(By MARY KUNZ GOLDMAN – 08/14/2006) Chris Byrd isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to find hanging out on an East Side street corner late on a Friday night. He’s 38, lives in Snyder and works for the Amherst schools.
But Byrd and his friends, gathered in front of Arty’s Grill and Tavern with beers in their hands to see the big picture that is Buffalo. They know that what happens to the East Side affects Clarence and Hamburg. They care about history and heritage. And they’re ready to do their part to help save an old neighborhood they love from decay and neglect.
That’s why they formed a new group, Broadway Fillmore Alive. And they’re gathered at Arty’s, an old-time tavern at the foot of the Central Terminal, to do what?
Byrd admits that the nascent group’s goals are nebulous.
“We get a lot of people asking, “What the hell are you doing?’ ” he laughs. “I don’t see us coming in like gangbusters and saying we can solve everything. But we can accomplish little things.”
A modest agenda emerges as the evening proceeds. A Paderewski Street park calls out for cleanup and landscaping. One woman is concerned for the fate of a particular historic house.
And the right tenant is needed for the stately old department store building at Broadway and Fillmore, owned by the same family since the 1890s. They’ve turned down offers, says Mike Miller, an architecture buff who grew up in the Fruit Belt and works for M&T Bank. They turned down Walgreens. A sigh of awe goes up.
Small things add up. And in the struggling Broadway/Fillmore area, the time is right for progress. Forty new houses are going up near St. Stanislaus Church. The Masjid Zakariya mosque on Sobieski Street is asking its members, who include many professionals, to move to the area.
