo“. This is oversimplistic propaganda. Coming from Esmonde in particular, it’s patent narcissism.
First off, there is no consensus on even whether a “new Buffalo” exists, much less when and how it came about; to conclude that it had to do with Bass Pro is absurd. Let’s start with basics: the city of Buffalo’s population continues to shrink. An estimate from May 2015 shows a slowing of the loss of city residents, but a loss nonetheless. Since the 2010 Census, the population has shrunk about 1% per year. By contrast, Erie County’s population grew by a fraction of one percent. The city’s population peaked in 1950 and has been in decline ever since – most dramatically in the 1970s. A lot of that has to do with improved mobility, automation, a shift from regional to global economies and free trade, de-industrialization, and the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway. “Old” Buffalo of rust, decline, shame, and the butt of jokes has been palpably transformed into something that at least feels better, even if the data don’t all agree on objective economic or social improvement.
Unemployment is down, population loss seems to have stabilized, and people feel better about the region than in previous decades. Those of us in the area who have some amount of disposable income exalt in the new restaurants, shops, and startups in town. The #Buffalove is palpable as we witness art installations near the grain elevators, the rejuvenation of our waterfront, Hertel, Grant, and Elmwood are always changing and improving the quality of life for our cognoscenti. But you’re not generally going to have a rennaissance while shrinking. Bass Pro was not the cause of Buffalo’s decline, or its years-long civic and economic depression. It was, at best, a symptom of its time.
When Bass Pro was announced in 2004, there weren’t a lot of blogs. There was no Twitter, no Facebook. There was no real social media to speak of. Only kids used MySpace. That year Buffalo Rising began publishing online and a periodical, devoted to promoting good news about the City of Buffalo. Making Buffalo feel good about itself was a difficult task, but Buffalo Rising was at its forefront, never straying from its narrowly defined mission. Indeed, “New Buffalo” was a term that Buffalo Rising’s Newell Nussbaumer and George Johnson popularized, making it the centerpiece of their effort. As Buffalo Rising focused on economic good news, WNYMedia.net and its array of writers and podcasters focused on a broader range of subjects touching on Buffalo’s suburbs, its neglected and struggling outer neighborhoods, and its diseased political culture.
The turning point for New Buffalo was the adoption of online communication and debate, which later blended into social media. Credit is also due to Old Home Week, Jay Rey’s and Charity Vogel’s “Revitalize Buffalo” series that the Buffalo News published in 2004, and the grassroots offshoot organization that activist Amy Maxwell spearheaded. Not, as Esmonde claims,the rejection of an anchor tenant for Canalside. Esmonde writes,
Any road-to-revival capsulation that credits CEO-laden state agency boards, elected officials (with rare exception), or corporate power-brokers confuses cause with result.
Esmonde then goes on to quote and offer plaudits to Howard Zemsky, a CEO and corporate power-broker who sits on state agency boards. There is very little sunlight, the grand scheme of things, between Zemsky and former state agency/Canalside CEO powerbrokers Larry Quinn or Jordan Levy. They’re all well-off, well-connected political and business bigshots. Zemsky gets the high fives from Esmonde despite the fact that Larkinville is a suburban office park surrounded by a sea of surface parking. Quinn now fecklessly moistens a Paladino-aligned seat on the school board, and Levy has gone on to help kickstart the successful incubation and promotion of entrepreneurs and startups through 42 North. In Esmonde’s world, Levy’s philanthropy and activism merit no mention despite the fact that they strike at the heart of Buffalo’s long dilemma: industry and manufacturing are largely gone, so now what?
Bass Pro: Plans A-C
At first, Bass Pro was going to be the anchor of an Inner Harbor entertainment district, and the plan was for it to be sited in a renovated Memorial Auditorium. Over the course of years, we lived through a meaningless memorandum of understanding (MOU), debates about the use of public subsidies, then-County Executive Joel Giambra refusal to sign the MOU, then changing his mind, then whether we should use one-shot tobacco money, and whether sales tax rates should be hiked. We made it through Governor Pataki’s creation of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation at Brian Higgins’s urging, the naming of Canalside and the first 30-day deadline for Bass Pro to commit, which turned into a 60-day deadline, which turned into no deadline. For a period of time measured in years, the Bass Pro / Canalside project remained “imminent“. As the NYPA reauthorization moved forward, we reassured that Bass Pro’s secretive executive clique was uniformly and constantly in a state of perpetual excitement of the deal being done.
