Mayor Brown mulls support for Franczyk’s Broadway Market shakeup plan
By Brian Meyer
Updated: 07/05/08 8:02 AM
Mayor Byron W. Brown might support a management shake-up at the Broadway Market if he concludes the action would shore up the future of the city-owned facility.
Brown told The Buffalo News he discussed the market’s problems with Common Council President David A. Franczyk, who has been lobbying for a management overhaul.
“I think it’s something we definitely have to consider,” said Brown.
Meanwhile, the people who run the 120-year-old East Side retail icon insist the problem isn’t inept management — but lack of adequate city funding.
“The Broadway Market cannot survive without monetary support,” the president of the market’s board of directors told the Common Council in a July 1 letter.
James Malczewski pressed the city to make good on an unfilled 1999 pledge to sell a $1 million bond.
Board members said the money would be used for long-overdue improvements that might include upgrades to the air conditioning system, better signs and other work that would make the market more viable.
Malczewski, a market vendor, expressed fears that Franczyk’s plan to create a task force that would explore strategies to strengthen the market might be a precursor by the Council President to replace the current board with “his own political appointees.”
“Any task force appointment must be neutral without political axes to grind,” said Malczewski, who added that under Franczyk’s plan, the council president would alone decide who should sit on the study panel.
Last month, market managers acknowledged that vacancy rates dipped to their lowest levels in at least eight years, with about 40 percent of its space empty.
Still, the market has been operating in the black for about two years, and Executive Director Richard M. Fronczak disputed claims that the market could be in danger of shutting down by as early as next spring.
Fronczak called a reporter Thursday to note that business was relatively brisk. It’s not only during the Easter season that shoppers patronize the market, Fronczak said, noting some vendors saw a spike in business right before Independence Day.
The market’s lease with the city expired last week, and the council president thinks a renegotiated agreement should hinge on seeing changes that would pave the way for a “radical reimagining” of the facility. Under the expired lease, the city was responsible for all major capital improvements and also paid half of the market’s utility costs.
In his letter, Malczewski politely told city lawmakers they should butt out of bargaining.
“The Common Council should not force itself into the city/market lease negotiations,” he told lawmakers. “Lease negotiations are always sensitive under the best of circumstances. Placing the negotiations into the media almost ensures the negotiations not succeeding.”
bmeyer@buffnews.com