A neighborhood filled with vacant lots near the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus may be getting major changes. New housing is expected to fill those vacant lots.
Impacto Consulting Associates would take 26 city-owned lots and turn them into 6 -housing units of an array of sizes and rents, designed to fit right into the Dodge-Ellicott-Best-Michigan area.
Resident Shawn Laporte says it's an opportunity because of that vacant space.
"The medical corridor is coming and there is a ten-year projected plan or 20 year projected plan for 10 or 20,000 more new residents and it's needed for the community because there is a lot of vacant lots," Laporte said.
The project would be thin on parking and Laporte says he owns a large lot he might be willing to deal to the developers.
Architect Jeff Hazel says the sponsors hope to hear on state financing in the spring to ready construction. That's why he was successfully in front of the Zoning Board of Appeals yesterday to ask for some variances, especially allowing the front of the new buildings to line up with the existing buildings along the sidewalks.
