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Buffalo News TOP STORY Work begins on gas station park at center of feud between Amherst, billionaire Stephen T. Watson Jun 12, 2022 Updated 5 hrs ago 28 Pocket Park in Eggertsville Construction finally has started on a pocket park at the corner of Niagara Falls Boulevard and Kenmore Avenue on a site that once was home to a gas station. The Town of Amherst and the property's former owner, a New York City billionaire, have fought over the property's fate for the past four years.
A pocket park at a former zombie gas station is – finally – coming alive in Eggertsville.
After a lengthy delay, crews recently began work to transform the site that Amherst officials once condemned as an "eyesore" into a pleasant place to relax or wait to catch a bus.
This progress comes two years after the Town of Amherst used eminent domain to take control of the property over the fierce objections of its New York City billionaire owner, John Catsimatidis. And it comes four years after Supervisor Brian Kulpa first targeted the brownfield at Niagara Falls Boulevard and Kenmore Avenue for revival.
Kulpa expects the park to be ready for use by late fall. It will feature a curving trellis to provide shade for farmers market vendors and their customers, benches, two bus stops, trees and rain gardens.
Catsimatidis and his allies call it a waste of money. But Kulpa said the project further boosts a growing, increasingly diverse area where Eggertsville, Buffalo's University Heights and the Town of Tonawanda's Kenilworth neighborhoods all meet.
"It adds a little heart to that Kenmore Avenue community," he said.
The park's construction is bringing to an end a contentious property dispute that dates to early 2018. That's when Kulpa, who was initially elected in 2017, first focused on the condition of the property at 159 Niagara Falls Blvd.
Catsimatidis' United Refining Co. had operated a Red Apple gas station and convenience store at the site for years before the businesses closed in the late 1990s.
United Refining removed the underground gas storage tanks, razed the site and surrounded it with concrete barriers. But the "zombie" site otherwise sat unused, with neighbors and town officials complaining about unkempt grass and the occasional discarded shopping cart.
United Refining agreed to let the town spruce up the property, but insisted on retaining ownership.
Kulpa and Amherst rejected this condition and began the legal process of taking over the quarter-acre parcel.
Catsimatidis lost his court challenge and the town in summer 2020 took ownership of the land. The town revealed plans for a small park on this parcel and a nearby property purchased in 2018.
The town removed the barriers, placed a handful of wooden benches along the property and briefly hosted a pop-up farmers market. But, otherwise, nothing else happened through the end of 2020 and throughout 2021, with Kulpa previously blaming procedural hurdles and a required environmental analysis.
Support Local Journalism Finally, a couple of weeks ago, crews began work at the site. Kulpa said they are digging out, and replacing, the layer of fill that covered the site and installing the concrete pillars that will serve as the foundation for the shade element.
A visit to the property on Friday afternoon found a chain-link fence surrounding it on two sides, large piles of dirt and gravel and a dump truck and paver sitting at its center.
The benches along Kenmore Avenue and the boulevard were removed, to be replaced eventually with a pair of enclosed bus stops.
Kulpa said he still hopes a $364,000 state grant will cover most if not all of the park's costs.
"It's got a natural synergy to it and it just needed the public space," he said of the neighborhood. "We needed a better entrance to the town and we needed to get blight cleared."
Catsimatidis, who has an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion, hasn't walked away from the former gas station quietly. He has repeatedly criticized Kulpa and Amherst Democrats, often in personal terms, for using eminent domain to wrest control of the site and he donated money to the unsuccessful GOP campaign against Kulpa last fall.
Catsimatidis' ally, Brian Rusk, the Amherst Republican chairman, blasted the idea of a park at the busy intersection, where parking is limited, and doubted it would be well visited.
"We need a pocket park in that location like we need a hole in the head," said Rusk, who noted Catsimatidis' previous offer to open a new gas station and convenience store at the corner.
As part of the eminent domain proceeding, the town initially offered to pay $81,000 for the property but, based on a more recent appraisal, has lowered its valuation of the site to $50,000, Town Attorney Stanley J. Sliwa said Friday.
Catsimatidis has insisted the site is worth $250,000. He previously told The Buffalo News he would accept and donate this amount to local charities – at least, those located outside Amherst.
He has until April to either accept the $50,000 and end his challenge over the site's value, accept the $50,000 while continuing his challenge or continue the challenge without taking the money, said Sliwa, who has no sense of what Catsimatidis will do.
"I can't figure him out," Sliwa said. Catsimatidis' Syracuse-based lawyer, Brody Smith, did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday afternoon.
Kulpa, for his part, looks forward to moving on from this fight.
"This has been a little bit of an arduous process. And that included a reasonable amount of head-butting through a campaign. I'm just happy to be finally looking at shovels in the ground," he said. "I'm gonna be happy when I can cut a ribbon."