The goal is to bring Jefferson Avenue back to being a great East Side Buffalo shopping destination as it was long ago.
Jefferson is one of four East Side shopping districts that are not what they were. Albany is throwing in $2 million to renovate commercial and mixed-use buildings to help improve the overall feel of each area: Broadway-Fillmore, MLK Park, Kensington-Bailey and Jefferson.
Tuesday evening was the briefing session at the Beverly Gray Business Exchange for those interested in Jefferson. The potential grants run from East Ferry Street to Dodge Street. Sydney Brown, economic development director for Citizens' Alliance, said the program has a lot of goals.
"Property owners need to have 15% of their project cost and we will reimburse their project up to $50,000, which is nice," Brown said. "So that also helps the small contractors, because we are trying to keep things local to help circulate the dollars within the community, which is very important for communities to be strong and sustainable, and this program is designed to help with that. So we'll be helping on multiple levels."
There was a good turnout of people looking for general information and others looking for specific information about their business situation. Leroy Love was there, looking for help for the building housing his barber shop.
"It's a good place. Very good," Love said. "You just gotta be from around there. If you do, you'll love it. I love it."
His neighbors know his shop as Mr. Love's Barber Shop and say having a distinctive name is important in his line of work.
Columbus Brooks said he might qualify for the $50,000 because he is doing both inside and outside repairs on a building where he runs a dishes for restaurants and moonlights cutting down trees.
"It would help tremendously because I live there also," Brooksa said. "We did the storefront first, but our living quarters are terrible. We have a bathroom in the kitchen, but we don't make much money. We could make more money, but I have to fix the building."He's doing significant repairs on the outside. The state program puts building owners together with contractors and monitors and inspects what's done.
