By Mark Scheer
Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS —
When Tom Yots looks at the empty lot on Buffalo Avenue between Fourth and Sixth streets, one word comes to mind: Tragedy.
Decades ago, the site was home to one of the higher profile structures in Niagara Falls — the old Shredded Wheat administration building.
Today, it is another reminder to the city’s historian about what happens sometimes in the name of progress.
“The building was in very good condition,” Yots said of the building, which was torn down in the 1980s. “It was on the National Register and it was demolished to make a shovel-ready site. It is still waiting for the shovels that never came.”
Yots and members of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission believe the city should be doing more to avoid losing buildings of significance to the wrecking ball.
He has been promoting more of a “mothball” approach to dealing with the city’s housing stock, suggesting a lot of money and a lot of valuable buildings could be saved if the city elected to tear down fewer vacant homes and structures.
“I think what we have to do is encourage people and make them understand that they have an asset here instead of a liability,” Yots said.
Yots draws his inspiration from the City of Buffalo where some developers have had success turning the old and abandoned into the new and habitable. He points to the “Lofts at 136” where developer Jake Schneider is turning the old Alling & Cory building next to Erie Community College’s city campus into housing for 300 students. The project will resurrect a six-story structure built in 1910 that has been vacant for the past seven years.
“It’s happening in Buffalo,” Yots said. “It’s happening in other communities. It could happen here.”
Buffalo architect Clinton Brown, who is working on his own lofts development project at the old South Junior High School building in Niagara Falls, agrees. Brown’s firm has been involved in several adaptive re-use projects involving historically significant structures in Buffalo and said there’s a market for similar work in the Falls.
Both communities, Brown said, suffer from the aftereffects of the nation’s manufacturing boom _ rows and rows of large homes with fewer big families to live in them.
After the factories in Western New York closed, many of the homes around them were abandoned and Brown said many were built to accommodate the traditional American family — a much larger group involving more children than the typical home would have today. While inner cities in places like Niagara Falls would ideally prefer to promote available housing stock to college graduates, young professionals, couples and empty-nesters, Brown said the available homes are very often too large, too expensive to heat and do not fit their needs.
A conversion is necessary, according to Brown, who concedes that the transition has not been easy, nor is it widely accepted as a better alternative to demolition.
“The people who stuck in out in Upstate New York are very frustrated,” Brown said. “But, you don’t shoot the wounded.”
Brown believes upstate New York has a “cash crop” in vacant housing just waiting to be harvested for re-use. He likes that plan better than the alternative: Tearing down buildings and leaving behind vacant lots.
“It’s cheaper to mothball a building than it is to demolish it,” Brown said.
City officials have taken steps aimed at taking a closer look at the available housing stock in some neighborhoods. The city’s Urban Renewal Agency last month agreed to craft a plan for redevelopment of the neighborhood north of Niagara Street near the downtown area. The consultant, Parsons Brinckerhoff, will review existing housing stock and identify potential development opportunities in the area bordered by Niagara Street to the south, Pine Avenue to the north, Main Street to the west and 10th Street to the east. The so-called “draft action plan” will identify properties the agency may wish to acquire for economic development projects and will result in the creation of a request for proposals to solicit redevelopment ideas from private investors. Dyster has said the Seneca Nation of Indians has expressed an interest in finding suitable housing for its casino and hotel employees in the Niagara Street area.
“One of the challenges for cities like Niagara Falls is to take the housing stock you have and keep adapting it to the needs of society,” Mayor Paul Dyster said. “What we are looking for are opportunities to convert buildings over. If you have the right type of housing, there can be a huge demand for it.”
Dyster said planning efforts like the one being undertaken by the URA will help the city get a handle on what it has to offer so it can bring in investors who are capable of making properties the city has now more attractive for potential end-users.
“We have to overcome the general perception that Niagara Falls is a dangerous, dirty place to live,” Dyster said. “Those of us who live in the city know that is not always the case, but when you are asking someone who is not familiar with the city to come in, buy a vacant home and rehab it, chance are they already have a perception about the quality of life here.” Yots and other members of the historic preservation commission have approached officials at city hall in the community development department about the possibility of changing the approach to handling abandoned houses and buildings. He would like some funds currently allocated for demolition to be set aside as part of incentive program aimed at attracting people to Niagara Falls who would be willing to invest in rehabilitation projects that would turn old houses and buildings into new apartments, lofts and commercial spaces.
He does not object to demolition in cases where structures pose public health threats or safety hazards, but said using money to button-up properties before they end up too far gone makes more sense long term. Too many valuable structures, he said, have already been left to rot in the elements for too many years.
“The idea of mothballing is to keep them from further deterioration,” he said.
