A pile of wood at 1070 Seneca Street photographed on May 14.

(photo: Art Robinson)

A larger pile of wood photographed on July 25. Together they indicate continued dumping on the site.

(photo: Buck Quigley)

If there are any bright spots in the city’s handling of its urban forest this summer, one might be the removal of the big, dead Norway maple that was pictured in “Timber!” (Artvoice v6n28), four days after the story published. After being on the removal list for a year and a half, Schneck’s Tree Removal, an Orchard Park company the city contracts to cut down trees, finally arrived to remove it. The foreman on the job explained that they’d be back to grind down the stump and lay down fresh topsoil within two weeks. Dead before the storm, there was no way to justify FEMA money for its removal. Nevertheless this is one example where the city found the funds to have a hazardous right-of-way tree removed.

If only there were a similar future for the 7,000 stumps left standing in the city following the hurried removal of trees months after the October 12 storm.

As the FEMA-funded tree-removal process grinds along in Buffalo this summer, huge piles of wood sit at 1070 Seneca Street behind a City of Buffalo Engineering garage. On July 6, when I asked some city employees there about the wood, and about the Arborturf truck that we watched pulling in there full of logs, they informed me that the land was owned by a Cheektowaga company called Custom Topsoil.

I have left several messages for Michael Fronckowiak, head of Custom Topsoil, who also happens to be the chairman or CEO of 1070 Seneca Street, Inc., to ask him about all that wood on his property. He has not returned my call. Last Wednesday I got a clue as to why that might be.

It came in the form of a tip from Art Robinson, president of the Seneca Babcock Block Club. He told me that he saw trucks removing logs from 1070 Seneca Street, and urged me to call Richard Tobe, Commissioner, Economic Development, Permit and Inspection Services in Mayor Byron Brown’s administration.

Robinson was citing the Seneca Babcock Redevelopment Project Urban Renewal Plan, which was drafted in November, 2005. Bailey Avenue on the east, Elk Street on the south, the CSX railroad on the west and another CSX rail line on the north bound the project area. According to the plan, “The Project Area has been found to suffer from spreading slum and blight conditions. The Common Council of the City of Buffalo and the Buffalo City Planning Board have designated the project area as a substandard, unsanitary area, which tends to impair or arrest the sound growth and development of the municipality, as defined in Subdivision 3 of Section 502, Article 15 of the New York State General Municipal Law, and designated the area, pursuant to Section 504, Article 15 of the New York State General Municipal Law, and Section 105 (D) of Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, as an area appropriate for urban renewal treatment.”

This neighborhood has suffered since the 1950s, when the New York State Thruway split the area in two. The population has been in steady decline and the per-capita income is one of the most distressed in the city. That’s why the Office of Strategic Planning, in cooperation with the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, proposed a long-term renewal program to “assist in the elimination of existing signs of blight, slums, and substandard conditions within the project area.”

Why would anyone dump hundreds of truckloads of tree “debris” there?

“Here’s the situation. The city passed an urban renewal plan that prohibits this use specifically,” said Tobe. “I’d had a meeting with some staff in which we’d gone over this with [Interim Public Works Commissioner] Dan Kreuz. As a result, we concluded that the storage of the wood [at 1070 Seneca Street] was an illegal activity within the zone. It’s an illegal use. That’s what we told Dan Kreuz. Dan Kreuz told me he sent a letter to them to cease and desist. And although I don’t have the letter, he’s confident he can unearth it.”

According to Tobe, he doesn’t have grounds for bringing charges because an investigator would need to catch a truck pulling onto the property to deposit logs. I told him that I’d witnessed an Arborturf truck pulling in there on July 6. He reminded me that I was a reporter, and wondered if I was prepared to testify in housing court. “When we bring charges in housing court, it’s a criminal case,” he said. “We need to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt in court with witnesses.”

The problem, according to Tobe, is that “there’s reason to think our Commissioner of Public Works initially allowed [the dumping of wood]. And I don’t know if that wood pile grew after they were told ‘you can’t do it.’”

It could be that Kreuz is too busy digging around for that cease and desist letter to call me back to comment on this embarrassing new wrinkle to the story. But then, it could be that Kreuz is still upset with me for quoting him directly in recent stories. He called on July 16 to tell me that he had spoken with Corporation Counsel and that the city lawyers had determined that my tree was too great a risk to remain standing. I reminded him that that was why it needed attention and asked him who in the Corporation Counsel’s office he’d spoken with. He then clarified that he was “going to” talk to the Corporation Counsel. “I have been talking to her, but not about this specific issue.” He then asked if I was taping him on the phone. I said, “Yes.” He said, “Bye,” and hung up.

I called Corporation Counsel Alyssa Lukasiewicz, left a message and subsequently received a phone call from Senior Corporation Counsel David Rodriguez. I told him about my conversation with Kreuz and explained that I’d been trying for months to be granted permission to have the city’s tree in front of my house fixed. He said he’d look into it and call me back. He didn’t. I called him back, and he explained that Assistant Corporation Counsel Gregory Heeb should have called me. I told him he hadn’t.

Same for the mayor’s Director of Communications, Peter Cutler. Ever since July 9, when he told me that he and Kreuz had agreed to let me have the tree in front of my house fixed, he has been incommunicado. I’ve sent him several emails, and have left messages on both his office and cell phones to no avail—because I need written permission from the city before I can have repairs done to the tree.

On July 20, during a chance encounter in City Hall, when Artvoice video director Matt Quinn and I happened to be sharing an elevator ride with Mayor Byron Brown, I took the opportunity to ask the mayor if he would like to go on camera with his views on the tree removal process in the city. He directed me to Cutler. I explained that I had been in contact with Cutler a number of times, but had heard nothing from him since July 9. I asked the mayor if he could ask his director of communications to call me at Artvoice. I didn’t have a business card with me, but the mayor repeated: “Buck Quigley at Artvoice, I’ll tell him.”

The mayor must have forgotten to remind him, because Cutler has still not responded to my calls. Or maybe the mayor did remind him, but Cutler has decided that no response is a kind of response. Or it may be that he has no response that will help to explain why the city currently has an estimated 200 truckloads of logs and branches illegally deposited on zoned property that forbids any kind of dumping.

One licensed arborist and one certified arborist—the one who initially recommended the tree’s removal—have said the tree in front of my house can be repaired with appropriate pruning, bracing and cabling. Further, it would be more cost-effective than cutting it down, removing the stump, and replanting with a young tree that would take decades to mature. The licensed arborist is of the opinion that the tree in front of my house could possibly live another 50 years with proper attention.

However, both Art Traver at Wendell Duchscherer, the architecture and engineering firm the city hires for over $300,000 a year, and Jeff Brett, tree care supervisor with the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, told me that it was his impression that the city planned on coming back to cut down the tree in front of my house at the very end of the process—as the tree crews are readying to get out of town.

It is also interesting to note that the Ohio-based tree removal company Arborturf has taken out a small ad in the Bee Newspapers this week, proclaiming “LOGS FOR SALE, $250 PER LOAD.” Debris removal, indeed.