(Lou Michel – Buffalo News) Getting a job could be getting a little easier for the poor.

A boutique clothes closet dedicated to providing financially strapped individuals with suitable attire for job interviews officially opened Friday.

The clothes closet is at the Matt Urban Hope Center, 385 Paderewski Drive, across from the old Central Terminal. Hours are 9 a. m. to 4:30 p. m. weekdays.

But the facility might not have been possible if it weren’t for two area Boy Scouts in search of an Eagle Scout project.

Alexander Fumerelle, 17, of Kenmore and a member of Troop 37, refurbished the women’s bathroom and tiled the runway.

Read full story—>

Photo: Charles Lewis/Buffalo News

I am so glad the Buffalo News has focused on a couple of the places in the neighborhood this week that work to make the lives better for people…without them, a lot of people would be forgotten…God bless them for all they do!

From the Buffalo News…

Twenty-four hours after St. Adalbert’s School closed in 1985, the Response to Love Center was born.

And for the last 25 years, three Felician sisters have been serving the “economically deprived, spiritually poor, emotionally battered, the isolated, wounded and broken” from the Kosciuszko Street building on Buffalo’s East Side.

Sister Mary Catherine Raczkowski is in charge of the youth program and the baby ministry, while Sister Mary Rose Szymanski works in the intake department and is one of the first people seen by new clients when they come for help.

But the women are extending their reach to include “the forgotten people who have not come forward,” said Sister Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz, the center’s longtime director.

This is the “new direction” of the Catholic Church and the Western New York Holiday Partnership, to respond to all in need, Rzadkiewicz said.  Read full story in the Buffalo News—>

Support the Response to Love Center by clicking here—>

After work and a long day of running around, I came home to find a bunch of emails and voice messages asking about Donn Esmonde’s column in the Buffalo News today regarding the Broadway Market.

This is what I have to say…DO NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ.

Honestly, it made what was a great Friday turn sour.

Esmonde’s column is a one sided opinion piece…it fails to accurately portray what is/has been going on with the Broadway Market, its manager situation and what is going on at the core of the decisions being made.  Like I said, it is a one sided opinion piece.

What the Market needs is fair, honest and transparent talk about its current state and its future…it doesn’t need to be a political football…it needs people working together.

And this comes from one of the Market’s trust believers who is in a Broadway-Fillmore frame of mind 99.2% of the time.  I am also in need of finding the genie Donn Esmonde wrote about.

Amen…

This piece I wrote was published in the Buffalo News on 05/08/2006.  It is still resonates today to me as much as it did back in 2006.

Between the typical Easter season craziness and recent revelations surrounding a plan to add an outlet store to the Broadway Market, a lot of attention has been focused on this East Side landmark over the last few weeks.

As people often do when something is in the news, many have offered thoughts and ideas as to what is either wrong with the market or what should be done with it. Some say move it downtown. Some say it needs a new facility. Some say it just isn’t the same anymore. Some say the neighborhood is its biggest obstacle.

Though the Broadway Market has its share of problems, its doors are still open serving the Broadway-Fillmore community year round. This is something that can’t be overlooked in discussing the future of the market.

Cities like Cleveland, Rochester, St. Louis and Cincinnati have transformed similar inner-city public markets into regional destinations. Is it such a stretch to think that Buffalo can do the same? There is nothing like the market in the region. It has built-in name recognition and is a piece of living history.

There is a rebirth of sorts occurring in the area. The market sits amid a rejuvenated Corpus Christi Church, a thriving St. Stanislaus Church, a Central Terminal on the rise and an emerging community being developed around the Masjid Zakariya Mosque on Sobieski Street. It ought to be an integral part of this mix.

The Broadway Market should be viewed as a catalyst to help bring more business back to the neighborhood. The market stands positioned to be the epicenter of commerce on the East Side. Every effort should be made to ensure that 999 Broadway experiences a rebirth of its own. It is not only a vital part of our past, but can be a vital part of Buffalo’s future.

Christopher M. Byrd
Co-founder, Broadway Fillmore Alive

Support the Market!!!

BFA friend…Mary Kunz Goldman wrote about the Facebook Mass @ Saint Adalbert Basilica in the Buffalo News yesterday…

[check it out by clicking here]

Thanks Mary!

(By Donn Esmonde – Buffalo News) Sometimes you have to put your money where your heart is. That is what Eddy Dobosiewicz figured out. Good intentions do not go far in a neighborhood this far gone.

That is how Dobosiewicz—aka Airborne Eddy, aka Maxwell Truth—came to own the old Strusienski Restaurant. It was his for a bargain-basement $2,000 at last fall’s city auction. He thought that it was a small price to pay for a neighbor-hood icon, three floors of boarded-up nostalgia and potential in the shadow of the Central Terminal.

Some neighborhoods are more of a state of mind than a street grid. Few capture the imagination of true believers like the blocks surrounding the Broadway Market. Once a working-class Polish- American enclave, the neighborhood stands as a worst-case scenario, a battered, crime-plagued victim of suburban flight and middle-income abandonment.

[read full story at the Buffalo News]

In fine holiday tradition, landmark shines with old and new vendors, visitors
By Brian Meyer, Buffalo News Staff Reporter – March 27, 2010, 12:37 AM

So when Buffalo native Ginny Fuller flew home this week, she and her two sisters hit an East Side icon they’ve been visiting since they were kids begging for marshmallow Peeps.

That was several decades ago, before scores of empty buildings marred the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood. It was an era when the market was still thriving.

As the three sisters enjoyed a wine-tasting Friday, they said they were thrilled to see the market buzzing with activity. But it’s the Easter shopping season — a time shoppers flock to the market for everything from pierogi and pussy willows, to butter lambs and holiday hams. Except for another sales uptick during the Christmas holiday, the market struggles to lure customers about 10 months of the year.

“I wish it looked like this every week,” said Phyllis Dusel of the Town of Tonawanda. “But it doesn’t, unfortunately.”

[read for story in the Buffalo News]

(Derek Gee – Buffalo News)

From the Buffalo News…

You will have to take the word of 6-year-old EvRhett Eberle of Williamsville that that’s him inside the robot costume Saturday, hoping to have his Halloween bag filled with candy from Irene Sekuterski at Chrusciki Bakery in the Broadway Market.

Nice to pick up my copy of today’s Buffalo News and see a scene from the Broadway Market on it! 

[click here to see the rest of the photos from the Market and others from Halloween around WNY]

(Bill Wippert / Buffalo News)

(By Danny Yadron NEWS STAFF REPORTER) When John Hajduk’s family picked up his grandma from the train station in the 1960s, they met her at the clock.

And when Ben Hiltz left for Army boot camp in 1964, he met the “guy with the tickets” at the clock.

It was the common phrase at Buffalo’s Central Terminal during the station’s heyday.

“Meet me at the clock,” said Hiltz, 67, a Town of Tonawanda resident who has spent the past five years cleaning up the dilapidated building. “It’s something that everyone remembers.”

Central Terminal curators last week returned the original four-sided timepiece to the main concourse for the building’s 80th birthday party, scheduled Saturday. Fifteen feet tall under a nearly 60-foot ceiling, the chipped and repainted relic doesn’t change much, those involved admit. But supporters of renovating Buffalo’s once-stately train station said they hope the addition will help the city reclaim its past.

[read full story]

***reminder…tomorrow is 80th Anniversary Celebration***