An uproar is building in the South Buffalo neighborhood around Abbott and Coolidge, where a pet daycare center is being proposed.
Elizabeth Gehrman was a Boston freelance writer who ran a doggie daycare center when she moved back to this area to take care of an ailing mother and bought a house in her mom's old neighborhood. Saying freelance writing isn't an option here, she wants to open a doggie daycare center, a plan not appreciated by all of the neighbors.
Approval of her plan was overturned by the Zoning Board of Appeals, pending a public meeting.
"I had some friends who have dogs come over and they are people whose dogs I have watched in the past because I have done one or two dogs a month in the four years I have lived here. The videos show the dogs not barking at all," Gehrman said.
"They don't pay attention to anything outside of the fence. My neighbors' kids are playing on the other side of the fence and the dogs actually completely ignore them."
After the zoning board meeting, the opposed neighbors didn't want to talk. But South District Common Council Member Chris Scanlon said the operation would be detrimental to their neighborhood because it would bring a business into a residential stretch of Abbott.