January 17, 2007 was supposed to be the final day for Bass Pro to commit to the Aud, but it never happened. The whole fiasco became emblematic of Buffalo’s pathetic pursuit of silver-bullets to rejuvenate itself. As the Aud project fizzled, the city decided instead to rip down the unused and largely unusable Aud. Bass Pro and the ECHDC then turned their attention in early 2007 to the Central Wharf, right down to the imminent- signed – deal and flyover animation.
At the top of list is the historic Central Wharf, across Scott Street from the Aud, directly on the Buffalo River. The approximately 1.5-acre site, adjacent to the recently rewatered Commercial Slip, is being eyed for a store that would resemble an original, early 1800s commercial structure.
Suddenly the local preservationist cliques went to war, threatening lawsuits even before any plan had been finalized or formalized. ECHDC then-Vice Chairman Larry Quinn led the pro-Bass fight as opponents of the nascent plan polluted the process with catchy, knowing buzzwords and false accusations of taxpayer giveaways, suburbanization, all summed up best by the word, “big box“. Quinn took the opposition on. Never mind that the structures that once sat on the Central Wharf were, in fact, big boxes.
Reasonable and unreasonable discussions galore were had about this downtown shopping mall. In any event, the Bass Pro on the Central Wharf idea was dead before it was ever born, a victim of propaganda and demagoguery as “chain stores” replaced “big box” as our civic bête noire. It also died thanks to the hubris and arrogance of the people entrusted with power, money, and leadership. Quinn had set forth the central wharf plan as a fait accompli, and set about doing what he does best – proving himself to be the smartest guy in the room, even when he isn’t.
Throughout the process, people wondered why ECHDC wouldn’t simply put in utilities, cobble the streets, and auction off parcels with very stringent use and design guidelines. Why isn’t that being done now? Could it be because people want to put their fingers on the scales when it comes to who gets the development deals? Maybe they can hire Alain Kaloyeros to handle the RFPs.
But Bass Pro was the project that wouldn’t die. When Quinn’s big box on the wharf failed, ECHDC pivoted in October 2007 to a plan C – a new-build on the site of the demolished Aud. Discussion ensued, and by 2008, Bass Pro was pleading with Buffalo to hurry things up, already. The project was up for public comment and was going to cost $500 million. Suddenly we had a “pre-development agreement”, which roughly translates as “nothing”, then more nothing, and more nothing, and angry nothing, all going through three governors in six years, generating little more than news reports, renderings, and animations.
By 2010, Bass Pro was a hilarious afterthought about which no one cared anymore. While Buffalo was awash in “fish or cut bait” jokes, people were still debating what to do down there. On July 21, 2010, Brian Higgins imposed a 14-day ultimatum for a final agreement with Bass Pro. Next came a lawsuit, before Bass Pro finally put everyone out of their misery and announced it was never coming to Buffalo, ever.
In the interim, Bass Pro’s main competitor, Cabela’s, opened a store on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga. Just this year, Bass Pro acquired Cabela’s, meaning western New York will have its Bass Pro after all. The whole protracted drama was bookended by Masiello and Pataki donning flannel on the one hand, and Carl Paladino invoking Marx and ACORN on the other, and a lot of typical failure in between. Reading through my WNYMedia.net commentary from 10 years ago, we were reasonable when necessary, snarky when not. We were hopeful, skeptical, informed, cynical, interested, and offered the community a forum to debate the whole thing. The conclusion? When it comes to discussion of development in Buffalo, don’t bet against the cynics.
Canalside After Bass Pro
Since that time, ECHDC pivoted to the “lighter, quicker, cheaper” “placemaking” alternative to development. In 2011, this led to the historic opening of “Clinton’s Dish”.
