The City of Buffalo will repair a long-neglected building in the Theater District—but a neighboring hostel’s eviction status is not out of the woods yet.
During a Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency meeting Thursday, the agency voted unanimously to approve a renovation project at 664 Washington Street.
B.U.R.A. has owned the property since 2002, and has been cited for being a safety hazard to Hostel Buffalo-Niagara, its adjacent building at 667 Main Street.
The city is giving the hostel the Right of First Refusal on bidding for the redevelopment of the Washington Street building. The hostel has a year to develop a plan and come up with the money to buy the property.
“I think it’s fair to say that we want the hostel to be there,” said B.U.R.A. vice chairman Brendan Mehaffy. “We want the hostel to succeed. But we’ve got to say at some point in time the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency has other commitments to other places in the City of Buffalo.”
The $2 million being allocated to the project could have come from other resources if the hostel had come up with a purchasing plan ahead of time. Now, Mehaffy said, that money will not be used in Buffalo’s more economically depressed neighborhoods.
The hostel needs to pay off $110,000 in rental arrears, an amount questioned by Hostel Buffalo-Niagara President Alexander Burgos.
“The $110,000 was a number that was given to us today,” he said. “We heard it for the first time as you heard it for the first time.”
The renovations, scheduled for March, would require the hostel to close down for a period of months, hampering hostel’s ability to earn money.
Around 6,000 travelers pass through the hostel on a yearly basis.
Burgos does not believe B.U.R.A. has been negotiating in good faith nor been up front with communication.
“[Hostel Buffalo-Niagara] found out there may be a vacate notice given to us about two weeks ago,” he said. “And at that moment we had 48 hours before the meeting that you all attended here. We were notified of the exact language that was to appear in today’s resolution 24 hours before the meeting.”
“It's unfortunate that some of the conversations have to take place in public like this. And sometimes new bits of information are released that we aren't aware of. But we aim to address those, both behind the scenes where we can and in front of the cameras where it needs to happen at times,” Burgos added.
For now, Burgos said his focus as President is to keep the hostel their home. But he says it’s going to take a lot of work and he is asking the City of Buffalo to be a partner in keeping the hostel where it currently stands.
