I just saw on Channel 4 news that some boy scout is cleaning up the old offices in the Central Terminal. In the article it says that the train company threw the papers on the floor. If I remember it right from childhood, the papers were in the desk and people going through the desks, in addition to weather, threw them on th floor. I mean some of the stuff used to still be in the desks when we went there as kids.

I really don't understand why individuals care about cleaning up the upstairs of the central terminal. I mean I am not a fan of the building to begin with, but upstairs seems extra unimportant. If any company is ever interested in the building they will have to do that work when remodeling. Its not like its going to be usable? Aren't there so many better things that can be done for a city, other than to clean up a weather wracked, asbestos filled crap hole.

I also don't get why they needed to wear space suits cleaning up other buildings with asbestos but the boyscouts get paper masks. I already wrote about this before (e:paul,31144) when they had the neighborhood kids cleaning it up unprotected a couple years back.

Boy Scout cleans up Central Terminal
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - A Boy Scout from Niagara County has returned to Buffalo to continue his Eagle Scout project.

Christopher Gurnett is cleaning up the fourth floor of the old Central Terminal.

Back in December, he coordinated the first stage of the cleanup with about 30 volunteers taking away mounds of old papers.

Christopher said, "I actually started December 6, and we got over 230 bags out, and today we came back for the second and hopefully the final day, and we removed just about as much as bags, from the last one."

Christopher says a past owner of the terminal took the railroad paperwork from desks and drawers, and dumped them on the floor, so that's what they've been clearing out.

Updated: Saturday, 28 Feb 2009, 7:42 PM EST
Published : Saturday, 28 Feb 2009, 6:21 PM EST

* Written by: Brian Tabor Posted by: Emily Lenihan

Well after reading I thought it would be a good idea to attend Buffalo's Annual Blogtoberfest and get our peeps to meet some of Buffalo's other bloggers. The flyer was so damn misleading because it has no mention of the actual Octoberfest going on there. When we arrived and there were like 600 cars in the parking lot, I though, "Holy shit - I have totally underestimated Buffalo's blogging community." Now I do kind of live in my own web bubble here at estrip.



I barely, venture out to the other blogs but I was totally astounded when we also saw lots of elderly people.

(e:jim) - so many of these bloggers are elderly, that's awesome! it's great things are spreading out through the population!

Slowly, once inside - I realized that it was by no means a blogtoberfest but rather a regular octoberfest. We found the table where (e:zobar) and (e:dragonlady) were waiting. Luckily, I just his chatter on my phone and knew they were there.



So we were pretty much the only bloggers there - either that or we scared all the other ones away. It was (e:metalpeter), (e:mike), (e:libertad), (e:jim), :james, (e:terry), (e:zobar), (e:dragonlady) and I. I met one guy from punaro.com

I am pretty sure that this is the last non estrip, blogging event I will attend until some of the other bloggers attend one of our parties.

As for the octoberfest itself, I was totally disappointed in the food. It sucked. It was like they removed everything good that was german and replaced it polish. It seems to be every buffalo German event is somehow way too polish. I guess Buffalo is just a polish town. We even brought up how you can get pirogies at the Italian Festival now.

Also Steel Drums had jerk chicken there. It just seemed so out of place. I wish that German events ever had more than bland hot dog like sausages and sauerkraut. That is only a fraction of what Germans eat. If you went to a festival in Germany, the food is just so much better.

I am pretty sure that this was my terminal, terminal event. (e:jim) and (e:metalpeter) took lots of pictures.

Other pics from Saturday
The park lane with a sky crane out front. When are they knocking it down?


Someones end the war sign from a lawn over on Lafayette.


(e:matthew) and (e:terry) sitting out front what used to be a giant house and is now a parking lot for the Saturn Club on Linwood.


Another dead squirrel. This one looks like it just fell out of the tree.

First of all, just want to point out that I love Buffalo and I love preserving historical architecture. However, I was reading more about the Central Terminal on the web and I am still not convinced it is worth restoring.

