Something's fishy on Massachusetts Avenue

By Shrell Krawczyk and Elizabeth Lewin
BengalNews Reporters

There is something fishy going on at the Growing Green farm on Massachusetts Avenue, where a straw-bale greenhouse is home to 2,000 tilapia in Buffalo’s first aquaponics system.

The tilapia have been on the West Side now for about a year, feeding on duckweed and other vegetarian fare grown on Massachusetts Avenue Projects’ urban farm. The system that supports the fish is called aquaponics, a closed ecological system that recycles fish waste into plant food.

Jesse Meeder, the Growing Green farm manager, said this system is actually a prototype.

“It’s a test for a much larger system we will have May 1,” he said.

Growing Green is Massachusetts Avenue Project's youth development and agriculture program. The program runs after school workshops about sustainable urban agriculture, nutrition and healthy cooking.

Plans for a larger greenhouse are coming together, where the number of tilapia will increase to 30,000, Meeder said. The 96-foot-long and 24-foot-wide greenhouse will also offer more room for produce and composting, which the farm does with the help of 200,000 worms and waste collected from local restaurants.

Beginning in May, Massachusetts Avenue Project will sell organic tilapia at its Mobile Markets, where fresh produce is brought to various sites across the West and East sides of Buffalo on a weekly basis. The fish is sold on ice, unprocessed. Consumers must gut the fish themselves.

Meeder said the organization is working on plans to sell the tilapia in batches to anyone in the community who desires to create their own aquaponics system. The idea supports the organization's mission to teach the community how to access affordable and nutritious food, while being environmentally responsible.

“I’m excited about the expansion project, actually. I’m ready to go commercial. I feel that we’ve learned a fair amount this year, we have a good business plan, and were ready to supply fish to the local community,” Meeder said.

Jesse Meeder announces aquaponics workshops:


Tilapia are easy fish to raise, Meeder said, and were chosen for farming due to their hardiness and easy diet. Tilapia are vegetarians, so they eat various greens produced at the farm, and they are not a threat to each other, he said. Another benefit to raising tilapia is there isn’t need for permits or licenses to grow them in New York state. Because they cannot survive in Buffalo’s climate on their own, they are not considered an invasive species, Meeder said.

Raising fish might seem farfetched to some, but Laura Hill Rao, director of volunteer and service-learning at Buffalo State College, likes what Massachusetts Avenue Project is teaching the community.

“Their message is anybody can do this. You don’t have to have a greenhouse, you don’t have to have big systems. You can do this in your basement,” Rao said. “It’s a great way to grow your own food and support sustainability.”

After-school programs keep kids safe

By Marc Lucarelli, Tiffany Monde and Kori Sciandra
BengalNews Reporters

During after-school hours children can become curious and restless. Or in some cases get into trouble on city streets.

Buffalo Public Schools such as School 3, on Niagara Street, and School 30, on Vermont and 13 St. have implemented after school programs in order to occupy students’ time during crucial hours that students may be exposed to drugs, weapons and violence.

“We have two programs that begin with academics,” Dr. Wanda Shoenfeld principal of School 30 said. “The first hour we emphasize on reading and math and the second hour the students are involved with music, physical education, art, cooking, arts and craft, tutoring, cheer leading, swimming, basketball, and computers, just to name a few.”

While the schools are implementing these programs there is still a need outside the system.

Evelyn Pizarro, former principal of School 3, is now the project director at The Belle Center Community Center on 104 Maryland St.

Pizarro said that The Belle Center upholds a gentlemen’s agreement with neighborhood drug dealers in order to maintain civility. They stay away from the children and she doesn’t call them in.

This shows how real the danger is to the children in the community. Without afterschool programs offering activities for children to take part in, they could very well get caught up in the illegal behavior that happens daily on the streets.

Evelyn Pizarro says it's hard to get kids to come regularly:


The center welcomes children and splits them up into various age groups so the program can benefit them in the best way possible. While it gives students a place to do homework and enjoy numerous activities it operates under the 21ST Century Grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, which provides opportunities for children to participate in activities during non-school hours.

“If you get the same crop of kids coming at least three times a week that’s a good program, if you get an average of some kids that come maybe six times a month that’s still considered good, “said Pizarro.

When the children come to the center they have a minimum of 45 minutes of homework they have to complete. Supervisors at the Center also have teacher’s e-mail addresses so they can keep track of the work the students need to catch up on.

