Why keep the Marine Drive Apartments?

[300miles]

Where exactly are you going to develop at canalside. Its basically the board walk and a few hundred feet of grass to the skyway. There is no room to put buildings on.

Go look at Google Earth. Seriously. Canalside itself, where the Aud used to be, is still a giant construction site with no buildings. The only one planned is the Children's Museum. All the other spaces are still unclaimed. All those sites around the skyway are also available for development. The site next to Harbor Center is also ready for development. Go look around Erie Basin Marina and condos. All those parking lots and unused grass areas, all potential development sites that sit unused.

[Linda_D]

Thank Goodness the Vamp has lost ground on the tear down issue -

The only people who want the Marine Drive apartments down are developers who see another possible tax dollar subsidized development.

Its a wonderful group of rent controlled housing units - has a good mix of residents of all ages. For the most part people who live there take pride in their apartments and surrounding area.

I have been in those buildings literaly hundreds of times - they come under attack by developers every couple years. Some outsiders wanted them turned into condo's - some wanted them torn down.

The only thing that raises this issue is "MONEY" -

Some say why have people paying so little (Rental Range: $305 - $576 Bedrooms: 1 - 4) - when we can collect higher rents - more taxes simply by displaced the vary same people who these buildings were built to house.

Well said. Right now, those buildings do nothing for developers because all that's done to them is maintenance and minor upgrades, which is why the developers want to get their hands on them. I don't know how much they "cost" the taxpayers at this point, either. Definitely much less than building new subsidized housing.

BTW, privatizing those buildings into condos or tearing them down would be a "double dip" for the developers ... whom in Buffalo probably represent fewer firms/individuals than a normal person has digits on one of his/her hands because they would NOT only get the land/buildings for development, they would also then get more develop work to build newer, more expensive subsidized housing for the displaced tenants of those 600+ units.