It’s all very nice, but ultimately placemaking is a scam. The group of people who demanded the Canalside “pause” also persuaded ECHDC to retain the services of Fred Kent from the Project for Public Spaces (at public expense), in order to explain how benches and triangulation would solve all the problems. As a result of this extended delay, we have literally seen the Webster Block go from asphalt eyesore to HarborCenter. Meanwhile, Canalside has the nice replica canals used for summertime and wintertime recreation, some temporary structures, and grass. We have the ice bikes, we have the truss bridges, we have Shark Girl, and we have the boardwalk.
But this is all a betrayal of the original promise of Canalside. Indeed, the very people who vehemently opposed the Bass Pro “big box” on the Central Wharf in 2008 demanded that ECHDC instead follow the 2004 Master Plan. OK, fine – they won and Bass Pro went away. So, when do we get this?
More to the point, when the Buffalo News reports on the new toilets and lawns, why aren’t the 2004 Master Plan proponents opposing that as strongly as they did the Bass Pro Central Wharf idea? Far be it from me to suggest that we should court some new big box or chain store. But when we take visitors down to Canalside, everyone agrees that it’s just great; everyone loves to take a selfie with Shark Girl, and do the handful of other things available. People enjoy that its “flexible lawns” can be used as a concert venue. But it wasn’t supposed to be just that. It was supposed to be more – something not too dissimilar from, say, Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace area. Placemaking enthusiast Mark Goldman had this to say to Donn Esmonde in 2011,
“It is not just people having picnics, it is good economic-development strategy,” Goldman added. “You start small, and it snowballs. By next summer, you’ll see private businesses lining up to come down—instead of asking for big, fat subsidies.”
Lighter, quicker, cheaper. Already, it’s working
It’s 2016. Five years later, there are no “private businesses” lined up “to come down”. It is, alas, “just people having picnics”. So what are we discussing now? Toilets.
In March, the “Buffalo Waterfront Heritage Coalition” had a great idea, but we never heard more about it.
This works! It’s waterfront-y and heritage-y! This truly reflects what the Central Wharf looked like during its industrial heyday. So, where is it? When will ECHDC let this thing just happen?
Not anytime soon, it appears.
But we don’t have Bass Pro, we don’t have Explore ‘n More, and we don’t have any major construction at Canalside; we instead have a major announcement of permanent bathrooms that will, presumably, be unlocked and available for use at all hours. We will get the solar powered carousel championed by former Erie County Legislator Joan Bozer. Also,
… the summer concerts [will be] relocated to a permanent performance stage on the Central Wharf.
On the backdrop of the stage will be a facade depicting the 19th century Union Steamboat Company. And facing it will be a pavilion that’s a ghosted structure meant to recall another 1850s-era canal district building. The building will serve as a shelter for shade, activities and entertainment.
Permanent stage? Ghosted replica facade? When did the 2004 Master Plan turn into this?
Who loves the ill-conceived jumble of disused lawns and a “permanent stage” with a ghosted faux-cade? Mark Goldman, the guy who strong-armed the ECHDC to hire Fred Kent and gave us “placemaking” in the first place.
Who doesn’t love seeing a “heritage-based” stage show on a windy 10 degree F day in February? What happened to this?
Transforming the Central Wharf at Canalside into some sort of permanent concert venue is a devastating mistake. If anything, it cements as permanent and perpetual a “flexible lawn” with Adirondack chairs, which was supposed to be a “placemaking” stopgap. When you look at the renderings from the 2004 there is a noticable absence of green space. Because it’s a city and this is its downtown. If you look at the renderings from the Waterfront Heritage Coalition, there are no big empty lawns. Instead of Buffalo’s Faneuil Hall, we’re planning a summertime concert venue/lawn-cum-frozen wasteland exposed to lake winds. We already have a summertime waterfront concert venue – disused though it may be – at LaSalle Park.
Buffalo is now in its second decade waiting for something more permanent to be done around Canalside. Look at the 2012 renderings from Brian Higgins’ Flickr account shown above – see the people? They’re there because there are things to do. Not just selfies and skating, but food, drinks, shopping, art, and crafts. Maybe offices, apartments, and hotels. The possibilities are exciting, but not as long as we’re stuck with ghosted facade stages that placate the naysayers. There are no implements being used right now to construct anything seen in the renderings shown above. Canalside’s promise remains years away.
