More facts on the Buffalo situation than offered by the NYT

Dear Editor:

My name is Barbara Dunn. My husband and I are home owners in the Cedargrove Heights neighborhood of Cheektowaga. We currently live in Alameda, California. We have been actively planning our retirement move over the last year to our home in Cheektowaga. which we will be doing at the end of this month.

My husband was recently laid off and we have decided to retire in our Cedargrove Heights home, which we purchased approximately five years ago in the neighborhood where I grew up. In addition several of my family members reside in this neighborhood.

In early February of this year we became aware that our neighborhood has been picked by the Town of Cheektowaga Supervisor, Dennis Gabryszak, for redevelopment.

The town has invited a local property developer, Dominic Piestrak, in to present and develop a plan called "Renaissance Village" which would intend on razing the entire community of Cedargrove Heights ( a working class neighborhood of 300 family homes and rental units). We have been trying to stay on top of this story through local stories.

The stories have become ever more demoralizing in their use of terms such as "encroaching urban blight/crime/drugs/rats/deterioration and gentrification." Town Supervisor Gabryszak was quoted using the threatening "If we need to, the town could use eminent domain."

The truth of this neighborhood is that it is situated in a prime location at the crossroads of the NYS Thruway and the Kensington Expressway, State Route 33 ( a major thoroughfare between downtown Buffalo and the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport). It is an older community, having been built over 60 years ago as housing for the Curtiss-Wright employees during WW II.

It is a community of working class persons, who have maintained and developed their homes and neighborhood with their own labor and savings. Many in the area are of retirement age and are long time residents. They are neighborly, friendly and grounded people who have been very inviting and helpful to my husband and I on our trips back to ready our future home. We are looking forward to our move into this community and meeting all our neighbors.

In addition to single family homes, this community has many duplexes, of which many homeowners rent out one unit to supplement their income or care for family. The single family/duplex community is circled by multi-family (4-5 unit) dwellings. Many of these multi-unit buildings are investor owned, subsidized rentals with absentee landlords. The community has asked for help from the local government entities to curtail and clean up some of the inherent problems brought on by these multi-unit rentals.

Apparently, the Town of Cheektowag's answer to this call for help is "Renaissance Village." Many feel this plan is an extreme response and are being told by Supervisor Gabryszak and the developer that if they don't agree to this plan, welcome the demolition of their community and replace it with "Renaissance Village" concept, then they are destined to become just another part of the creeping urban blight of the City of Buffalo. Some think there is common ground and welcome and actively search out information from the Town of Cheektowaga website, www.tocyny.org and the developer.

My own search has led to very little information...so I find myself searching the websites of the local papers for articles and editorials. This has been unsatisfactory at best and frightening at worst, as the articles increasing slant towards portraying this Cedargrove Heights community as blighted and doomed unless the Town and the proposed "Renaissance Village" development save us. This has turned our joyful, peaceful retirement plans into a future of uncertainty, fighting or fleeing.

Barbara Dunn,
Cedargrove Heights Homeowner