KCA Newsletter - October, 1999

Well, it's been another amazing summer thanks to our energetic, never-tiring residents and activists. The following sections will try to capture in a succinct manner all the wondrous activities that have taken place in our neighborhood this summer:

Garden Walk
Our neighborhood participated in the Forever Elmwood Garden Walk for the first time ever. The effort and accomplishment was wonderful!

• Special thanks to Ann Angelo for all her years of effort in Symphony Circle and all her hours of work to have our area included on the Forever Elmwood Garden Walk.
• Information Table Volunteers - Even those who didn't have their house on the Garden Walk got involved! Thanks to Joyce Berg, Bill Lindner and Mayer Brothers for working out the donation of the water as well as picking up the water and setting it up in front of the Coda Restaurant. It was enjoyed by walkers as they braved the hot weather! Also thanks to the following people for greeting people into our neighborhood and spending their day at the information booth: Bill Lindner, Joyce Berg, Sylvia Krayna, Donna Raczynski, Mary Ann Cassidy, Beth Kauffman, Danny Greenway and Barbara O'Neil.
• Thanks to the following people who opened their gardens to the public: 350 and 343 Pennsylvania St., Dr. Susan Persico; 28 Orton Pl., John & Cyndy Allen; 34 Orton Pl., Chris Brown, Robert Beavers and Joe Gerace; 36 Orton Pl., Michael Rooney and Paul Lachacz; 42 Orton Pl., Candace Church and Dinah Gamin; 332 Pennsylvania St., Sue Byron; 312 Pennsylvania St., Ann & Molly Angelo and Kathleen Betsko; 87 Plymouth Ave., Jeffrey Leffler and Tom Olszewski; 88 Plymouth Ave., John Morgan; 107 Plymouth Ave., Dot Brown; 116 Plymouth Ave., Dwight Smith; 325 Jersey St., Joseph Raimondo; First Presybterian Church, Dr. David Bond; and Karpeles Museum, Chris Kelly and Ed Lutz.
• Thanks also goes to Walgreens Pharmacy on North St. and Delaware Ave. They provided a generous discount on the price of the helium balloons that were used to mark the houses in the KCA neighborhood on the Garden Walk.
• Thanks to the City of Buffalo - Streets and Parks Department for cleaning up our streets and the Kleinhans lawn in preparation for the Garden Walk.

Planters/Garden Improvements
Planters were replaced where the old barrels on KCA street corners were formerly. Many of these barrels were over 10 years old and in poor condition.

• Thanks to Susan Persico for negotiating a discount for the new barrels with Dibbles Hardware on Grant Street.
• Thanks to Mr. Tenso Japadjief, manager of Dibbles Hardware for giving the KCA a discounted price on the planters and Jackie McGee, an employee for working with us seemingly endless hours.
• Thanks again to Ann Angelo for writing a grant to pay for the planters and for Judy Fisher, Erie County Legislator, for providing us a $600 grant for our new planters.
• Thanks to the following for adopting the new barrels and planting them with flowers (and keeping them watered!):
  • St. John's Place and Wadsworth St. (2) - Pat and Mike Heaverlo
  • Orton Place and Pennsylvania St. (4) - Susan Persico and helpers
  • Hudson St. and Wadsworth St. (2) - Mary Ann Cassidy and Patrick
  • St. John's and Orton Place (2) - Chris Brown, John & Cyndy Allen
  • Pennsylvania St. and Plymouth Ave. (4) - Ann Angelo, Danny Greenway, Jeff Leffler and Tom Olszewski
  • Pennsylvania St. and West Ave. (2) - Jean Hess
  • Plymouth Ave. and Jersey St. (2) - Robert Quintana, Maria Padilla and Dwight Smith
  • Jersey St. and Normal Ave. (1) - Joe Raimondo and Sylvania & Tony Krayna
  • Orton Place and Hudson St. (3) - Susan Persico, Beth Kauffman, Patrick Thomas and Steve Osterstrom
• What an improvement at 10 Orton - Susan Persico, Patrick Thomas and Steve Osterstrom maintained magnificent flower gardens at 10 Orton. Such a dramatic improvement over the former drug house that was in full swing only two summers ago.
• Special thanks to Beth Kauffman and Susan Persico for establishing gardens on Hudson Street bordering the playground. What a delightful surprise to see flowers on Hudson Street!!
• Joan Diana had cement put down, replacing gravel bordering the sidewalk and put down three planters filled with annual flowers in front of her home at 26 Orton Pl.
• Robert Quintana and family made beautiful gardens at their home at 303 Jersey St.
• 334 Hudson St. - new gardens were established in front of home and across Hudson St, adding greenery to the parking lot facing School 36 on Days Park.
• Susan Persico, Ann Angelo, Danny Greenway and others were instrumental in the reclamation of the corner of Plymouth and Pennsylvania by installing a park bench at Plymouth at Pennsylvania Street, garbage barrel and mulching of mud pit in front of the bus stop. That park bench is not only attractive, but is used frequently by those waiting for the No. 3 Grant Street bus.
• Kathleen Dentice and crew created a new front garden at 25 Plymouth Ave - what a difference!
• In the truest groundswell tradition, a lovely flower garden was created on the vacant lot at the corner of Hudson St. and West Ave., formerly the site of demolished home.
• Last, but certainly not least, Orton Place looked so great this year that it was entered in the Buffalo In Bloom contest as a block entry...