If ECHDC is satisfied with satisfying Mark Goldman, that’s not good enough. It has the power, money, influence, and ability to do something with these parcels right now. Subdivide them and make them ready for development. Sell them. Enough with the “designated developer” nonsense to reward campaign donors. It can grow organically – it doesn’t need to be a Benderson project or a Ciminelli project or an Ellicott project. It can be all or none of those.
Let’s aim higher than toilets, lawns, police substations, and bullshit phony stages. We can do better than this, and it doesn’t even take much imagination to do it. Canalside is better than just a venue for the Buffalo News to take 200 pictures for a Buffalo.com “Smiles at” clickbait featurette. We’ve been patient. Give us what we’re waiting for.
This Place Matters
The Execrable Donn Esmonde, the Buffalo News’ retired, detestable anti-suburbs, anti-public school ersatz-columnist, has finally stumbled upon a building he’d like to demolish. In a column hilarious for its blatant hypocrisy, Mr. Preservation, Mr. “This Place Matters”, calls for the implosion and disposal of the 40-story modernist but distressed structure that stands empty at the foot of Main Street. The guy who lauds Tielman, Goldman, and Termini for their historic preservation of Buffalo’s existing buildings, regardless of their architectural merit (see, e.g., Freezer Queen), reckons we should rip down the city’s most prominent tower.
The city’s roster of registered landmarks contains an armful of bog-standard square brick warehouses and the Tishman Building, but not our most prominent skyline feature? That’s amazing.
In the late 60s, the thriving and locally-owned Marine Midland Bank retained the world-renowned firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill to design its world headquarters. (They also did the Albright Knox’s annex). This was when Buffalo was deep into its catastrophic urban renewal, which was the trend at the time. But just like Boston can’t just un-do its uninvitingly Brutalist Government Center and City Hall, Buffalo can’t just eliminate a temporarily inconvenient skyscraper. One Seneca Tower’s occupancy rate was close to 90% less than five years ago. When HSBC, the Canadian Consulate,and Philips Lytle vacated all within weeks of each other, the building essentially emptied out.
That doesn’t mean it’s useless. Just because it’s difficult for one out-of-town investor to execute a rehabilitation plan doesn’t mean it’s impossible, nor does it render the building garbage. Or insignificant. Or ripe for demolition.
If the peeling, dilapidated, blight of the Freezer Queen is worth saving, how is it that One Seneca Tower is worth demolishing?
Because Rocco Termini and Paul Ciminelli say it’s hard to redevelop.
Maybe Termini could open up another hipster fast food joint named after a sex position made from faux shipping containers. Maybe Ciminelli just hasn’t paid off contributed to the right politicians to make the project work. So many variables, so little “belovedness”.
Forget the bottomless-pocket developer with more optimism than sense.
What the giant albatross of One Seneca Tower may need more than anything is David Copperfield.
The best thing that could happen for downtown is for the vacant, 38-story behemoth to suddenly disappear.
Problem solved, with the wave of a wand.
The New York City developer who conditionally bought Buffalo’s tallest building backed out last week. Harvey Kaylie was predictably unable to find anyone to help lift the $27 million purchase load – and estimated $100 million rehab.
The problem isn’t that the place is too big to fail. It’s too big to fill.
For now.
One Seneca Tower stands a block from a still-under-construction Canalside, a place where the old Donovan building has undergone a gut rehab and the Pegulas put up a massive 20-story hotel and rink project. One Canalside has 8 stories, housing a law firm and a hotel. That’s 28 stories recently completed steps from the 38-story Tower. The demand for space there may not be there now, because it’s over 40 years old, empty, has high carrying costs, and needs rehab. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible or unfeasible.
Esmonde won an award for championing the preservation of the Richardson Towers – a series of buildings that stood empty for decades before someone finally, recently, undertook a rehabilitation. LP Ciminelli is in charge of that costly, heavily subsidized rehabilitation, but the former insane asylum is “beloved”. Specifically, the Richardson deal is, “assisted by $64 million in State funding.”
That’s the reason only out-of-towners have sniffed around this stinker. The locals who know the Buffalo market understand that the numbers don’t make sense. Not for $27 million. Not, maybe, for $27.
