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I lived in Buffalo for 10 years, and now I live in Minneapolis, and lived in other cities. As a whole the Western NY area is just not "to me" a great place to live. I lived through layoff after layoff, and finally had enough and moved to an area that was prospering. Erie County is the victim of the "good ole' boy" government, and it is business as usual. That is what has kept it behind other areas of the country.
I have noticed people in the area don't like change. The same scumbag politicians get voted in, and yet people are mad because the area is becoming dirtier and less pleasant to live. I still have family there, and I shake my head every time I visit. Instead of blaming the inner city for Cheektowaga's problems look to the local government, who has played a MAJOR role in the decline in the city and suburbs.
VOTE FOR DET.(ret) DENNIS DELANO for TOWN JUSTICE!!! no more self serving politicians who move to the outskirts and support Representatives who dont even live here!
NOT ONE lives in Cheektowaga!!! and the judge he is running against has a law firm with his son here and three more lawyers...THAT is a conflict of interest in my opinion! If you want justice you would have to hire him or his firm or loose? YOU BE THE JUDGE!! He has in his own condecending words.. .." a VERY successful lawfirm here" and I'm not letting ANYONE diminish what my property is worth. With that he put an 80plus year old grandmother in jail over the weekend for housing violations instead of calling for a senior assitance program to step in and help. That and harassed and fined a mentally challenged 80 plus year old VETERAN too on housing violations. The Detective and his brother Paul went and fixed the VET's house for nothing! THAT is the guy we need in the courtroom. NOT in my opinion a bully!!
Dear PatriotGramma,
There was only one thing correct in your post regarding Judge Vallone, he does have a law practice in Cheektowaga.
Here is what is incorrect:
1. There is only one other lawer in his firm and that is his son. The other 2 people in that office are not lawyers nor do they claim to be.
2. Judge Vallones son is NOT ALLOWED to appear in Cheektowaga court and never has.
So before you go running your mouth off again, please do your homework and get your facts correct!
Those who dont play by the rules, will not win the game
I'm moving to WNY soon and have been looking at properties in Cheektowaga. It's sad to hear that some of these affordable neighborhoods are going downhill, but the good people of Cheektowaga can thwart that if they really want to. When you look at the east side of Buffalo and my hometown of Detroit the common denominator in the making of these slums was white flight. White (and middle class) flight is just as much to blame for the condition of these areas as the criminal element that makes them unsafe. People uprooted themselves and their families and businesses to head for 'greener pastures' leaving behing massive abandonment of homes in businesses. This led to further devaluation of property in these areas creating neighborhoods of exclusively poor people and all the social ills that come with poverty in america. Now the 'greener pastures' are facing a repeat of the same tragic history that has destroyed the innerds of cities across america! Hopefully people will be able to wise up to lessons learned from the past if they truly care about their communities. With populations aging in first ring suburbs, there is a stockpile of affordable housing avaliable in these communities. This is naturally going to attract people from the inner cities who wish to live in safer more viable neighborhoods. Don't just assume that all people of color, or lower income people are freeloaders and thugs. Get to know your neighbors and figure out for yourself who is moving in for a better life and who is out to cause trouble. Buffalo has some nice affordable older suburbs with good schools. To a working class single parent like me, this is a godsend. Hopefully, people have evolved since the 60's and 70's, and white flight won't ruin the few places in america where people like me can raise our families in safe and affordable communities.
As a primary first ring suburb to Buffalo's eastside, I would avoid living in Cheektowaga. The problems that have plagued Buffalo are a contagient and Cheektowaga is prime for decay. Abandoned homes are already cropping up around the Galleria Mall which has become a magnet for crime and blight. Cheektowaga is doomed. Avoid it.
As a primary first ring suburb to Buffalo's eastside, I would avoid living in Cheektowaga. The problems that have plagued Buffalo are a contagient and Cheektowaga is prime for decay. Abandoned homes are already cropping up around the Galleria Mall which has become a magnet for crime and blight. Cheektowaga is doomed. Avoid it.
I don't think all of Cheektowaga is bad and 20 years ago none of Cheektowaga was bad. There are other communities that will hold up well over the next 20 years and I don't think anyone can honestly say that Cheektowaga will be nice in even 10 years. The decay of the eastside of Buffalo is not going to magically go away, it will continue to spread and Cheektowaga is the natural geography to continue that spread of decay.
The latest on Cheektowagas new Judge. Dennis Delano has already ditched his responsibilites as the new Town Justice. Instead of attending the MANDATORY Judical school, he thought it better to go on a cruise. He will not be able to be take the bench until April 1st now. As an elected official he will be paid for the 90 days that he will not be working (at tax payer expense). Also the Town Board will have to appoint a judge in the interm to fill the vacant position for those 90 days who will also have to be paid (another tax payer expense).
