Buffalo Spree Magazine

A building and a dream

By Miakka Natisse Wood

950 Broadway.
Photo by Jim Bush.

Many believe that the number three is a powerful number. It is associated with numerous aspects of society and culture, and it often appears in everyday life. For example, three is the most universal number of deity. In Christianity, there is the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Time is divided into three divisions: past, present, and future. Three dimensions to a solid object, three primary colors, three meals a day—you cannot escape the number three. And perhaps, with people, three is just right. The Three Stooges, The Three Wise Men, the three men key to the Watergate scandal: triumvirates of exceptional people occur throughout history.

On the east side of Buffalo, three is also making its powerful presence known, manifest in the collective effort of Michael Miller, Michele Johnson, and Chris Byrd—three people who are uniting to change their neighborhood.

Corner visions
On the corner of Broadway and Fillmore sits a large and seemingly unassuming building.

950 Broadway is frequently passed by without a second thought, 42,000 square feet that has sat unoccupied since 2004. Michael Miller however, couldn’t ignore the building that he often sees on his way to the Central Terminal. (He serves on the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation (CTRC) Board of Directors.) Having worked with the CTRC since 2003, Miller realized that for the Central Terminal to be revitalized, the entire neighborhood would have to undergo a transformation.

“Something has to be done with the neighborhood,” thought Miller. “Because if 950 Broadway, which is a beautiful vacant building, can’t get rented, there’s nothing in the imminent future for the Central Terminal.”

This revelation inspired Miller to do some research, and he published his findings in a short article on the popular local website Buffalo Rising (buffalorising.com). Posted last November, the piece heralded the building’s assets and proposed that it would be a great space for a commercial retailer like Pottery Barn or Ikea.

Distinguished buildings are on every corner at
Broadway and Fillmore.
Photo by Jim Bush.

“I’m recalling the Elmwood strip of twenty-five years ago and then imagining what Broadway can become!” Miller exclaims at the end of the article.

Generating over thirty comments in less than a week, the article opened a discussion on the state of Buffalo’s troubled East Side. It was through these posts that Miller met Michele Johnson.

A volunteer with the housing court, Johnson had been well aware of some of the issues that plague the East Side, but was also eager to turn the neighborhood around.

“There’s so many good things that are happening that people don’t hear about,” Johnson explains. “There are some great people living on the East Side, love it, and chose to stay there. We need to help them, because there are a lot of issues going on.”

Distinguished buildings are on every corner at
Broadway and Fillmore.
Photo by Jim Bush.

Understanding the work and effort required to turn a neighborhood around, West Side activist Harvey Garrett suggested they form an organization to help mobilize the revitalization effort. Miller had met Chris Byrd at a Central Terminal event, and he knew that Byrd’s active volunteerism with such East Side community groups as The Response to Love Center would be the perfect addition to round out the troupe of revolutionaries.
Having officially formed in December of 2005, Broadway Fillmore Alive (BFA) is the end product of Miller, Johnson, and Byrd’s efforts.

“We came up with the concept of Broadway Fillmore Alive, because we wanted to give the neighborhood an alive feeling,” says Byrd. “There’s a negative perception of the area, but when you walk around there and see some of the positive things happening, it makes you feel alive. There is hope.”

Distinguished buildings are on every corner at
Broadway and Fillmore.
Photo by Jim Bush.

BFA is more of a coalition than a not-for-profit, with goals to synergize the various organizations of the East Side in hopes of improved progress. Thus far the group has created a website (www.broadwayfillmorealive.org) to advertise community events, but its primary focus at presstime was getting a tenant in 950 Broadway. The land itself has been owned by the Eckhardt family since the late 1880s. John Eckhardt commissioned the building to be built in 1940 to house his growing Eckhardt’s department store. Since then the building has also been home to a Sears and a regional office of the New York State Department of Labor.

Now memebers of BFA are working in conjunctions with the owners to spread the word about the Eckhardt building. Besides featuring it prominently on their website, they have also created a brochure to advertise the building’s assets. However with the negative reputation that the east side garners, BFA has more to battle with than just the legalities of getting a building sold. Yet the three visionaries are convinced that the East Side has just as much potential as any other area of Buffalo.

“People want to redline the East Side, but take all the businesses off of Hertel, take them all off of Elmwood, and tell me what the neighborhoods look like,” Johnson defends.

Broadway Fillmore Alive: Chris Byrd, Michele
Johnson, and Michael Miller.
Photo by Jim Bush.

Though they do admit that the East Side has its problems to contend with, having also grown up in the neighborhood, they remember what it once was and are passionate about bringing it back.

“The Broadway Fillmore area has been allowed to deteriorate for too long,” says Byrd. “It’s time that the neighborhood starts fighting back.”

Thus far the response and progress of the organization has been exceedingly positive. In the month of March its website received an estimated 2,200 hits, according to Johnson, 900 of which were new visitors.

And though some organizations are weary of the “new kids on the block coming in and kicking ass,” as Byrd puts it, they’re realistic about their goals and accomplishments.
“We know that we cannot do it all,” says Miller. “But anything that we do, whether it’s getting a tenant into 950 Broadway, or saving a block, that’s much more than was ever being done before.”

Only a few months into the task, and already stirring up quite an amount of change, it seems as though three is the magic number to turn around the East Side.

Miakka Natisse Wood is a recent college graduate and an intern at Buffalo Spree. An aspiring freelance writer, she also writes for Artvoice.

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