“I wouldn’t touch it for a dollar,” developer Paul Ciminelli said. “It’s so big. You’ve got $100 million in rehab, plus years of carrying costs before you turn the lights on.”
Benderson spent $30 million to re-do the empty Donovan Building. HarborCenter cost the Pegulas an estimated $172 million. But $100 million is too much? Hell, the state is paying Ciminelli $750 million to do the SolarCity facility. I guess the argument is that the people earning bigger bucks at SolarCity or the Medical Campus simply wouldn’t be interested in living, working, or playing in a mixed-use rehabilitation of a building with the best views in Buffalo – and underground parking, to boot.
The former HSBC Tower is a symbol of a particular time in Buffalo’s past, but only the short-sighted or cynical would think it is valueless going forward.
The Urban Land Institute suggested a few years ago that the community “partner” in the building’s revival with a huge subsidy. That notion landed with a thud. The CEO of Ciminelli Development thinks any tax dollars would be better spent on a wrecking ball.
“To me, demo it for $20 million and put out [development] proposals for a great, open site,” Ciminelli said. “You could do something exceptional there.”
Just not 38 stories high.
Granted, demolition is an extreme solution. And not the first option. But it’s not as if the building is beloved.
That last sentence underscores the cynical phoniness of a lot of “historical preservation” in Buffalo. It’s not really about a building’s objective historical significance – it’s about emotion. One Seneca Tower is not “beloved”, so the preservationists’ signature propagandist is okay with its demolition. Yet Freezer Queen and Trico are somehow “beloved”? The Bethlehem Steel administration building was so “beloved”, it had been vacant, ignored, and covered in weeds for decades.
It looks like it was birthed by a mammoth waffle iron. It’s hardly unique – the same uninspiring mold stamped out a multitude of similarly cross-hatched ’70s buildings. Its perimeter is infuriatingly anti-urban – a square block walled off from its surroundings, like a castle designed to keep out the infidels. The building is part of an architectural era aptly known as “brutalism.” If we’re lucky, the tower – in a two-for-one demo deal – will take out the Skyway on the way down.
Inaccurate. It shares its design with only one other building – a tower in Minneapolis – and is an example of modernist, not brutalist, architecture. (They are related, but not identical. Brutalism usually incorporates bare concrete, which isn’t used in the One Seneca Tower). According to Architecture.com, modernism is recognized by its use of “rectangular or cubist shapes; minimal or no ornamentation; steel and or reinforced concrete; large windows; [and their] open plan.” As for its fortress-like base, there are no doubt myriad ways that skilled designers could figure out ways to improve that, especially if the structure is transformed into a mixed residential/hotel/business building.
Put an observation deck and restaurant on the top floor, while we’re at it. No building has better views.
One thing is certain: The huge empty building is an embarrassment. It stands at the foot of Main Street like a giant exclamation counterpoint to downtown’s rebirth and Canalside’s development. As long as its lights are out – and the nearby 19-story Statler’s cup remains 9/10ths empty – downtown’s revival comes with a huge asterisk.
It’s been empty for only a couple of years; five years ago it was filled and bustling. Now that new uses for it must be examined, there’s a cost involved in updating it. But Buffalo is “America’s Best-Designed City” with One Seneca Tower in it. When talking about a flop-house-turned-luxury-hotel, Esmonde says, “We are repopulating downtown and transforming such icons of the past as the Lafayette Hotel – saved from the wrecking ball – into foundations of our future. It’s deeply gratifying for all of those who fought over the years for civic sanity.” Except for the city’s largest and most prominent building. Go ahead and rip it down because it’s not “beloved” by Esmonde and his clique. “So many of the stories we now tell about Buffalo and our identity concern sites or buildings that were saved by preservationists.” Except, I guess, the story of Marine Midland Bank. I guess that entity doesn’t “matter”, and isn’t part of Buffalo’s “identity”.
Maybe it all means that Tim Tielman doesn’t like the tower, so Esmonde doesn’t care, either. When the Chautauqua Institution announced plans to re-construct its auditorium to make it technologically up-to-date and ADA compliant, Esmonde had a predictable fit. It’s “beloved”, after all. Buffalo’s tallest building? Meh.