Home Improvement
In Buffalo, summer means Bison games, boating on the lake, cook-outs, gardening, and. . . EXTERIOR HOME IMPROVEMENT CHORES!

• The home at 331 Hudson St. received a fresh coat of paint.
• Donald Stewart painted the Italianate cottage at 367 Hudson St. an exuberant pink and red color scheme as exterior restoration work ensued.
• Mr. Howarth Colon of 388 Hudson St. rebuilt his basement/garage entrance into his Italianate cottage home.
• It seems that every year someone does something with their house that just says WOW! Last year, Joan Diana stripped off the front asphalt siding from her home at 26 Orton Place and painted the fancy Victorian facade a cheery yellow. Patrick Moreton restored the porch at the home at 324 Pennsylvania St. and made a huge difference in how the home looked. And last year John Allen restored the verandah of his home at 28 Orton Place. . .
  As impressive as those accomplishments were, this year they were BLOWN AWAY by two men who seemed to be competing with each other to see who could outdo the other.
  • Carl Schade had been planning for several years to restore his two storey porch at 38 Orton Place, but actually did the wonder of wonders and RESTORED THE TOWER OF HIS HOME WHICH HAD BEEN DEMOLISHED DECADES AGO. No one thought that it could be done, but it was. Joe Jackson of Houseworks Restoration rebuilt the tower on Carl's home in such a way as to replicate Victorian craftsmanship of 1885. The results are simply amazing and were complete just in time to impress visitors to our area from the garden walk.
  • Not to be outdone, Danny Greenway of 325 Pennsylvania Street undertook a complete exterior restoration of his Queen Anne style home. Roof, clapboard and fancy carved wood elements were restored and the house was repainted. Next, Danny had the wrap-around verandah completely rebuilt with 5 supporting columns and much gingerbread work. The verandah is just stunning and reinforces the notion that Buffalo Victorian homes were DESIGNED with verandahs and when they are demolished or reduced to a stoop, it really makes a difference. The verandah is a Victorian home's crowning glory, and certainly encourages social interaction. Art and society in harmony!
• Wally Handy also put a fresh coat of paint at his home at 49 Orton Place.
• Olstra Danovskis repaired her front porch at 28 St. John's Place.
• The house at 371 Pennsylvania St. was repainted a stately grey color with black and white trim.
• 301 Pennsylvania had a detailed jungle-theme mural painted on its front porch and new gardens established.
• 51 Plymouth had new paint applied to its exterior.
• The Murray family also undertook a fancy paint job on their home at 81 Plymouth Ave.
• 303 Jersey St. - the Quintana family repaired the front porch on their fancy Victorian home.
• 118 Plymouth also had new paint applied to its exterior.
• On 443 Porter Ave. a new fence was put up on the Plymouth Ave. side adjoining Karpeles Museum.
• 296 Jersey St. also had an exuberant blue and white paint scheme applied to its clapboards.
• As promised, renovation work continued on our landmark Kleinhans Music Hall as exterior bricks were repointed and graffiti removal and protection measures took place. It will look spiffy for September 18th's gala Philharmonic opening.

Symphony Circle
This was THE year for Symphony Circle. Although it has been in the works for a long time, it finally came to fruition: THE WATERING SYSTEM! In July a water system was placed in each quadrant of Symphony Circle. This was considered a requisite for the sustainability of the annual gardens as well as necessary for the establishment of perennial gardens in each quadrant, consistent with Frederick Law Olmsted's original garden design. The perennial gardens were installed right in time for the Garden Walk. They look spectacular!

• Thanks to Jim Cookfair, 57 Symphony Circle, for watering his quadrant of Symphony Circle.
• Thanks to Sue Byron and Bill Lindner for all their efforts working with the new watering systems in Symphony Circle (and if there was ever a year we needed water for the gardens, 1999 was IT!....)
• Thanks go to Ann Angelo for her work in pulling this AMAZING feat off! Grant writer extraordinaire.

