Ten new senior housing units open Thursday in Buffalo's Pratt-Willert community, a project so new that landscaping and installation of new appliances had to stop for Wednesday's ribbon-cutting.
Over the last decade, the charismatic Pastor Dwayne Jones has taken a small and struggling church on Genesee Street and added several additions. Now Mt. Aaron Manor is opening at 528 Genesee, across the parking lot from the church.
"They can't afford a house, but now they have a safe senior housing on the East Side that's affordable. It's clean. It's safe and affordable and it's leading into the medical corridor," said Jones. "This is a plus for Buffalo, a plus for the medical corridor and it shows how the mayor is working with the churches on the East Side."
The pastor says there will be more housing next year, beyond this $1.4 million project. Mayor Brown told the celebration it is part of a pattern of housing across the city.
"When people think about all of the progress that's taking place in this city, they think about the waterfront, they think about the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, they think about downtown," Brown said. "But this is another example that development and progress is taking place in each and every area of the City of Buffalo."
Erie County Legislator Barbara Miller-Williams says the senior housing residents are pioneers, people who held out in the community in the bad years and are still around for better times and what the new housing represents on the periphery of the medical campus.
Acting Erie County District Attorney Michael Flaherty says new construction shows people care and keeps some bad people moving on to somewhere else.
"It makes everyone around here that much more safe because when people come to this neighborhood, they see someone cares," Flaherty said. "There's someone looking out for his neighbor here and that makes all of us safer. Not just the residents of this great building, but everyone around here safer and that's how neighborhoods grow."