Life was good, when former tenant HSBC Bank took up three-quarters of the space. The bank’s departure three years ago made a huge sucking sound still echoing through 1 million square feet of emptiness.
When the preservationists demanded that Trico not be demolished, one person said that place “mattered” because her parents met while working there. Yet, a place that is – if nothing else – symbolic of Buffalo’s never-ending aspirations to be a world-class city should be demolished without a second thought. Maybe we just need to find some people whose parents met while working at HSBC.
If it was Matt Enstice who was advocating for the demolition of the tower, rather than Ciminelli or Termini, Esmonde would be screaming for it to be heart-bombed, the subject of a teach-in, and treated to a human chain.
“They’re testing the market, and finding out there is no market,” said developer Rocco Termini, who counts the 1904 Hotel @ The Lafayette among his downtown resurrections. “The smart money is not going for that building. There’s so much space to fill.”
Termini thinks the building may be beyond private-sector salvation. If the price drops to $10 million, he thinks the state should step in with Buffalo Billion dollars and repurpose One Seneca.
Termini can rehabilitate a warehouse and turn it into lofts because of a public subsidy. Rocco Termini and Paul Ciminelli don’t have the vision, inclination, or money to rehabilitate Buffalo’s tallest tower, but perhaps someone does. Maybe not right now, but at some point. Suffice it to say that demolition seems, at the very least, extraordinarily wasteful. That building may need rehab, but everything about it was designed for flexibility of use, and the location is unbeatable.
“They’re running out of space on the Medical Campus, which is connected [to One Seneca] by Metro Rail – and you’ve got underground parking at the Tower,” noted Termini. “ECC is spending $30 million on a STEM building at North Campus. It would work better in One Seneca. I can’t believe the state couldn’t find a use for the building.”
It may have to. Unless somebody has a spare $100 million, we’re looking for a magic wand – or a wrecking ball.
From the City’s own statutes,
The Preservation Board shall, upon such investigation as it deems necessary, make a determination as to whether a proposed landmark, landmark site or historic district meets one or more of the following criteria:
(1) It has character, interest or value as part of the development, heritage or cultural characteristics of the City, state or nation.
Buffalo’s own Marine Midland Bank built One Seneca Tower to be its world headquarters. Marine Midland’s history goes back to 1850, when it was founded in Buffalo to serve the economic needs of Buffalo’s waterfront. The tower was an emblem of its then-prominence as the region’s largest bank; by 1980, it was a national bank with $20 billion in assets.
(2) Its location is a site of a significant local, state or national event.
(3) It exemplifies the historic, aesthetic, architectural, archaeological, educational, economic or cultural heritage of the City, state or nation.
That location at the base of Main Street and adjacent to Canalside is undoubtedly significant, and the building exemplifies the economic and historic heritage of the City of Buffalo. Again, it was built to be the headquarters of a locally based national banking entity. It’s not very sexy, but neither are wiper blades.
(4) It is identified with a person or persons who significantly contributed to the development of the City, state or nation.
The people who created Marine Midland helped to finance the growth of Buffalo’s waterfront industries – the ones that left places like Silo City behind. How can Silo City matter, but not the bank that financed its creation?
(5) It embodies distinguishing characteristics of an architectural style valuable for the study of a period, type, method of construction or use of indigenous materials.
(6) It is the work of a master builder, engineer, designer, architect or landscape architect whose individual work has influenced the development of the City, state or nation.
(7) It embodies elements of design, detailing, materials or craftsmanship that render it architecturally significant.
(8) It embodies elements that make it structurally or architecturally innovative.
It is a Modernist building designed by world-renowned architects who also built other landmarks such as the Lever Building in New York and Chicago’s Sears Tower. Nothing in this code, it should be noted, mentions whether a building is “beloved”.
(9) It is a unique location or contains singular physical characteristics that make it an established or familiar visual feature within the City.
I’m pretty sure that the tallest building in Buffalo – which has had that title since its construction – has “singular physical characteristics” that make it a “familiar visual feature” of Buffalo’s.
B. Any structure, property or area that meets one or more of the above criteria shall also have sufficient integrity of location, design, materials and workmanship to make it worthy of preservation or restoration.