Newsletters/Communication
Thanks to Bill Lindner and Cyndy Allen for keeping the communication flow happening this summer. Also thank you to United Neighborhoods/Gloria for being so helpful in helping us make the many copies of newsletters. Also, thank you to Block Captains for passing out the flyers!

Meetings
Our August KCA meeting was one of the best attended ever! Let's try to encourage participation and membership in the KCA!

Housing Committee
Bill Lindner and John Morgan drafted a housing policy regarding the many abandoned homes in the area. This will warrant further discussion soon.

KCA Directory
Danny Greenway agreed to head up a committee to review the directory of the neighborhood. We'd like to get this updated and published soon. We'll need help to verify information that we have received from Haines Directories, phone books and Erie County property records.

New Additions to the 'Hood
Several homes have traded hands this summer including the following:

• 5 St. John's Place - Gina and Kevin Varney (and family) have purchased Pat Kellogg's former home that was on the Allentown Tour of Homes in 1998.
• 33 St. John's Place - Pat and Mike Heaverlo have purchased the former home of Ernie Hall. While the home is magnificent and intact, it is a lot of work as the home has been neglected for decades. Pray for Pat, Mike, Brandon and Chase as they undertake this effort!
• 21 and 23 Plymouth Ave. - Bill Lindner purchased and adopted these two homes this summer. He is working to restore them. They are lovely Victorian cottages from the 1870s... Bill has confirmed that contrary to popular belief, the first block of Plymouth is not as bad as its reputation!
• 38 Plymouth - Melissa and Efrain Nieves purchased Dorothy Watts new-build house on Plymouth this summer.
• 500 Porter Ave. - Welcome to Steve Cater as he moves into his new home across from Kleinhans Music Hall.
• 51 Symphony Circle - Welcome to Tanya and Jim Peck as they move into their "new" home on Symphony Circle, the former home of TAD...
• 22 Orton Place - After being in want of a new owner for about a year, 22 Orton was finally purchased by Richard Heerdt. Thanks to the efforts of Ricky Turnage and Chevon Davis, the house almost runs itself.
• 310 Jersey St. - While not fully finalized, Mr. James Hogan of Hogan Restoration is looking to purchase the former firehouse to use as his corporate headquarters. Hogan Restoration has done, among many other things, the restoration of Niagara Mohawk's building on Washington St. The KCA sent a welcome letter to Mr. Hogan. Hopefully he'll attend one of our meetings soon and give us his vision of the firehouse. (In the meantime, it's getting more and more covered with graffiti.)

Crime
No, life in the area is not all roses... In one of the strangest cases of crime, 3 houses on St. John's Place fell victim to the porch column burglar. Three porch columns were stolen from 52 St. John's Place, 2 columns from 32 St. John's Place, and 1 column from 8 St. John's Place. It's really too sad to be true. Sometimes it seems that there are so man elements working against us!

And They Come Tumbling Down...
Earlier this summer, the long-vacant house at 146 Cottage St. was demolished amid much publicity. On Memorial day, the garage at 40 St. John's Place burned and was soon demolished. Lucky that none of the nearby homes caught fire. 20 Orton Place is scheduled for demolition and is planned to be replaced with a community garden, with the help of Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo.

Just in Time for Halloween - Trouble Brewing...
Abandoned housing. Our neighborhood is plagued with it. What's worse, we actually wrestle with the lesser of two evils: abandoned empty housing, or occupied housing that is owned by an absentee landlord (better known as slumlords). How we are saddened by landlords who enable criminal activity by providing an unsupervised environment where crime breeds, fine as long as the income comes in and they are not bothered by the harm created by their activities... They are removed from the situation. That is NOT to say that all people who own property and don't live in them are slumlords. That's just not true. Some people own property and manage it wonderfully. There are several people in this neighborhood who could give classes to others on how to manage property. Here are some of the problems:

• Updates on Some Problem Houses In KCA Area

  St. John's Place

• 32 St. John's Place - This former rooming house fell victim of a firebomb cocktail in April 1998. Thanks in part to Robert Beavers keen eye, no one was harmed in the fire. Some work started, but it stopped. The roof is exposed and the building is in housing court. To add insult to injury, this summer, some of its porch columns were stolen. It's a magnificent building. Hopefully it won't get demolished because it will leave a big hole on St. John's Place (too many there already).
• 8 St Johns Place - This house burned in January, 1997 and now has an exposed hole in the roof.  Buffalo Housing Inspector Golombek has an active file on this property.  Currently the owner is working on repairs from the fire. This includes patching the roof.
  
