Letters From Carl	by Geoff Kelly

Carl Paladino takes a stab at AV in one letter, Tim Wanamaker in another

We received two letters from developer Carl Paladino this week. One was critical of Artvoice for publishing George Sax’s article about the Kissling Interests pursuit of Empire Zone benefits for a high-end apartment building prject at the affluent corner of Virginia Street and Park Place (“Friends With Benefits,” Artvoice v7n11).

Sax’s article isn’t about Paladino’s Ellicott Development Company, but it mentions his use of Empire Zone benefits for upscale housing on the city’s downtown waterfront. You can read the article at Artvoice.com. (Go to AV Daily.)

The second letter is a salvo in Paladino’s ongoing war with developer James Sandoro, Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis and Mayor Byron Brown’s administration. It’s addressed to James Morrell, chairman of the city’s Planning Board, and concerns what Paladino calls “political obstruction” in his effort to win site plan approval for a 150-space surface parking lot at 175 South Division Street, to be leased to Erie Community College for student and faculty parking.

The obstruction Paladino refers to is a March 11 letter sent to Morrell by Tim Wanamaker, outgoing commissioner of the city’s Office of Strategic Planning, advising the Planning Board that surface lots “are primary detractors to the urban landscape in downtown Buffalo” and out of line with the city’s “vision for Michigan Avenue as a mixed use cultural corridor that connects our redeveloping waterfront to the growing Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.”

A fair argument against surface parking, to be sure, but Paladino claims that Wanamaker wrote that letter at the behest of Davis, who is working on behalf of Sandoro, whose surface parking lots compete with those of his old rival, Paladino. Sandoro, a financial supporter of both Davis and Brown, lost the bid to provide ECC with surface parking, having bid $25 more per spot than Paladino and demanding that ECC leas no less than 400 spots.

“We ask that Mr. Wanamaker be invited to testify under oath as to who wrote his opinion letter of March 11, 2008,” Paladino writes. “We suspect that it was written by cousel to our adversary James Sandoro who seeks to protect his parking lots from competition.”

You can read all these letters and more on the matter at Artvoice.com. (Go to AV Daily.)

—geoff kelly