Posts Tagged ‘North Buffalo’

Little Italy is a BIG Deal!

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

 

Here we go again…more urban planning magic compliments of some R.I.T. students.  Good Grief.  What happened to the Planning Department at the University of Buffalo.  They are located just down the street on the Downtown Campus.  Been there for years – a ton of expertise and student horsepower just waiting to be unleashed.  And it takes students from R.I.T. to get some effort (and newspaper coverage…) to publicize the potential of Hertel Avenue as “Little Italy” ??? 

Who doesn’t know about (or appreciate) the Italian Festival each summer.  Good for business and good for the neighborhood and good for getting out and meeting your neighbors during a week of fun & food.  That is a busy week at the Bella Mia Candy Store.  We sell a ton of ice cream, T-shirt, candy and chocolates.  You can stop in early or stop in late.  We are always happy to see you!

 

Bella Mia strongly supports any new initiative that will increase the interest and appeal of Hertel Avenue.  As they say around here:  it ain’t Elmwood – it’s Hertel Avenue!  Things are just a little different around here.  Parking is easy and more available.  Hertel Avenue is definitely wider and the NFTA bus going down the street doesn’t cause the traffic jams that it might on Elmwood during the winter when those nasty snow banks make Elmwood even narrower.  Easy to get around and easy to shop!  Who knows – maybe some of local Councilmen will wake up to the fact that there is only one Hertel Avenue.  Let’s get behind this effort to get some money from the City of Buffalo to spruce things up in our version of Little Italy.  We don’t need to shoot for recreating the Leaning Tower of Pisa in North Buffalo – just make a sustained effort to make something good even better…

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Leaning Tower of Pisa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s end this rant this way:  the last quote in the Buffalo News article says it all: ‘…Delaware Council Member Michael J. LoCurto said he thinks he can help snare city funds to further…”  Did he say snare?  I thought that was a way to catch a rabbit.  Oh well – if we can’t snare a rabbit, perhaps we should settle for some funding.

 

Now is not the time to just sit back and see what happens.  I wonder what the North Buffalo Merchants Association has to say about this initiative…