Not only is the West Side of Buffalo a hot market for house purchases, it's getting some market-rate housing.
While the snow disguises the situation a little, work has started to haul away 3500 tons of contaminated soil and fill from a site at Maryland Street and West Avenue. It was an outdoor advertising company site, most recently Penn Advertising, where paint and chemicals were routinely dumped.
Builder David Pawlik said by the end of the year there will be a building with 54-units, mostly one-bedroom. Pawlik said it's a mix of state tax credits and renter interest.
"The land that it sits on is a former brownfield. So we are actually going to be moving forward with a brownfield remediation program which is allowing that gap to be closed on the financing for the project," Pawlik said.
"But, to be able to have market rate housing on the West Side of Buffalo has shown the growth and stability of what's going on."
For developer Anthony LoRusso, this is a more than $5 million project. He's done some re-design of the project since it was initially approved in 2011 and it's going back to the Planning Board next month for some minor changes in the design.
LoRusso should recover around $1 million of the cost from the state's brownfield tax credit system.
