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Block Club

Kathleen and Anthony Mecca have lived in their comfortable, three-family home on Columbus Parkway for 34 years, watching the neighborhood experience the ups and downs of change while working to keep its fabric strong.

Now, under the Public Bridge Authority’s preferred alternative for Peace Bridge plaza expansion, their neighborhood—including 128 houses and 10 businesses—is on the chopping block. Needless to say, they’re not happy about it, although they’re not at all surprised. Even as the dramatic bridge renderings change and the players presenting them to the public are shifted around, the story is always the same: we want your house, and you have no say in it.

The Meccas, along with neighbor and lifelong resident Elizabeth Martina, shared their feelings about the proposed expansion with Artvoice.

AV: How has the threat of eminent domain affected life of your neighborhood?

Kathleen: Eminent Domain is not just a declaration they invoke or a piece of legislation that gets passed. It is a process of layers and layers and layers. Because anywhere that they claim eminent domain, if you take a look at history, what they do first is blight the area to drive down the market value, which is exactly what the authority is doing. [PBA owns most of the block of Busti Ave. between Rhode Island and Vermont, where it has left its houses boarded up, to rot.] They say this area is now in need of urban revitalization, they’ll come in and knock down the blighted and diseased neighborhoods, like the mayor’s 5 in 5 program. Unfortunately, maybe 140-150 people will have to lose their homes to accommodate the capital project. If you look at eminent domain projects, public and private, that’s exactly the kind of poker game you’ll see. All of a sudden we get these notices buried in the sports page of the Buffalo News, on a Sunday in section D12. Notice of DEIS public hearing and you’re advised to attend because so,me of your property or all of your property may be involved in eminent domain. That’s how they do it; it’s the element of surprise.

We’ve been held hostage when it comes to maintaining our homes. If I need to paint my house or fix my roof, things that other people would normally do to maintain and keep up their home, I have to weigh that investment against what the Peace Bridge might do. That’s how we have lived for 13 years.

AV: How does that feel?

K: I resent the fact that we are not worthy of consideration, as human beings in a beautiful city that we’ve embraced our entire lives. And in the USA, no less. The mayor talks about restoring neighborhoods one by one. That’s not going to restore this neighborhood.

Anthony: No one on this Public Bridge Authority project lives in Buffalo. They’re not city residents, so they could care less. The last bridge manager lived in East Aurora. He had a nice life, so he comes here to disrupt our lives. [PBA General Manager] Ron Rienas lives in Port Colborne, a nice little town, but far away from the bridge.

AV: What’s your preferred alternative right now?

Elizabeth: They say they’ve studied these other alternatives, but how can they justify saying it’s impossible to do it at the site of the International Railroad Bridge? There’s already a bridge there, so they’ve done it once before. Why can’t they build another bridge there now?

A: Have you seen the brown fields up on Tonawanda Street? There is nothing up there, just old warehouses.

K: And all of your highways intersect.

E: We don’t care if it is Ambassador, we don’t care if it’s PBA—we just don’t want it here.

AV: How do you rate shared border management? And what about the national security concerns that Chertoff brought up?

K: Oh, I think it is a concern to them, but I also think it’s the path of least resistance. The minute Chertoff made it seem that it would be more difficult to achieve shared border management, that was the PBA’s out. They seemed to say, “Oh well, we tried,” and throw it out.

Why not re-negotiate shared border management or wait until after the upcoming Presidential election, when there will be a new administration in power? What is the hurry to expand now?

AV: How have the local pols been performing on the matter?

A: Byron Brown could really be a great mayor if he says, “I don’t want this, this is wrong for my city. If we’re going to have a bridge crossing here we are going to find a way to do it right, a way that’s innovative and that’s not going to destroy the good neighborhoods.” To do this he is gonna have to stick his neck out. He is the mayor of this city. He could make such a stink about it.

K: But he’s not going to do it. And Higgins, how can he be embracing the redevelopment of the waterfront downtown when less than a mile away he is going to decimate a historic, vibrant, healthy community?

And who is representing the impoverished renters? Urban renewal is not a cure for diseased neighborhoods and it doesn’t kill poverty, it just exasperates it. Where are these people going to live? Talk is talk, but they haven’t demonstrated how they are going to house these people, which is an outrage.