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Mayor Brown Announces Start Of Construction At Riverside Apartments

Contact: Lorey Schultz
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City allocated $1.5 million in city HOME funds, leveraging the additional funding needed to enable this $20 million affordable housing project, which will target Veterans, to move forward

Buffalo – Riverside residents are about to see a major transformation in their historic neighborhood. Wearing hard hats and armed with shovels, Mayor Byron Brown, North District Councilmember Joseph Golombek, Vice President of DePaul Key Housing Gillian Conde, Leonard Skrill of New York State Housing and Community Renewal and community leaders today attended a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction at Riverside Apartments, a new affordable housing complex in Buffalo.  Once finished, the $20 million renovation of former Buffalo Public School 60, located at 238 Ontario Street, will offer 68 affordable apartments, with a focus on Veterans.

“This $20 million renovation will not only provide much needed housing for Riverside residents, but will also create many good construction jobs for our community,” said Mayor Brown.  “We worked closely with residents in the neighborhood to secure $1.5 million in city HOME funds, enabling this important affordable housing project, located in the heart of a vibrant residential neighborhood, to leverage the additional funding needed to move forward.”

Once a center-point of the neighborhood, this former city school building closed and sat vacant for many years.  Under the leadership of Mayor Brown, the City of Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning worked closely with the Black Rock community to secure the $1.5 million in city HOME funds that leveraged the additional funding needed to transform this long vacant site into affordable housing.  DePaul Key Housing, the developer, purchased the property from the city for $180,000. 

Councilmember Golombek stated, “It is projects such as these that speak to the continued viability and future resurgence of our neighborhood.  My hope is that a project such as this will act as a catalyst for future developments.  My thanks to Mayor Brown and DePaul for this significant investment in Riverside and its residents.  Thanks also to the Black Rock Riverside Good Neighbor Planning Alliance and Rediscover Riverside for their tireless efforts on behalf of our community.”
“School 60 has been an important part of the Riverside Community for over 100 years. We are so pleased that through our hard work we could make others see this beautiful building as an ongoing community asset,” said Mary Ann Kendron, Riverside Good Neighbor Planning Alliance. “We could not be more pleased that this building will once again house individuals from our community in a new progressive way.   We wish to thank Mayor Brown, Councilman Golombek, the City, State and Federal Government for their support.  We have learned that it takes strong partnerships to build strong communities.   Thank you to all those members of Rediscover Riverside who believed this was possible when everyone else did not.  This is just the start of many new projects in this wonderful community.”