Once the students’ work is done they can take part in activities in the gym and game room. There is also a pool that is being fixed, and they hope to have it working by the summer.

These after-school programs from both facilities are also benefiting the community. Shoenfeld said they have just completed a program called Urban Studies where students were involved with looking closer at their neighborhood and planning to make it better.

At The Belle Center the children work with AmeriCorps, a national non-profit organization, Children are able to be more involved in the neighborhood by shoveling porches in the winter and painting houses among other things.

“My kids are going to be involved on Global Youth Day on April 24, and there is going to be activities all over the city like cleaning gardens and cleaning up graffiti,” said Pizarro. “We can choose one of the activities that AmeriCorps is doing and our group will go with their group and do those.”

The influence of good role models and the opportunity to attend afterschool programs is something Pizarro and Shoenfeld said is an essential part of the success of the programs.

“I believe that with an after-school program we keep students off the street and they feel a part of something bigger,” Shoenfeld said. “We, the teachers have an opportunity to extent the academic learning and practice differently than what takes place during the regular school day.”

Police league provides programs

Assisting in the effort to keep children off the streets in Buffalo is the Buffalo Police Athletic League with a variety of safe, fun activities to keep them entertained and out of trouble.

The Buffalo Police Athletic League provides a example of what can be done when people take a vested interest in helping kids become better individuals. PAL’s mission is to teach kids life skills, leadership, and direction by providing them with organized activities in a safe comfortable environment.

PAL provides a wide array of athletic programs including basketball leagues, a baseball league, ice skating, tennis, golf, floor hockey, and even a boxing program. PAL also provides other educational opportunities to the children at the seven community centers of the PAL program are: Asarese-Matters, Machnisa, Hennepin, Lincoln, Tosh Collins, Lanigan, and JFK.

The Buffalo Police Athletic League serves around 40,000 children in the Buffalo-Niagara area and is funded through grants from the City of Buffalo, Erie County, New York State, and other private and public donations.

Renovating neighborhoods, block by block

By Stacie Duderwick, Stephanie Ortiz and Jolene Zanghi
BengalNews Reporters

Original stained-glass windows.

Unique woodwork.

Timeless staircases.

These are a few enduring characteristics of a handful of houses on Nineteenth Street, which have survived fires, decrepit conditions and abandonment.

In 2008, HomeFront Inc. purchased six houses on 19th Street from the city and its Division of Real Estate at the city’s public auction.

HomeFront, a non-profit community development agency, has been working on ways to redevelop vacant city homes, block by block. An example of one of these properties is 110 19th St.

The two-story home was built 100 years ago and up until recently has been neglected, causing the walls, roof, and flooring to deteriorate. Hypodermic needles and rubber gloves were some of the many objects found on the dirt-encrusted carpet on the hallway leading to the upstairs bedrooms.

Joseph Bologna, HomeFront’s construction analyst, said the previous homeowners of some of these units leave the properties a mess.

“When people leave, they just leave everything behind,” Bologna said. “Furniture, clothes, toys, plates, pots and pans. They just leave.”

Joseph Bologna talks about abandoned houses:



After purchasing the properties from the city, HomeFront works with Bologna to establish a reconstruction plan. Bologna said construction costs total up to around $150,000 and they sell the homes for around $50,000.

The first steps include gutting the houses down to the bare bones, or framework, and salvaging what unique characteristics the homes still possess, said Bologna. The houses are then renovated with the additions of new flooring and carpets, windows and doors, as well as energy efficient heating systems and duct work.

So far the biggest success story for HomeFront is 106 19th St. which was built in 1900.

Before and after views of the project at 106 19th St.:



The two-story home was in left in deplorable condition after it caught fire three years ago, leaving it with half a roof and a tree growing inside, Bologna said.
In August 2009, its rehabilitation process began when it was restored by HomeFront through Calabrese General Contracting and sold to a Somalian couple.

Bologna said the philosophy of rebuilding the neighborhoods is inspiring.

“This is probably the first time a community housing development organization actually went out and bought multiple houses on the street to do,” Bologna said.

The block-by-block initiative is an idea that HomeFront values greatly as there are approximately 11, 400 vacant housing structures in Buffalo, according to the 2000 Buffalo Census and a survey conducted by the Buffalo Fire Department.

The executive director of HomeFront, Bryan M. Cacciotti, said that the community response to the redevelopment-housing program on the West Side has been strong.

