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Three nonprofit organizations in Buffalo’s Lower West Side will hold a meeting for neighborhood residents to air their most pressing concerns from 6 to 7:30 p. m. Wednesday in the community room at Hispanics United of Buffalo, 254 Virginia St.

Heart of the City Neighborhoods, the Belle Center and Hispanics United are holding their first quarterly meeting of the year to allow the residents to discuss crime, safety, housing and quality-of-life issues. In addition, a representative from each of the nonprofit agencies will be in attendance to share updates on current neighborhood initiatives and available resources.

For more information, call Heart of the City’s development coordinator at 882-7661, Ext. 202.

This FREE hour long class informs you of the dangers of lead poisoning and how to protect your family and children from lead in the home.

Do you have chipping and peeling paint?  Questions on Lead Poisoning Primary Project? Was your house built before 1978? Have questions about lead and lead poisoning?

Join us on February 23rd! RSVP by calling (716) 961-6838
For questions on this class, please call (716) 961-6800

Note: RSVP not required to attend class. Walk-ins welcome!

Heart of the City is pleased to be working with some amazing new community partners towards providing healthy home related services to the Lower West Side community, as well as launching our Green & Healthy Homes Program to provide necessary repairs to low-income homeowners who are most vulnerable to health hazards in the home.  We’ll also be looking forward to hosting community meetings as well as community forums to extend our knowledge and services to not only those in our neighborhood, but the greater City of Buffalo.

We encourage you to join us as we kick off the new year with two community events: our Office Warming Party and our Winter 2012 Community Meeting. We look forward to continuing to work with you to elevate the quality of life for everyone in the Lower West Side community!

Anyone interested in this matter is welcome to attend the public hearing.

The Next Police Chief/Community Meeting is with B District Chief Brian Patterson, Monday February 13th, 10:00 am at B District Home
in 695 Main Street.

Western New York is receiving over $100 million from New York State for a long list of different projects. While there is a lot of money being spread throughout the region, Erie County alone is getting over $51 million of the $100.3 million.

Among the big “winners” was the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus which is receiving funding for several projects.

$5.1 million will support the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Genome project to build a robust approach to personalized medicine. The approach will enhance the study of genetic sequences, the health information data associated with individuals’ genetic sequences, and enable analysis and discovery to inform more personalized, and more effective, medicine.
$500,000 will enable the Hauptman-Woodward Crystallization Laboratory’s expansion of its crystallization laboratory biotech services, to offer competitive, revenue-generating and sustainable research.
$4 million for development of the Jacobs Institute of its Center for Innovation in Medicine, a cutting-edge, state of the art medical device prototyping facility at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. This facility will be the only U.S. center for entrepreneurship in the heart of a clinical facility. It will include a fabrication center, a machine shop and a clean room to create new devices and techniques and a training center for physicians to test those devices.

There are a lot of notable organizations and groups which are receiving funds, most of which are for restoration or rehabilitation work. For example, the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation (CTRC) is receiving over $300,000 which will go to stabilize and restore the massive canopies above the entrances to the building.

Paul Lang, vice president of the CTRC explained, “The CTRC is excited to have been awarded the funds and thankful for the State’s continued support and recognition of our on-going efforts. This project is the first of many planned, but will certainly be the most visible. Restoring the canopies over our main entries will be a very public statement of our organizations continued growth and internal development with regards to our Master Plan and ultimate goal of re-developing the Central Terminal structure and property. Hopefully our success in winning the grant and completing the project will further demonstrate the potential of the building when given the support.”

Governor Cuomo created ten Regional Economic Development Councils to identify a comprehensive strategy for investment. The Councils were comprised of local businesses, labor, education, and community leaders. The Western New York Regional Council worked over the last few months to decide where the money should be allocated while also focusing on areas of investment which have the greatest chance of job creation.

Four million dollars has been allocated to a major downtown project which will connect five downtown districts. It focuses on re-establishing high-quality, multi-modal transportation corridors which will link Main Street, the Genesee Gateway, and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The investment targets infrastructure and streetscape development which is within the guidelines of the Queen City Hub Plan.

