The talk of the nation right now is the Senate’s ongoing debate over immigration reform. Following the House’s December passage of the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (HR 4437), also known as the Sensenbrenner Bill, a firestorm of protest ripped across the country, primarily in Latino communities. The protests were triggered by the fact that Sensenbrenner’s bill, packaged as “immigration reform,” was strictly a security bill that planned to deport all illegal aliens and criminalize anyone who offered them aid, including the clergy.

“We’ve really been pushing for the last six years or so,” says Pam Beal to the gathered audience, referring to North Buffalo’s planned rail-trail. “And we feel a bit like Sisyphus—we keep rolling the rock up and it keeps coming back down.”

Curtiss-Wright moved most of its Buffalo operations to Columbus, Ohio, at the end of World War II, taking nearly 35,000 jobs with it. This facility, at 60 Grider Street—which manufactured aircraft engines—hung on for a while, finally closing in 1997. At an on-site press conference on Thursday, March 30, Centerstone Development CEO John Giardino announced a $22 million plan to redevelop the abandoned factory. The first phase of the project, called Wright Place, will be a state-of-the-art linen processing plant operated by Sodexho, Inc. The laundry will create approximately 160 new jobs—Sodexho already employs 4,000 people locally—and will serve hospitals and hospital systems throughout Western New York. Giardino was joined in the announcement by Emeka Okeani, president of Sodexho Laundry and Linen Services, as well as executives from the Western New York Purchasing Alliance, Buffalo’s Catholic Health System, ECMC and Kaleida Health. Mayor Byron Brown also spoke at the press conference. Giardino said that 600 tons of metal and debris had been removed from the building since Centerstone bought it a year and a half ago. Almost all of it was scrapped, he said—there’s not much of a resale market in North America for the enormous cranes and trolley systems and presses the factory once employed. Two giant cogs used for pressing steel, such as the one in the foreground of this picture, will be used as landscaping elements near the facility’s entrance, a reminder of its past.