Here is an interesting site on the history of it

Buffalopundit even called it

Buffalo's unofficial convention center

.

Why dwell on a building so far removed from the downtown area and in such bad condition? After attending an event at the "neo convention center" it seems like suburbanites would be much ore likely to flee home to the suburbs than to go out downtown. Especially for some non-city people, downtown would seem downright freakin' scary if that neighborhood (e:paul,38905) was their view of Buffalo.

It seems like it was always too distant to serve downtown.

The New York Central had agreed in 1926 to build an additional Buffalo station to satisfy the city officials who believed that the East Side location was too far uptown to effectively service downtown Buffalo. This promised downtown station was never to be built.

The Environmental Question
How much would it cost not only to rehab it, but to make it hospitable, environmentally sustainable and cost effective in our winter climate. When people talk about how this type of rehab happens all the time in places like San Francisco, they fail to note that it gets to freezing temperatures here most of the year. I am just saying be realistic. According to one of the comments on Buffalopundit's journal

The building was once heated by a separate coal plant behind the terminal that pumped steam heat into the building was torn down in the early 80's.

Even then, would it even change the neighborhood around it. Why would we not invest in things closer to areas that are already succeeding and let it expand from their instead of planting seeds in this distant, broken location.

At the two events I attended there during the last week, I heard so many people say, "Wow, I had no idea it was still so crappy and cold."

What do all you rehabbers propose as a responsible and sustainable heating mechanism in a cement chamber with 100+ foot ceilings in a place where winter is nearly perpetual?

Does anyone think that if the Central Terminal is renovated, that businesses are really going to sprout up all around it and a light rail system will connect it to the city?

Okay, that title was just to catch your eye. I really don't care about the Central Terminal much either way. But I do care about that time when they had unmasked children sweeping up nasty debris.

During my rigorous search of the internet to find links to the site I came up with this forum talking about me and my journal. Michael Miller begins by refering to my article about the terminal (e:paul,31144) last year that criticized the use of unprotected child labor in a cleanup effort at the terminal. I would like to take this time to bring some more attention to the situation. My favorite is the death threat at the bottom of this entry that I highlighted from Mark Lewandowski if The 107th Air Refueling Wing

I can't believe that these people cared about what I said enough for the conversation to develop so deeply. I have a connection to the building too. Yes,my family arrived from Italy via the Central Station and settled in Buffalo. I still believe having unprotected workers in an unventilated area, to preserve people's memories si ridiculous. What about the health of the children. They are at an age when expopsure is really risky.

MICHAEL MILLER mmiller at mandtbank.com
Thu Dec 16 08:14:10 EST 2004

Hi guys! I just found this blog from the Elmwood Strip website. He
describes the terminal as in crappy condition and "toxic". It pretty
much blasts us for allowing a child to sweep the floors, unmasked. He
also links to our site. I don't feel that replying to this blogger will
do anything positive, but we should take extreme care to avoid these
possible situations in the future.

from: [Pr] Bad Publicity

This guy has a lot of personal issues and could use some "be nice pills" for Christmas. I am surprised that he remains in the Western New York area since he is willing to give up so easily. I would not respond to any negatives unless they made the normal news outlets.

He does have one very valid point about the paper masks. They do not offer a sufficient level of protection for anyone. I would suggest that at the absolute minimum a 3M mask that has a N95 rating be used but of course a respirator and goggles are the better choice. There is no doubt that asbestos is in the building but it is also all around as is radon and many other human unfriendly chemicals.

The picture of the kid with the broom looks very staged notice the area appears to be fairly clean so I would think that he was not deeply involved in the clean up and someone gave him the broom for a cute photo.

We all assume a degree of chance in everything we do in life. Getting behind a steering wheel, walking down stairs without holding the railing etc. But we can also freely choose what level of protection to use. It would be great to have the bucks to use professionals for all the clean ups but then again it would be great to have a good developer fall from the skies with a ton of cash.

