Buffalo Central Terminal

From www.trentonian.com:

By Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman

TRENTON — The city’s vision to revitalize downtown Trenton began with the renovation of the historic Broad Street Bank. As such, it was only natural for the residential high-rise to host the “Central Terminal” documentary yesterday for Day 2 of the Trenton Film Festival.

The film’s producers, Scott Richardson and Kirsten A. Jahn, were in town to debut the documentary here, which they completed about a year ago as Canisius College Video Institute students in western New York.

“Central Terminal” is a 29-minute film about a train station in Buffalo, N.Y., that was a thriving hub in the 1920s which closed down in the 1970s.

Then the Central Terminal, much like the Broad Street Bank, underwent decades of blight and deterioration until area residents intervened in an effort to save it from destruction.

“I think it’s a nice fit that a building like the Broad Street Bank — that has been renovated — is the host of a film about a building in Buffalo, N.Y., that everyone is hoping to be renovated some day,” said Dr. Barbara Irwin, who mentored Richardson and Jahn as director of the Canisius College Video Institute.

Production of the film began shortly after Jahn contacted the Central Terminal Restoration Corp. in 2006 to see if they’d be interested in having a documentary made on their efforts to save and renovate the terminal.

But filming during the brutal winter months was challenging to the filmmaking duo.

“It was really cold. That was the major problem,” Jahn said yesterday following the documentary’s screening to more than 20 attendees.

“The terminal building is not heated,” Richardson told The Trentonian yesterday. “We were shooting in February and March. The president of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp., we shot his interview at the terminal in the middle of March, and we were freezing.”

Marilyn Campbell, a fourth-time volunteer with the film festival, said the event is always a blast. “They’re great films,” she said. “It’s really nice to see films that aren’t the usual movie theater films.”

David Henderson, president of the Trenton Film Festival, said he was happy to have the opportunity to showcase the “Central Terminal” documentary in the Broad Street Bank. And he noted the film festival is going to be even bigger as it concludes tonight with a showing of “The Flyboys” at the Masonic Temple on 100 Barrack St. following the 7 p.m. awards ceremony.

“Trenton is the center of the international film world for one weekend,” Henderson said.

And for the two Canisius students, they arrived in the city yesterday morning as participants in Trenton’s fifth annual film festival.

After months of research and filming, Richardson and Jahn said they started to get emotionally involved in the restoration effort of the Central Terminal.

“We got very connected,” Richardson said. “The group that is working to restore the building is very tight-knit. We actually ended up in their Dingus Day parade,” he said, referring to the Polish holiday.

“It’s a big Polish neighborhood around there. They ended up putting us on a float in the back of the Dingus Day parade, so we became pretty connected,” Richardson added.

“I had never actually been inside the building before we started working on the film, and by the end of it I was ‘farrah, save the terminal.’”

The Trenton Film Festival always brings in creative artists like Richardson and Jahn to showcase independent motion pictures.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for our students to have their work shown at a venue like this,” Dr. Irwin said.

From today’s Buffalo News:

Russell Pawlak steps aside after 10 years as volunteer

Ten years ago, Central Terminal was an uninhabited and dilapidated relic in danger of the wrecking ball.

Today, the 17-story art deco former train station on the East Side is still a long way from full restoration, but it has become a popular site for community and offbeat artistic events.

The surprising transformation wouldn’t have happened without Russell Pawlak, the former pitchman, marketer and, some people contend, visionary who grew up on Milburn Street, in the shadow of Central Terminal.

Now, after a decade of volunteer involvement, including the last eight as president of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp., Pawlak is hanging up his conductor’s cap.

“I’m very proud of the role I’ve played in the project, no matter how small or large you want to consider it to be. We proved a band of creative, dedicated people could make a difference,” Pawlak said.

Mike Miller, the organization’s acting president, credits Pawlak with giving the public the chance to reconnect, or experience for the first time, one of Buffalo’s architectural icons.

“Had it not been for Russell’s hard work in the last 10 years, we wouldn’t even be on the map,” Miller said. “In the early days, he had to really fight for attention because we were told no one would want to come to the East Side.”

Central Terminal opened in June 1929 at Paderewski Drive and Curtiss Street, an example of the art deco movement so popular during that decade.

The station, which in its heyday saw 200 passenger trains daily, was closed 50 years later when the last Amtrak train pulled out in October 1979. City of Buffalo negligence, followed by a succession of private owners and vandalism, resulted in the building’s being stripped of its decorative ornamentations.

Pawlak became involved with saving Central Terminal through an annual cleanup of the station grounds, just before the nonprofit Central Terminal Restoration Corp. had formed and purchased the structure for $1.

The group secured a grant to repair and light the four exterior bronze and glass tower clocks and the crown of the tower, both of which Pawlak called a “good symbolic gesture.”

Then, it received a $1 million grant from Erie County to stabilize the building and seal it from the elements and intruders.

