Proposal for a Kinneys in Eastwood

Now, oddly enough, there’s a threat coming from the mother ship itself, City Hall, and Eastwood residents and business people have responded with what I believe is a first: an online petition (and I’m not the one who created it!). The threat comes in the form of an increase in the aggressive enforcement of parking rules, made all the more onerous by the installation of parking machines. These machines are confusing to some, difficult to use for others, and, during a winter like this one, sometimes impossible to get at. And that’s just for starters. As it turns out, Eastwood is not like, say, downtown Manhattan, or downtown Syracuse for that matter, where there’s enough density to put parking spots at a premium. In fact, Eastwood is surrounded by businesses where parking is free – in Shop City, along Teall Ave and Erie Blvd, in East Syracuse, even at the Eastwood Plaza. It’s no wonder people think that, if parking might cause them to risk a $35 fine, it just makes more sense to completely avoid doing business in Eastwood.

I have heard from several James Street business owners who have said that those parking meters chase business away. One of our most dedicated business people, the owner of Books and Memories, is concerned that his business will fail if the machines aren’t removed. After all our hard work making Walgreens conform to guidelines, it is greatly disquieting to see the city punish businesses on James – the kind we want there, the kind that attract people into Eastwood like Books and Memories does. Walgreens was allowed to lay down a sea of asphalt at the gateway of our neighborhood, but the businesses that were already there on James Street are made to suffer. Where is the logic in this?

If it made sense to have meters there, you’d see James Street packed with parked cars all the time. But the meters have driven away those people who would have come here, so now whatever revenue might have been obtained from them has dried up. The city loses, our struggling businesses lose, and the property values of the residents necessarily start to drop as James Street teeters once again at the brink.

I’ve been thrilled with the transparency and responsiveness of the current administration. This makes it all the more astounding that our business district is not getting the tender loving care that it needs. Instead, it’s been roped into some kind of blanket “solution” to the fiscal nightmare the city faces. Making life difficult for businesses doesn’t solve a thing.  If you put business out of business with parking meters that don’t even collect quarters any more, you have created a lose-lose situation.

Please, let’s sell those machines to Manhattan. They need ‘em a lot more than we do. Let’s keep these businesses on the tax rolls. Let’s keep our home values and assessments up. The city cannot afford to let tumbleweed go rolling through our business district.

To learn more about this issue and to sign a petition to pull the parking machines, please go to this site: Eastwood Renaissance Association

Lone car that dared to park gets ticket. $35 goes into city coffers. Business loses yet another hard-won customer for good.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead.

The Eastside Revival Coalition is proud to announce Put Kids To Work Day at Papa John’s, on Tuesday June 29th from 9:00 am- until about 11am. Manager and franchise owner Steve Adams came up with this idea and he and assistant manager Cathy  Tillipaugh (sp) welcome Eastwood’s children to participate! 5-8 year olds (roughly) are welcome to go to Papa John’s that day, put on an apron and make pizzas for awhile. Cathy will be teaching how to fling dough in the air and catch it, while Steve will be teaching the rest of the process. On top of the experience your child/children will also receive a free lunch, a frame-worthy certificate of accomplishment, and a buy-1 get-1-free coupon for a large delivery pizza!

Starting this Monday you may RSVP your child by calling Steve Adams or Cathy Tillipaugh at 463-7272. There will be allowing up to 15 children to participate, “FIRST COME FIRST SERVE”.

Thank you,

Mike

PS We are trying to get a few more James Street businesses to do this. We have plenty of ideas, but please let us know if you know of a business owner that wants to do this.

• We will build what we want, where we want it, despite your overlay district guidelines.
• We will sell pornographic products within mere feet of a church, a school, and residences.
• We will take you (and your tax dollars) to court if you try to prevent us from violating your city codes.
• We will win in court.
• There is nothing you can do.

There was virtually no positive response to the presentation and many people were quite unhappy with what they saw. Their plan violates the overlay district zoning standards as well as city regulations that prevent the sale of adult materials within 1000 feet of a church, school, or residential area.

Also, the building would be literally within a few feet of the James Street Methodist Church, so close that the church would not be able to properly care for its building because they wouldn’t be able to get equipment in.

Several people pressed them on the issue of the sale of adult materials. They would not come up with a definitive answer. We’ve all seen presentations like this before, and we know how much of it is truth and how much of it is spin or simply avoiding answering… which means they don’t want to say what they know we’ll object to.

I asked them how we could be assured that we would not end up in the same situation as Auburn, which had to go to court over the sale of such materials. They, too, have regulations against it. The response: “Auburn lost.” and “We always win in court because it’s a small portion of the product that we sell.”

But that doesn’t reassure us at all, does it?  While their pornographic material may represent a small percentage of the videos in the store, it could mean a huge percentage of the sales. We see no other way this outmoded business model can be as successful as they claim.

We in Eastwood are just so accustomed to this kind of arrogance on the part of a developer who waltzes in with a plan that clearly demonstrates no knowledge of or interest in our community standards. It’s almost laughable – did they not do their homework and, as someone in the meeting pointed out, did they not realize that Eastwood has already stood up to another developer for five years in order to keep our community pedestrian-friendly and safe for our kids?

This message is for “Family” Video: if you insist on moving ahead with the abysmal plan you brought to our community Monday night, you are in for a rough ride. Your plan has done for Eastwood what nothing in the past has accomplished: united it. And that is the feedback from the community that you can bring back to headquarters.