Not-so-ancient proverb says, "Blogs are like buttholes. Everyone has one and most of them stink." You can't get upset about one person's opinion. In fact, there's lots of people out there that share the opinion that the Terminal should be torn down. There's [hopefully] more people that feel it should be saved.

You can take the same picture of the kid sweeping and put a caption such as,
"Neighborhood kids help out restoring Buffalo landmark" and you get a
completely different take on it.

r

It is obvious that this individual has abused the privilege of access the
building to take pictures etc.

The "workers" are families taking pride in their neighborhood.

I guess just because he never had any memories of the place, do to the fact
he said it wasn't around that long, he should not refuse the terminal's past and future existence. (Gee based on his logic, I guess that World War II
was meaningless because it only lasted 5 years, and therefore no memories.)

I hope I don't run into this person anywhere......I'll tie this F***ing
idiot to the active tracks behind the building to give him a memorable experience. Link from Mark.Lewandowski at nyniag.ang.af.mil

The health issues are valid. Has a trained/educated professional been consulted regarding hazardous materials in the building and how to remove properly/safely? If not there should be and if we do have qualified personel on this we should advertise it (website to start?).
Beyond that the guy's opinions are very narrow minded and short sighted. The fact that he fails to see the difference in the aeshtetic qualities of the architecture of the Central Terminal versus the Airport prove it. Also it's that type of "why does anybody care" mentality that has caused so many roadblocks to progress in WNY (new Peace bridge?).
This is not worth resopnding to directly but maybe he has done us a favor in reminding us what we are up against and we need to be careful.
Sorry I'm so long winded!

The air and water quality was certified as safe in 2003, before the
public events began. I have the results on file. We will probably retest
this season, as per a suggestion made by Jeff Ingersoll.

This guy (blog) obviously never grew up and found that his "play" palace has
fallen into the hands of a mature responsible group of Adults that have proven
... to many ... they can make a difference! He is probably a current or ex
city govt. official that left the landmark terminal to the forces neglect and
deterioration and hopes to cover his tracks!

Brad

This is how I remember it.





As a child I used to play in there all the time. I should have listened to my parents. Now as an adult, I know the building is full of toxic abstestos. I can't even believe it is structurally sound. I remember one time being in a part of it when the ceiling collapsed. At the time we though it was cool. Looking back it was stupid. The goal of each visit was to go play behind the clock and manually change the time by moving the arms. It was such an adventure to get up to that part without falling through or dying. Oh the life of suburban children gone wild. I think we just didn't understand death very well. We also used to play in the sewers, abandoned grain mills, old building on Niagara Street and Behind Linde in the toxic nuclear waste dump from the Manhatten project (e:paul,30660) . Buffalo is just fun like that.

It was abandoned in such a weird way that everything was left there as though the people had simply dissapeared. You could go through the desks and find tons of paperwork and itinerarys, etc.

The part of the whole thing that is so sick, is that it should have been cleaned up by some profressional group with space suits instead of volunteers. Especially, when some of those voluneteers were children.





Those pictures are so disgusting. Why does the lone child not have a mask, and has anyone done home repair with fine dust? Do you believe these children are being properly ventilated and that these little paper sars masks are working?

My biggest question now is what is this restoration really working toward?. We obviously could never have another viable train station in Buffalo. Especially, not in that neighborhood, so what is it all about? Why does the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation!! care about this place? Maybe someone here knows more than I do, but I can't see how it is that important in people memories. This building was only around from 1929 to 1974, so it doesn't even have that long of a history. Furthermore, the type of history it has is really not so very different from any other point of travel, such as the airport.

So imagine this, the airport shut down because of bad business,etc right now. Can you actually see yourself doing an airport restoration project. Not me! Just because something is old (<100years old) does not mean it needs to be restored. especially when it's in as crappy of condition as this building. BUt most importantly, if the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation ever makes money off that building, how will they justify the fact that they used "volunteer" child labor to do their toxic waste cleanup?