Banco Popular North America agrees to make repairs to apartment block at 65 Belmont Ave., Springfield

Link to January 21 Springfield Republican article.

Excerpt: An Illinois-based bank has agreed to make repairs and correct code violations at an apartment block on Belmont Avenue, replacing a landlord who is accused of abandoning the building and leaving tenants without heat and hot water the day before Christmas.

Civic leaders see lower State Street corridor in Springfield turning corner

Link to January 10 Springfield Republican article.

Excerpt: Not that long ago, economic development along the lower State Street corridor was measured in mini-marts, video stores and fast food franchises.

Not anymore.

Not with a $70 million federal courthouse already open at 300 State St., and groundbreaking for a $110 million state data storage center on Elliot Street set to begin this spring.

The data center represents a potential boom for the Elliot Street neighborhood, where a well-known landmark is the abandoned hulk of the Technical High School building. As detailed on Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, the 115,000-square-foot facility will rise from the site of the old high school site.

To residents, the project will do more than just create 70 full-time jobs and restore the blighted school property that has been a fire hazard for more than 20 years.

“It’s a good sign for Springfield’s future, and it also shows that we are able to preserve the past,” said Carol A. Costa, past president of the Armoury Quadrangle Civic Association and resident of the nearby Classical Condominiums.

No one suggests that the data center will turn back the clock to the 1950s and 1960s, when lower State Street bustled with shops, restaurants and a movie theater.

Auld lang syne for beloved Statler?

Link to December 31 Buffalo News article.

Excerpt: Closing the 20-story structure on Niagara Square would continue a decline that started four decades after its opening on May 19, 1923, as the 1,100-room Hotel Statler, flagship of the high-end chain developed by Buffalo’s Ellsworth M. Statler.

By the time ownership passed to the newer Hilton chain in the 1960s the landmark was showing its age, and the conversion of several floors to office space could not stop the slide into disrepair.

A ceiling leak that disrupted a 1976 Chamber of Commerce luncheon in the Golden Ballroom, chasing businessmen from their tables, symbolized the decline.

At least for a night — Jan. 28, 1977 — it seemed like old times in the grande dame of Buffalo hotels as office workers, businessmen and women, lawyers and government officials stranded downtown packed the lobby, mezzanine and any other standing or sitting space to wait out the monster Blizzard of '77.