The grant also paid for the removal of more than 350 tons of debris, 1.5 million gallons of water from lower levels, roof repairs and the enclosure of 4,000 windows.

The event that really turned heads came in 2003, when an estimated 4,000 people waited in line, some for hours, to get the first public look inside in nearly a quarter of a century.

In recent years, thousands of people have showed up at a time to attend a wide array of events, from Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center’s “Artists and Models” event to this year’s second annual Dyngus Day celebration.

Eva Hassett, chief of staff for former Mayor Anthony M. Masiello during those early years, praised Pawlak’s efforts. “He has shown amazing instincts at knowing how to connect the building to the community, which is how I think buildings get saved.”

Pawlak believes the group’s steady approach, with concrete gains at each step, proved to the public that something could be done with the building in a city where projects often fail.

Pawlak said he needs a break after going full steam ahead for so long. He hopes the day comes when the building finds the mixed-use tenants he believes will ensure its long-term viability and wishes the volunteer organization continued success.

“When I think about the Central Terminal, I think of the [poet] Delmore Schwartz’s line, ‘In dreams begin responsibilities,’ he said. “We had a dream for a building; in order to execute it there are a lot of responsibilities.”

msommer@buffnews.com

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for Russell’s many years of dedication and service to this project. Had it not been for his unyielding determination in those early years, the project would not be enjoying the successes that have been seen in recent years.

The Central Terminal Restoration Corporation has appointed Michael Miller as interim President, Mark Lewandowski as interim Vice President in addition to his responsibilities as Treasurer and Sara Etten will remain as Secretary. Ed Werick, Yuri Hreschyshyn and Kate Resetarits will also remain on the board.

We are looking forward to another busy and fulfilling series of events at the Central Terminal this summer!

Tim Driscoll’s story, centered around the Buffalo Central Terminal, was a runner up in the Buffalo News short fiction contest.

I drove my Crown Vic down Fillmore Avenue. Winter in Buffalo. Things were quiet. Fillmore was lightly peopled, everyone behaving. Salty cracks veined the street’s asphalt surface, parallel to the curb. An old cop once told me the cracks were from buried trolley tracks. The crackle of the department radio broke the silence.

“Dispatch to Detective Devoe, what’s your 10-20?”

I grabbed the mic, “Devoe north on Fillmore at Broadway.”

“Proceed to Central Train Terminal Memorial Drive, breaking and entering reported.”

“Copy that, Devoe enroute.”

Read the rest…

Congratulations to Scott Richardson, Kirsten Jahn and Dr. Barbara Irwin of Canisius College for their nomination for best film in the 2008 Buffalo Niagara Film Festival.

It’s truly a professionally produced film and it deserves recognition. Best of luck to you all!

You can purchase the DVD of this documentary at our webstore.

From the Buffalo News…

Graffiti vandalism leads to jail
By Matt Gryta
Buffalo News NEWS STAFF REPORTER
01/15/08

Buffalo graffiti vandal Christopher Fargo was sentenced Monday to up to nine months in jail on his latest graffiti-related arrest, which violated the probation he was granted two years ago.

State Supreme Court Justice Penny M. Wolfgang warned Fargo, 24, of Linwood Terrace, that he faces “much longer” time behind bars if he gets in trouble again.

Fargo was arrested in the Central Terminal on Nov. 11 while allegedly with a group of other graffiti suspects. He has been in jail since his Dec. 13 arraignment.

One of the first vandals seized in a multi- agency crackdown on graffiti throughout the city two years ago, Fargo spent 35 days in jail then before pleading guilty to felony criminal mischief for defacing the Ferguson Electric Construction building.

He was placed on five years’ probation by Wolfgang on July 17, 2006, prohibited from carrying paint cans or shoe polish and ordered to pay Ferguson $360 in restitution.

Assistant Erie County District Attorney Thomas D. Kubiniec, the county’s chief graffiti vandalism prosecutor, said the jobless Fargo pleaded guilty Monday to the probation violation count of failing to lead a law-abiding life and that he still owes the $360 in restitution.

Fargo apologized “to the court, the city and everyone I have harmed.” He said the court-ordered substance-abuse and mental counseling he has been receiving since his Dec. 13 arraignment has helped him accept responsibility for his actions.

But the judge sternly told him that after having given him “a break” two years ago, her fear now is that he “will try to do the same thing again and destroy the property of other people.” Should that happen, she guaranteed he will be sent to state prison instead of the Erie County Correctional Facility, where he will serve out his latest jail term.

Eugene P. Adams, Fargo’s court-assigned attorney, told the judge Fargo remains “despondent” over his latest graffiti- related arrest.

Adams said he has found since representing Fargo that, while graffiti vandals are generally perceived to be hell-bent on just destroying the property of others, there seems to be something of an emotional “impulse” on their part to find a way of “being recognized by society.”