Once again Delano proves that he thinks that the rules do not apply to him. What person in their right mind goes on a cruise when he was supposed to be training for his new job? I dont care if he booked this trip a year ago, he should have cancelled it. It is such a slap in the face to all thoses people who voted for him thinking that he actually cared about this job at all! Hes just looking for a cushy job! Boy is he in for a rude awakening, that job is anything but cushy.
I have friends who live in Cheektowaga, and my grandparents lived there from 1971 to 2008. My grandparents lived near Cleaveland-Eggert, my friends at Harlem-Walden...aka the West Cheektowaga- Buffalo East side borders. My friend and I walked through his neighborhood going to Thruway Lanes a few days ago and noticed an alarming number of for-sale signs. I swear one street had about six or seven, not exagerrating. Either white flight is taking place, or the eldery residents are dying off or moving at a rapid pace (like another poster said, a LOT of Cheektowaga residents are elderly).
Apparently gangs have been meeting in the Cheektowaga Town Park at night recently.
My friend (whos 20 and has lived in Cheektowaga his whole life, btw) told me that the Walden area was still a fairly nice area 15 years ago.
I haven't been in my grandparents' old neighborhood much recently, but I remember seeing increasingly unkempt houses the last 5 years they lived there.
So, yes, West Cheektowaga is having issues. It's not extremely bad yet (my friends and I still walk around the Thruway plaza and surrounding area at night without a problem), but based on the pattern I'm seeing, in 10, maybe even 5 years, it could end up being a dangerous area. I wish something would be done, because Cheektowaga is an affordable, cozy town. This is something Cheektowaga must adress.
I wrote a study on the decline of Cheektowaga's Pine Hill/Walden neighborhood. Basically, there's no one reason accounting for the changes taking place; it's a convergence of several different trends. Government can't be blamed, either, nor "white flight". To summarize, it's:
* Housing that is too affordable.
* Absentee property ownership, partly driven by the neighborhood's extreme affordability.
* Housing that is functionally obsolete; awkward floorplans, no delineation of public or private space, central space heaters, etc.
* Loss in housing units on the East Side pushing former residents out towards the city line. All the people who used to live in neighborhoods that are now urban prairie have to go somewhere, and the path of least resistance when it comes to housing availability and affordability is east.
* Loss of the industrial base that previously provided employment for what was once the blue collar population base.
* Aging of the existing population, with few peers to replace them. Working-class Poles now live in better but still very affordable housing in Depew, Sloan, Maryvale, U-Crest, Doyle and other areas east of Union Road.
* Inappropriate development that harmed the physical fabric of the neighborhood (e.g. vehicle-oriented development that broke up what oonce was a very walkable environment along Genesee Street and Walden Avenue, poor exterior renovations that harmed the architectural integrity of houses, and thus the harmony of the larger streetscape.)
The other thing that Cheektowaga should be concerned about is similar to what wiped out Buffalo's tree canopy in the 1950s and 1950s. Just like Buffalo's tree canopy was once overwhelmingly comprised of Dutch Elms, Cheektowaga has a similar housing monoculture throughout the town. Outside of the Cleveland Hill area, the housing stock consists almost entirely of small houses and duplexes built for a working-class and lower-middle class population. Cheektowaga has plenty of starter houses, but nothing to move up to; for that, residents go to Lancaster or West Seneca. Very little of Cheektowaga's housing stock is valued at more than $125K, and the vast majority of homes in the town still carries a five digit price tag.
Even Tonawanda, with a similar blue-collar reputation, has a variety of housing stock for all income groups. One can easily drop $400K or more on a house in the beautiful Deerhurst neighborhood, or $200K+ in other areas near Colvin Avenue, Ellicott Creek, or in the Curtis Park area. Outside of a small portion of Cleveland Hill, there's no equivalent neighborhoods in Cheektowaga.
If you have the median household income in the Buffalo area, you can easily afford to live in a nice neighborhood in Tonawanda, West Seneca, or Hamburg. Why live in a Cheektowaga doll house?
Also an issue: because Cheektowaga has a rapidly aging population, with a large number of long-time homeowners, when houses come up for sale, they're usually in need of extensive updating. It might not make financial sense to spend $30K to update a 1950s kitchen in an $80K house.
It's a shame, because I think Cheektowaga has a really unique identity and personality that they've failed to use in marketing themselves. It's one of the last refuges of Buffalo's old-school blue-collar culture. Amherst is the power suburb, Tonawanda the suburb of summer memories. Also, if Cheektowaga goes, the Polish-American community in the area could lose its cohesiveness and identity, in a way that's similar to the fate of Buffalo's once-strong German-American community when the East Side first began to transform in the 1950s. Buffalo's German population hasn't shrunk since the 1950s, but it scattered away from its traditional centers in the Genesee Street area, Kensington, and Amherst.
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