Cacciotti said that strategic planning is only one element of what HomeFront does. The business also provides financial literacy and education for first-time homeowners, financial assistance programs, and various support groups that deal with subjects such as budgeting money and home repairs.

Local political leaders have commended the restoration process that HomeFront has started on 19th Street and the collaboration of community organizations to reinvest into the West Side community.

Councilman David A. Rivera, who represents the Niagara District, said city leaders and groups are working hard to promote that Buffalo is a great place to live.

“You’re not just buying a house,” Rivera said. “You’re buying into a neighborhood.”

The West Side has gone through a period of disinvestment, when people went to out to the suburbs, took business away, turned around and rented their property instead of putting money back into the community, Rivera said.

With 100 19th St. on the brink of renovation, HomeFront’s mission to push forward with their block-by-block initiative is picking up pace.

“This is solely our baby,” Ciaccotti said, referring to 19th Street. “This is really our biggest project to date.”

PUSH Buffalo hosts Spring cleanup

By Kyla Goodfellow and John Fetter
BengalNews Reporters

Wooden doors, living room chairs, sheets of carpet, and other dusty and deserted remnants were pushed out windows and doorways of an abandoned house and thrown into massive blue dumpsters with a ground-shaking thud.

That was the scene on March 17 at 43 Lawrence Place where People United for Sustainable Housing, a local organization working to rebuild the West Side, started part one of its two-part Spring Cleaning program.

Local PUSH volunteers joined forces with a group of Princeton University students from New Jersey, volunteering as a part of their studies, to empty the organization’s newly acquired vacant two-story property and prepare it for rehabilitation, but ultimately to transform it into affordable housing for West Side people in need.

“What we’re going to do is empty it out, make sure there’s no leaks in the roof or broken windows and then we’re going to board it up and wait until we can find the money to rehab it. We really want to make sure that we have enough money so that we can make it a quality house,” said Whitney Yax, PUSH’s community planner.

Whitney Yax speaks about PUSH projects:


Joshua Smith, PUSH’s landscape manager, said the organisation is focused on rehabbing properties and turning them into rental units that are very affordable for people.

During the six-hour cleaning session PUSH volunteers sporting industrial gloves and white masks emptied both floors of the cluttered house, filling up nearly three dumpster’s worth of trash. But hidden in the rubbish were salvageable items.

“We have just filled up our second dumpster…but we did save everything that’s usable. It will all get donated into the neighborhood or to Goodwill,” Smith said.

Luckily for PUSH organizers it was surprisingly sunny for a Buffalo day in March and residents flocked over to lend a hand.

“It turned out to be a beautiful day so we got tons of folks, people just waking by. We had a bunch of folks from Gateway Longview, a father-son mentoring program, come down and they were really helpful and we had a lot of PUSH members,” said Yax.

Tim Lowert, a local PUSH volunteer, was also impressed by the interest shown by members of the wider community.

“People are really getting behind it. We’ve had locals walk past and put gloves on and help out. People driving past in their cars are stopping and asking what’s going on,” he said.

Lowert said he decided to help out because he knows how much work PUSH has done to get useable urban housing in the area for locals in need.

Yax said PUSH homes are so affordable and of such a high quality that tenants just don’t want to leave.

“Most of our tenants have been longer term. Once you come into a PUSH house you usually want to stay because it’s nice and their heat bills are low,” she said.

PUSH is utilizing energy-efficient technology to downsize utility bills for the home’s future residents.

“We’re aiming to make it net zero energy efficiency. It basically means that as much energy that is consumed by the household gets produced by the house so it turns out to be equal and theoretically there will be zero dollars in energy bills,” said Yax.

The second part of PUSH’s Spring Cleaning program will be held April 25, at Good Neighbors Park, located on the corner of 15th Street and West Utica.

According to Yax, the volunteers have a lot of work ahead of them in order to transform the deteriorated park into a more functional space for everyone who lives around the area.

“So we’re going to be there on April 25 cleaning up the park, raking leaves and trash from the streets and cleaning up our vacant lots, about almost 20 vacant lots in this area, so we have a lot of work to do. We’re hoping to get about a hundred people if not more,” said Yax.

“It’s called our Spring Cleaning Party because we’re going to have a party afterwards in the park so it should be a lot of fun. If it’s a nice day it will be great,” said Yax.