There’s nothing wrong with the Tower; it’s not structurally unsound nor otherwise objectively unworthy of preservation or updating. It’s ready to go – 40 stories of what was until very recently Class A office space.
But it’s not “beloved”, and Donn Esmonde talked to two buddies who are developers, and they say it’s hard to rehab. So, Donn Esmonde has found for himself the very first building whose demolition he advocates.
Perhaps we could slap some red cardboard cut-out hearts with slogans like “This Place Matters” and “#Buffalove”, and people could learn to love it.
The Buffalo News’ Tacky Sign
No way this is in the 2004 Master Plan.
The Buffalo News building has the good fortune to be across the street from Canalside. The News moved into its current location in 1973, and the building is, from street level, somewhat imposing – concrete and institutional, like a Communist-era Warsaw apartment block. That was all well and good for the time when it was kitty-corner from some surface parking and the old, ugly, Donovan Building, but now it’s surrounded by new, shiny things like the Courtyard by Marriott and the other Marriott with 716 and the rinks in it – Harborcenter.
The more we celebrate history, the more it helps Canalside. – Donn Esmonde
So, the Buffalo News building is, I suppose, something of a brutalist anachronism. Tolerable, but unfortunate.
But just this week, something tacky happened.
There’s been a recent outcropping of these LED advertising billboards in town – one on Oak Street inbound, another on the 190 in Black Rock, and now this on the side of the Buffalo News. When I saw the unlit sign on the side of the building this past weekend, I thought that the News might be trying to get a sort of Times Square vibe at that corner, like some sort of haphazard effort to transform that particular corner into a modern-day Shelton Square. But instead, it just looks vulgar.
The historic elements are what gives everything around it credence and value. Fads and businesses come and go. History has a generation-to-generation appeal. That’s why it’s so disappointing that this stuff hasn’t been done. – Tim Tielman, to Donn Esmonde
It reminded me of an article that the News’ own self-righteous retired columnist Donn Esmonde wrote in April 2003. In a three-peeves-in-one blog post, Esmonde excoricated WGRZ for the chain link fence topped with barbed wire that then surrounded its parking lot fronting Franklin Street. He wrote,
Thousands of visitors here for last weekend’s Frozen Four hockey championship were drawn to the Chippewa bars. They raved about our great downtown buildings. And they noticed, in the heart of downtown, the prisonlike fence around the Channel 2 parking lot.
The cyclone fence topped by rings of razor wire wasn’t welcomed when it went up six years ago. It hasn’t improved with age, as the Chippewa boom attracts more people and events like the Frozen Four bring out-of-towners.
Downtown is safer than ever, but the razor wire suggests it’s a combat zone. It doesn’t just startle tourists and less-hearty suburbanites. Restaurateur Mark Croce has sunk more than a million bucks into three places near Channel 2, including his upscale Chop House. Diners coming for a $30 steak first feast on the Attica ambience next door.
“I’ve had countless (patrons) say (the fence) is ridiculous for this part of downtown,” said Croce.
Despite numerous pleas to lose the razor wire, Channel 2 General Manager Darryll Green just says no. He says it protects his people, trucks and satellite equipment.
“You’ve got empty buildings on Main Street,” said Green. “Our fence isn’t the problem downtown.”
True. But it’s not helping. It belongs in a factory district, not on a thriving nightlife strip.
Green says the station can’t afford the security cameras and guards that work for other businesses. He’s open to other suggestions. We’d hate to think it’s time to pass the hat for the local NBC affiliate.
That was long before Esmonde went on to champion the placemaking plan for Canalside, emphasizing green space and history and “lighter, quicker, cheaper“, and “flexible lawns”, and solar powered carousels. It was all supposed to be special – it was supposed to be like the very epicenter of our unique “sense of place” and authenticity.
Yet here is the Buffalo News – the paper that employed him and continues to pay him – throwing a cheap, tacky LED advertising sign on the side of its building. Mind you, the News didn’t slap that cheap piece of trash on the side of the buiding facing the 190, but right on the corner facing Canalside, where all the people looking for their flexible lawns, a sense of place, and maybe a Bass Pro will see it.
If WGRZ needed shaming over its barbed wire fence, then the News needs some shaming for uglying up Canalside.
