Another day, another Family Dollar

■ Two weeks ago, we wrote that Ellicott Development planned to build another Family Dollar discount store—the 19th in the city—at the corner of Niagara and Pennsylvania Street. The new-build on the site of a defunct gas station was granted a negative declaration by the city’s Planning Board, exempting the project from a lengthy and expensive environmental review.

Enter #20: This week the Buffalo Common Council received and filed another recommendation for a negative declaration for an Ellicott Development project: a Family Dollar on Bailey at Langmeyer Street, just north of Delavan. This time it’s a remodel of a former Bells supermarket, not a new build, and the project will cost about $178,000.

■ Meanwhile, Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis asked the Council on Tuesday to oppose a negative declaration for a housing project at Michigan Avenue and Sycamore Street. The project, Davis said, “does not seem to fit the fabric of what we’re trying to do” in the neighborhood. Davis referred to Mayor Byron Brown’s recent State of the City speech, in which Brown described plans to invest millions to develop the Michigan Street corridor as an African-American cultural heritage destination, capitalizing on and adding to the rehabilitation of such significant landmarks as the Nash House and the Michigan Street Baptist Church.

The project that Davis opposes is a $3.5 million residence proposed by Lake Shore Behavioral Health, with 16 rooms and shared kitchen and bath facilities. It is, Davis said, a residence for the homeless and the mentally ill—not at all in keeping with the city’s plans for that stretch of Michigan Avenue.

Originally the Council had agreed to receive and file the Planning Board’s recommendation to grant Lake Shore Behavioral Health a negative declaration. At Davis’s request, it was sent to the Community Development Committee instead, where it can be subject to debate and public hearing, and, if need be, languish.

■ The Council congratulates our man at MBBA: Earlier this month, Buffalo Comptroller Andy SanFilippo was named by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to the board of the Municipal Bond Banking Agency, the division of Empire state Development Corporation that until recently sat idly on more than 1,500 delinquent and decrepit city properties.

■ But thanks for asking: In a letter filed this week with the Common Council, Commissioner of Economic Development and Permit and Inspection Services Rich Tobe informed the Council of his response to a request from Seneca One Realty to consider extending its payment in lieu of taxes agreement on its Washington Street parking ramp.

Tobe said that he explained to Stephen Fitzmaurice of Seneca One Realty that the PILOT agreement for the firm’s ramp could not be extended by the city. PILOT agreements are state tax exemptions that can be granted by IDAs, Tobe told him—in this case, the Erie County IDA—and are in any case meant to expire. At which point the beneficiaries are supposed to begin paying taxes like regular citizens.

Tobe said that he had accordingly referred Fitzmaurice to ECIDA if he had further questions about his firm’s agreement.

—geoff kelly