• All three proposed designs violate the James Street Overlay District Zoning Standards in many ways.
• Video stores are unsustainable businesses unless they are selling adult videos – which “Family” Video does.

Not one of over a dozen comments in the email group of over 100 members was in favor of having this business in Eastwood. This community has spent years fighting bad design – and winning – so we’re not about to turn back the clock and allow suburban-style development in our urban community. That would cause all our property values to drop and would be a slap in the face of the James Street business owners who develop, successfully, following the guidelines.

Several commenters noted that selling videos is an outmoded business model and figured that it’s the sale of pornographic videos that keeps these businesses going. The last thing Syracuse needs is to end up in court over the issue of adult videos like Auburn is right now. The Post-Standard quotes Auburn City Manager as saying, “The fact that they advertise it as a family store and then have something that really is degrading for our whole community — I think some changes will have to be made…”

Note: the Adult Use Regulations for the City of Syracuse prohibit Adult Uses within 1000 feet of any residential dwellings, districts, churches or schools.

Common Councilor Kathleen Joy wrote to the email group the following (reprinted with permission):

I met with a representative of the “Family” video Monday. They fully intend on presenting at TNT on 3/22. I told him that I could not personally support this project as proposed because it does not  comply even with the spirit of our design guidelines &  I don’t like the idea of an X rated section (not disputed by him, by the way), they have no contract with the owner and have not vetted this project through any pre-development meeting.
He tells me that if the sense of the neighborhood is that it’s not wanted, then they won’t pursue it.

We were alerted to the problems with “Family” Video by PACNY‘s Mike Stanton, who sent the following, reprinted with permission (bolding mine):

Quote of the day: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Edward Abbey (The Journey Home, 1977).

Here we go again.

1) Family Video, a national video store chain with 550 stores nationwide, says it will build a $1 million store in Eastwood, but only if they can build a suburban style store with the parking lot on the corner and the entrance facing the parking lot rather than the sidewalk. Eastwood has an overlay district intended to promote walkability and pedestrian-friendly design. The video store would be built at the site of the former Steak & Sundae restaurant on James Street, which has been vacant and deteriorating for years. Mike Muraco, a Syracuse native who lives in Miami Beach, Fla., said “It’s a useless piece of property, unless they can bend a little.”

2) The city of Auburn took Family Video to court in 2008 because it rented X-rated adult videos. “The (store name) is a trap for families,” City Manager Mark Palesh said. “My family’s never going to go there again.” The city sought a court order to shut down the store’s sex video trade, saying it violates the city’s 1998 zoning ordinance banning sexually oriented businesses from operating within 500 feet of any area zoned residential. Family Video fought the city’s order in court.

3) A Buffalo News article says municipal officials in Western New York utter the name “Family Video” sarcastically these days. In the Town of Tonawanda, officials thought they nipped a potential problem in the bud when Family Video presented plans for a store in 2005. Not only was the Colvin Boulevard site not zoned for adult uses, town officials were assured that X-rated fare wouldn’t be offered there. And, for a while, it wasn’t. But recent complaints about adult videos in a back room — and Family Video’s alleged refusal to remove them — prompted the town to seek a court injunction barring their rental or sale. “The whole thing was, they misled us,” Councilman John A. Bargnesi Jr. said last week, when he announced the court case had been initiated.

Looks pretty much like the kind of buildings that used to be built in cities where people walked. There are many reasons for this design choice, and a quick search on “walkable” in your favorite search engine will provide them. But a quick review:

• Density (numbers of people living in the buildings above shops) creates walkability – the people want to walk to businesses nearby so businesses get built for them.
• Transparency from the street and sidewalk to the interior and also back out creates safety for the same reason the elevators are made of glass in malls: you can see what’s going on outside and people outside can see what’s happening inside.
• Natural surveillance from the upper floors where people live 24/7 keeps eyes on the street at just about all hours.
• Parking is located in such a way as to make quick getaways difficult, resulting in lower crime rates.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but let’s take a look at one more fascinating aspect of a densely populated urban community: real estate value. Buried in the comments of the above article is something we might want to pay attention to:

If you want to buy anything within .5 mile east or west of Elmwood you will pay through the nose.

Elmwood does not have a lot of the kind of gorgeous buildings we see in Skaneateles, Geneva or Canandaigua. It’s quite similar to Eastwood’s James Street business district, and I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t all that long ago that it looked much the same, struggling to shift from the downward spiral to becoming the interesting and walkable destination district that makes it the most desirable neighborhood in Buffalo.

Now look at the home values. Two-family homes  near this project, similar to the many we have within blocks of James, are going for $160,000 to $206,000 (according to zillow.com). By national standards that’s still wildly inexpensive. But it’s about 25-50% greater than what we have in Eastwood.

How does this kind of good development happen?  In part, help from enlightened government. From yesterdays’ Buffalo Business First site (bolding mine):

Plans to demolish a vacant Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet along Elmwood Avenue and replace it with a mixed-use building have cleared another hurdle.

The Erie County Industrial Development Agency’s directors, Monday, unanimously approved an inducement package that will help the development trio of Orchard Park’s Krog Corp., Buffalo architect Karl Frizlen and lawyer Michael Ferdman construct a three story, nearly 20,000-square-foot building at 448 Elmwood Ave.

… The building will house a Coffee Culture outlet on its first floor and upscale apartments on the its second and third floors.

So how do we entice a developer like Krog Corp to build correctly on James and Midler?

All mayoral and Common Council candidates may now weigh in. :-)