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Silo City hosts Urbanism event

Mike Desmond/wbfo news

Hundreds of people were in on hand at Silo City Thursday night as part of the Congress for a New Urbanism. The event was surrounded by the city's past and present.

With Ohio Street essentially closed for its conversion into a parkway, the party area surrounded by grain elevators wasn't easy to reach.

Many made it.

They had a chance to tour some old grain mills. The industrial nature of the area was on display as a nearby freight train assembled a long line of empty grain cars.

For Tapestry Charter second-grader Kameron, it was a chance to see the Buffalo River he hadn't known much about until he did his study of how to clean water.
 
"We resurfaced the Buffalo River by planting plants right there so they can clean up all the water and stop polluting water."

Kameron was one of many Tapestry kids showing their projects about the environment and the waterfront to visitors to the party sponsored by the Congress and the Campaign for Greater Buffalo.

Credit Mike Desmond/wbfo news

"Buffalo has tremendous assets," said Nathaniel Hood,a transportation planner from St. Paul, Minnesota

"You can see the history in Buffalo, in the architecture as you're walking around any street in Downtown and it tells a story. And, I think it's a beautiful story."

Like Buffalo, St. Paul has many working grain elevators; others have been transformed into museums.

The St. Paul rail and transportation system has been boosted by a $250 million federal grant that improved its passenger train station.

 

Mike Desmond is one of Western New York’s most experienced reporters, having spent nearly a half-century covering the region for newspapers, television stations and public radio. He has been with WBFO and its predecessor, WNED-AM, since 1988. As a reporter for WBFO, he has covered literally thousands of stories involving education, science, business, the environment and many other issues. Mike has been a long-time theater reviewer for a variety of publications and was formerly a part-time reporter for The New York Times.