Heart of the City Neighborhoods is receiving over $250,000 to rehabilitate 30 homes in various areas of the City. The improvements will focus on elderly, developmentally disabled, ad households with young children. One of the largest amounts is $15.5 million for rehabbing and preserving 206 units in the Marine Towers complex at the foot of Hertel Avenue.

Other large city projects receiving funding was $2 million for St. John Fruit Belt CDC’s planned automotive maintenance training facility. The project is being developed through a partnership with Erie Community College, General Motors and the Niagara Frontier Auto Dealers Association.

Buffalo Place is receiving $500,000 to assist with building renovations and streetscape work in the Theater District. The Elmwood Village Association is also receiving $500,000 to rehabilitate commercial and residential structures in its targeted area.

American Heritage Home, a modular home manufacturer, is receiving $2.5 million in low-cost financing to help built a new manufacturing plant in the Lakeside Commerce Park in South Buffalo.

Our new office location, 251 Virginia Street!

Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc. has officially moved our office location!

We are now located at
251 Virginia Street
Suite A
Buffalo NY 14201
Please update us in your contacts!

With a new office space, we’re looking to continue to work closely within our Lower West Side service area, increasing the quality of life and expanding needed housing services to the neighborhood. “We’ve been operating out of a renovated home for eight years, and it’s important to us to continue our investment in this vibrant community,” said our Executive Director, Stephanie Simeon.

We will be in our temporary space at 251 Virginia Street, a building owned by our friends at Hispanics United of Buffalo,  for the next year while continuing to raise funds and support for their new permanent office. “We’re happy to have great neighbors who are supporting us during our transition,” said Simeon referring to Hispanics United. “HUB is a Community Based Organization (CBO) that enjoys assisting those that need, commented HUB’s Executive Director Lourdes Iglesias. “It is mutually beneficial to have HOCN here at the organization. We’re happy that we could help.”

We would like to thank all who supported us during our move! Heart of the City Neighborhoods looks forward to working on Virginia Street, and hopes to be settled into a new permanent office by 2013.

You can reach us at our NEW temporary office space, 251 Virginia Street, when regular office hours resume on Monday, November 28th.

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West Side Makes Progress

Homeowners and community groups are leading a stunning turnaround

Much hard work has gone into making the West Side a better place than it was 10 years ago, and the payoff is shown in the rising home values in the neighborhood. The Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors says sale prices for homes located from Richmond Avenue to the Niagara River and from West Ferry Street to Porter Avenue have gone from an average of $23,000 in 2001 to $84,000 this year.

The steady progress is wonderful news, but not all of the West Side has yet benefited. There are pockets of affluence, but parts of the West Side continue to deal with abandoned homes and poor housing conditions.

In just one example, hundreds of residents waited in line last week at the Belle Center on the West Side for a share of four tractor-trailers full of food and supplies delivered by Feed the Children as part of the national organization’s “Americans Feeding Americans Caravan.”

Fortunately, a constellation of community groups—Habitat for Humanity, People United for Sustainable Housing, Massachusetts Avenue Project, West Side Ministries, Homefront, Westside Neighborhood Housing Services and Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc.—is working on the problem areas.
Their strategy is to make sure West Side residents benefit from neighborhood improvements by retaining community control of resources, developing co-op housing and making sure housing remains affordable.

John Leonardi, chief executive officer of the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors said, “We’re fortunate we have people dedicated to the community itself, building it up and turning it around.”

Harvey Garrett, executive director of the West Side Community Collaborative, said, “In a region that is losing population, in a city that is supposed to be declining, we have a neighborhood that is reviving itself through self-determination and dwarfing all other areas of the region in growth by tripling its property values over the past 10 years.”

Steady appreciation spurs reinvestment by other homeowners who want to be part of the trend. There are signs that the healthy appreciation is spreading to low-income neighborhoods on the West Side as well.

Individual homeowners and community groups are working to rehabilitate buildings, demolish derelict houses and create community gardens.

Their efforts are making the American Dream possible in this diverse community where residents of a variety of colors and cultures are looking for a stable neighborhood they can call home.