Teen leads crew in cleanup of Buffalo’s Central Terminal
By Michele Deluca
Niagara Gazette
3-23-09
The 30 of them looked like black dust-covered coal miners coming down the four flights of steps recently at the Central Terminal in Buffalo.
Chris Gurnett, 17, of Wheatfield and his crew of fellow scouts, family and friends were tired but triumphant after carting out more than 400 bags of garbage from the fourth floor of one of Buffalo’s most significant landmarks.
It’s all because Chris doesn’t like to do things the way that everyone else does things. “I wanted to make my Eagle project very unique,” he said.
So, when it was time to top off his decade-plus scouting career by creating a project to earn the prestigious Eagle Scout badge, he chose a chore of boundless proportions — helping to clean one of the ravaged upper floors of the 20-story Central Terminal building in Buffalo.
A few years ago, while visiting the Broadway Market with his family on the city’s East Side, he first saw the old train station which has been closed to rail traffic for more than 30 years. He remembers being really impressed at the architecture of the building which loom’s over the area like an enormous monument to the city’s once prosperous history. Soon after Gurnett joined the volunteers at the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation.
“I began helping out at events,” he said. The terminal’s architecturally significant first floor lobby is often used for events like art shows, wine tastings and other celebrations and he would volunteer at those events as well as other terminal cleanup efforts.
One day, someone took Gurnett to see some of the upper floors of the building. Most, like the fourth floor, had been stripped of everything of value. Old train station papers were piled knee-deep as if someone had dumped out all the filing cabinets before they removed them.
“I was like, wow, this is really messed up,” he recalled.
To earn his Eagle Scout badge he and his volunteer crew spent two Saturdays clearing refuse from what was once a busy floor of transportation offices at the terminal.
“We made a big impact on the floor,” Gurnett said proudly. “You can actually walk through the floor now.”
While there is much more to do to completely clean the floor, the restoration corporation members will be finishing up the work in the hope of one day using the floor as a sample of space available in their efforts to re-populate the building.
Gurnett’s efforts will help the corporation move one step closer to its goal of restoring the building as a mixed-use center. With the talk of rapid rail expansion in the Western New York area, corporation members are also hoping there may be some return of passenger traffic to the terminal.
As such, the scout’s efforts were greatly appreciated by the restoration corporation, the non-profit organization that is care-taking the building and its historical landmark status.
“He’s just a good kid,” said Mike Miller, president of the group.
“We’re all in our middle ages right now. We love to see the kids get involved,” Miller said. “If we have to turn it over the younger generation, we want to make sure there’s young kids around to take over the project for us.”