Transplants keep flooding into Buffalo's most walkable neighborhood, driving up rents and changing the vibe — is gentrification killing the very character that attracted newcomers in the first place?
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Add your commentBorn and raised two blocks off Elmwood. My parents ran a small framing shop on the strip for 22 years. Gone now. A boutique dog spa took its spot. I have nothing against dogs or spas but come ON — that shop put me through high school. The neighborhood wasn't 'charming' by accident. It was built by working families who couldn't afford anywhere else. Now people show up with their Brooklyn sensibilities and act like they discovered something. You didn't discover it. You priced us out and then threw a mural on the wall to pretend you preserved something.
My grandmother's house on West Ferry sold last spring. She lived there 51 years. The buyers immediately gutted it and flipped it. Made a tidy profit I'm sure. She's in an apartment in Cheektowaga now and cries about it regularly. So when people tell me gentrification is neutral or net positive I have absolutely nothing polite to say to them.
Spent every Saturday of my childhood at the Elmwood Avenue Festival of the Arts. Used to be this scrappy beautiful weird local thing. Face painters who were actual art students, local bands you'd never heard of, the guy who sold those bizarre wind sculptures. Went last year and it felt like any generic street fair in any American city. Clean, safe, totally corporate, totally soulless. Nobody can tell me that's not a loss.
lol moved here from nyc last year and even I can see the irony of people like me complaining that the coffee shops are getting too corporate. like yes helen I'm aware I'm part of the problem. the oat milk was a dead giveaway
Respectfully challenging the locals here — what specific policy would you actually support to fix this? Because I see a lot of nostalgia and not a lot of solutions in these conversations. Rent control? The state basically bans meaningful local rent control. More affordable housing units? Everyone says yes until a development proposal shows up near them. I'm not being cruel, I genuinely want to know what the ask is.
the real answer is zoning and its been the real answer for 15 years. build more housing. full stop. the 'character' argument is almost always code for keeping supply artificially low so current homeowners can sit on appreciation. i say this as someone who rents a 1BR on forest for way too much money btw
The designation he's thinking of was the Allentown Arts District, not Elmwood Village, and it covers a different footprint. Elmwood Village as a branded entity wasn't really formalized until the early 2000s with the BID. Just want to be accurate here because this stuff matters when we're talking policy.
Okay but can we stop pretending Elmwood was some perfect working-class paradise before? I moved here from Columbus in 2019 and yeah rents have gone up but the infrastructure was genuinely crumbling when I got here. Some investment isn't automatically evil. My landlord finally fixed the furnace AND the front steps after the property value went up enough for him to care. Not everything about growth is a villain story.
Hot take that nobody wants to hear: Buffalo has spent 40 years begging people to move here and invest here because everyone was leaving. We had 580,000 people once. Now we're at what, 270,000? The city was hemorrhaging population and tax base for decades. Now that people are finally coming and money is finally moving, the conversation immediately flips to keeping people OUT? Make it make sense. I want affordability too but let's not forget what the alternative looked like.
I visited Elmwood for the first time in 2009 when my cousin lived there and honestly it felt a little rough around certain edges — some vacancies, a few sketchy blocks after dark. Now I drive through and it's gorgeous. Beautiful storefronts, packed restaurants, families out walking. I know I'm supposed to be upset about gentrification but I'm genuinely asking: is it possible for a neighborhood to just... improve? Is that allowed?
Fun fact that'll make your head spin: Elmwood Village was actually DESIGNATED as a historic arts district by the city back in the 90s specifically to attract exactly this kind of investment. The city literally planned for this. So complaining that it worked is a little rich. (And before anyone corrects me — yes I know the details, I was at half those planning meetings.)
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