Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

A standard fixture of urban downtowns used to be the big, multi-level department store. It still is, actually, in many of the larger cities -- Macy's, Filene's, Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh, etc. -- but in Buffalo, the downtown department store closed years ago. It used to be AM&A's (which stood for "Adam Meldrum and Anderson's"), which was then bought out by the chain Bon-Ton. Bon-Ton still exists in the region, as anchor stores in most of the malls, but the downtown Buffalo location was finally closed six or seven years ago. The building was bought incredibly cheaply by a Buffalo businessman named Richard Taylor, who tried opening a new store; but he couldn't attain profitability in Buffalo's current downtown climate when the only real shoppers are the downtown workers coming in during their lunch hours. So Taylor's closed, and the building's been dormant ever since.

Well, in the absence of anyone wanting to run a store out of that building, now there is movement to convert it into a school. This would actually be a special school, called a "charter" school, and there is a waiting list to get in. It would cater to talented and gifted students, would have a partnership with Buffalo State College, and would bring about 400 students plus the teachers and staff to downtown on a daily basis. Just about everyone admits that what downtown needs to get revitalization going again is people for more than just a few hours on weekends for special events. Just about everyone.

Everyone, that is, except a few business people who have suddenly decided that the building would be better served being demolished and replaced with a spiffy new office tower.

Just why this need suddenly exists now, when the school is trying to get set up for the 2003-2004 academic year and when the building has sat unoccupied for most of the last decade, isn't exactly clear. Just why a new office building is needed at that site, as opposed to any of downtown's many other vacant sites, isn't exactly clear. Just why these businessmen think that schoolbuses and such near the school would add to the currently non-existent downtown congestion isn't exactly clear. (Check this downtown webcam sometime to get an idea of what traffic is like during business hours in downtown Buffalo. This isn't the same street the school would be on, but it's very close, and it's what traffic is always like downtown.)

Cities that thrive do so by giving their children reasons to stay. Cities that wither and limp along, from decade to decade, do so by continually ignoring the future in favor of short-term projects that benefit a few rich people and by continually giving their children reasons to leave the nest.

Buffalo needs to decide which damn type of city it wants to be.