More Cars With Customers Needed In Eastside Commercial Districts

By Betty Jean Grant We Are Women Warriors

Betty Jean Grant

The beautiful city of Buffalo has been my hometown since I arrived in 1970, in the middle of a snow storm that piled up snow almost to the top of people’s garages. My first trip around the city was to find a store to purchase my very first pair of boots. I was born and lived in Tennessee until I turned 18, and during all those years, it did not snow long or heavy enough for a person to waste their money buying boots they may need only once every two or three year.

So, my future husband and I headed out around the city in search of what turned out to be a very important accessory to have if one wished not to have cold or frozen feet.

We started out around the Genesee, Bissell, Moselle area. Although, there were several shoe stores on and around those streets, we wound up traveling down Walden Avenue to the Thruway Plaza. I found the perfect pair of boots in that Cheektowaga Plaza, but I also bought a beautiful hooded coat from Sattler’s Department Store on Broadway; a living room couch and chair set from a store at Goodyear and Genesee St. This writer bought fish from a fish market on Genesee and bread and cakes from a bakery on East Ferry St.

What I am trying to tell you is that even though Buffalo was going through a major economic decline due to “White Flight” to the suburban areas and major companies like General Electric and Westinghouse, moving to more tax friendly states and taking the jobs with them, the eastside of Buffalo was still thriving. The financial and economic stability of the area was still robust because the men and women who had jobs traveled up or down those eastside streets, on their way to Ford, Fisher Price, General Motor, and to jobs at Republic and Bethlehem Steel.

It was nothing for these hardworking men and women to stop and purchase that gallon of milk or loaf of bread they remembered they needed as they drove by the neighborhood businesses on their way home from church or work. In addition, these eastside businesses got a big boost when New York State implemented the legalized Lottery Games and put gambling machines in every little deli or liquor store that wanted one.

Sadly, the eastside commercial districts suffered greatly when the Steel Plants closed and the workers were forced to settle for lower paying jobs and were not able to help sustain the economic health of all those eastside businesses, some of whom had served the community for generations.

With the new investment of the newly established immigrants like, first, the Arab community and now the Bengali or Bangladeshi business owners, the Eastside is finally showing some economic growth for the first time in decades. These new-to- Buffalo entrepreneurs are opening supermarkets on Fillmore and Bailey Avenues, an entertainment complex on E. Amherst St. and meat markets and furniture stores all across the eastside community.

Revitalizing the commercial strips is one of the reasons why the idea of burying a tunnel under the 33 Expressway is a devastating idea for the Eastside. We need cars to once again patronize the stores that these new Americans have invested millions of dollars into, on the eastside of the city.

The loudest argument the pro-tunnel people use to justify burying almost a billion dollars under Humboldt Parkway is that “the radial commercial streets cannot handle the traffic of 75,000 cars.” They are forgetting that, in 1950, Buffalo had three times the population it has right now. It also had twice as many cars on the streets than it has today, and with no Expressway. They also don’t mention the fact that traffic could be diverted to the 190 and 198 highways if the community-divisive 33 Expressway is removed.

The very best use of that almost billion dollars would be the complete removal of the intrusive 33 Expressway and the full restoration of Humboldt Parkway to reconnect it to MLK and Delaware Parks. This Removal, Restore and Reconnect project is the very best way to repair a grave injustice the community suffered when beautiful and majestic trees were ripped out of the Parkway to appease a group of people who could not wait to abandon this beautiful city.