  Plymouth Avenue
• 18 Plymouth Ave. - This warrants a separate discourse onto itself. Refer to web page.
• 43 Plymouth Ave. - Legend is that the owner of this home won the lottery, boarded the house and took off for sights unknown. It has stayed boarded.
• 49 Plymouth Ave. - This house has been vacant for a long time and is now for sale for only $14,000.

  Hudson Street

• 315 Hudson St. - The owner of this home tried to sell it, but couldn't so he simply let the mortgage company take ownership of it, which was insured by HUD.  Although the original mortgage amount was about $51,000, the house has been appraised for only $2,500 and requires at least $8,000 in repairs.  The irony of the situation is not lost on the fact that a paper has been posted in a broken window of the home which states:  Intown Management Group (HUD's privatized home manager).  This property is professionally managed by Intown Management Group, LLC.  In case of emergency, call 800-561-7571.  The local Buffalo office was kind enough to share with me that the house is currently in the process of being readied for sale and should be on the market by mid-October.  It is a lovely half-brick house; hopefully someone will buy it.
• 294 Hudson St. - This building was sold earlier this year for $5,000 at the city auction, but I don't think the purchaser knew what he was getting into. Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc. tried to get funding to renovate this large brick building. Meanwhile, it sits empty, abandoned.
• 364 Hudson St. - This house, part of an estate, was ransacked this past winter. Its furnace and other "guts" were stolen. It is now reduced to $8,000. It's a very handsome house on the outside and has a garage.
• 366 Hudson St. - This house recently traded hands and is in poor repair.  The back yard has overgrown trash and weeds.  The property was in City of Buffalo Housing Court, but the Judge dismissed the case because the owner is currently working on repairs.  Buffalo Housing Inspector Sandarelli will maintain an open file.
• 370 Hudson St. - This house has been vacant for a long time. It was sold through HUD for about $1,255, but nothing has happened since then. It's currently in housing court.

  Pennsylvania Street

• 333 Pennsylvania St. - This house, also an estate, will be sold by the bank holding the mortgage sometime soon.

  Normal Avenue

• 50-52 Normal Ave. - This house, also vacant for some time, has recently sold after being taken back by Fannie Mae. More details on this house as it is known.

City Property Tax Auction
The city's tax auction will be held on October 25-26, 1999. Any house which has not had its taxes paid is subject to go up for auction. Some of the above-noted homes (and more!) will end up on the auction block. Let's pray that these homes do not fall to the evil empire and become tools for Satan.  The terms of agreement are quite liberal and gives new meaning to distressed properties.

Of course, the owner can rescue their property by paying their back taxes.  It's almost certain that 285-289 Hudson will not hit the auction block; the home was recently repossessed by its lender, Associates Home Equity Services Inc./Ford Consumer Finance Co. Inc., a subsidiary of Associates First Capital Corporation.  They have listed the property with Hunt Real Estate and will make sure the taxes are paid by October.  See a list of properties for sale in the KCA area for more information.  20 Orton will also certainly hit the auction block, and the existing house is certain to be demolished by the tax auction, only a court order could stop it now.  Also certain to hit is 45 Wadsworth Street, which has been vacant for nearly a year.  I will predict that the owners of 32 Plymouth, 331 Jersey and 18 St. John's Place will rescue their properties.  32 Plymouth is a barn that has been worked on by its owner.  331 Jersey and 18 St. John's Place are both occupied large homes which have been turned into apartment buildings (5 units or greater).

Outreach
It's important for all residents to continually look outside of our neighborhood for resources to help with the quality of life here. Here's some of the things that were accomplished this summer:

• Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc. Newsletter - This summer, residents of the KCA met with Rich Morrisroe, Outreach Coordinator of Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc. to discuss neighborhood issues. The meeting was written in the summer 99 HCN Newsletter. HCN is still trying to get funding to do a acquisition/rehab project in our neighborhood.
• Police Meeting - Earlier this summer, Joyce Berg, Ann Angelo and Chris Brown from the KCA joined forces with the Fargo Estate Neighborhood Association and Days Park Block Club and met with the Police regarding quality of life issues. A copy of the recently-enacted noise ordinance was distributed to ALL neighborhood residents.
• Web Site - Buffalo Free-Net has agreed to host KCA's web site, which went live in September. This is important for us so that our issues can reach a larger audience.

The Future is Now...
Well, that's enough accomplishments for the summer of 1999! GREAT JOB EVERYONE!! Here's some things in the works for the autumn of 1999:

• At the KCA's October 20, 1999 meeting, we will be discussing the KCA as a possible "WEED AND SEED" site. The purpose of this program is to weed out bad things and seed good things. Come to the meeting to learn more.
• The KCA is having some dialogue with Habitat For Humanity so that they might select a home in our neighborhood as a possible Habitat rehab house. Let's hope!

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