And it’s not just the garish, cheesy sign – how about all of that prime street-level real estate that is completely empty on the News’ ground floor? If you’re going to take advantage of your building’s proximity to a new local downtown attraction, why not put that space to use? As it stands now, you have a brutalist fortress of a building with an empty ground level and the sort of tasteless LED signage you might expect in downtown Minsk or Ulan Baator.
But maybe we’ve solved part of the problem for One Seneca Tower.
We can improve any part of Buffalo by slapping a cheap LED “advertise here” sign on the side of something. Does this all follow the 2004 Canalside Master Plan? The guy in the tree suit probably wants to know.
It’s nice that history shapes the look and feel of Canalside. It’d be even nicer to finally make more of the real history that inspires it. – Donn Esmonde.
Crappy 2014 Retrospective Post
For some reason, not all of my posts transferred neatly from Artvoice to here. Nevertheless, even though I already wrote that year-end retrospective posts suck, here is my sucky 2014 retrospective.
Tom Bauerle’s episode. Geoff Kelly and I didn’t think the story was newsworthy enough to run with, even though we had enough information to publish something. The Buffalo News ran it, and I questioned why it might be something for public consumption. Its abrupt relegation to “life and arts” seemed like vindication.
Dennis Gabryszak’s toilet video. Ew.
We had to vet a former Buffalo chef’s bullshit. By way of reminder, his dad’s credentials to tell you the weather are “has looked out the window before”.
Here are some thoughts about how the country has moved away from its roots in the Enlightenment.
Eat chicken wings however the fuck you please, and call them whatever you want.
The NYS Thruway Authority is the worst. It is emblematic of what’s wrong with all NYS Authorities; mired in 50s groupthink, resistant to change, wasteful.
I posted this. It’s still accurate. Today is “elevated”.
WBEN is, generally, the voice of horrible things and people. Not Buffalo. Its operations director went so far as to fantasize about committing acts of physical violence against Hillary Clinton, and cheering street thugs harassing a peaceful protester. It came down to Tim Wenger’s WBEN basically being fascist.
Donn Esmonde is still an ass. Also, horrible.
Clarence resisted an effort to ban or otherwise restrict books on the ELA curriculum. Here’s the list, followed by my interpretation of it.
Clarence School Curriculum Letter March 2014 by Alan Bedenko
The Clarence List by Alan Bedenko
In an astonishing display of self-parody, certain people were offended that Mark Poloncarz ceremoniously “pardoned” a butter lamb.
The dad of my best friend from grade school and college passed away this year, and this was my effort to pay homage to him.
Mark Grisanti so angered the gun-hugging right that they opted instead to elect a pro-union liberal Democrat. Thanks, dummies!
In the meantime, it was time to shame all those slutty sluts with their sex and whatnot.
Carl Paladino – a guy whom I got to meet in person for the first time this year – is also still horrible.
Kathy Weppner on ISIS and Ebola and Islam by Alan Bedenko
Did we ban the Ebola flights yet? We had a horrible outbreak of Obola, for real.
Horrible people made up lies about the local League of Women Voters in order to try desperately to score a political point.
I don’t think building some apartments and other buildings on the Outer Harbor is such an awful idea. Neither would a customs and immigration union / statutory harmonization with Canada.
Local Republicans practically salivated over the prospect of Donald Trump running for governor. Boy, that would have been awesome. Bob McCarthy got to fly in Trump’s jet and likely sharted from excitement.
Electoral fusion is still corrupting everyone. (Again and again). Demand better from Albany. We deserve it.
Don’t let lunatics define you.
Correcting Weppner by Alan Bedenko
We might be getting some sort of justice, as it seems that AwfulPAC is under state and federal investigation.
What would a 2014 retrospective be without invoking Kathy Weppner, who kept us entertained all season long? Thanks for running, Kathy.
Happy New Year! Nice skating rink and stuff!
About
I’m Alan Bedenko. I’m a lawyer by trade, and I’ve lived in western New York since September 2001. I grew up in downstate New York and attended college in Boston, and lived in Massachusetts for some time after that. I’ve been blogging since September 2003. It started with a local effort to elect General (Ret.) Wesley Clark President in 2004.
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