By Kevin Ostrowski
LOCKPORT — A plan to put roughly 70 single-family homes on the grounds of the former Niagara County Infirmary on Davison Road is still stuck, and the reason is a sewer line nobody has been able to get a clear look inside.
The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal reported last week that the Town of Lockport is still waiting for the City of Lockport to produce video showing the city sewer line serving the campus can take more flow. A second attempt to film the line failed this fall.
“The private contractor came out and attempted to film the line in question. They could not get their camera through most of the sewer line, due to the volume of water present,” Mayor John Lombardi III told the Journal in an email. “We will once again attempt the process very soon with lower levels of flow in late fall. We had not planned on the inability to run the camera due to higher volume.”
A property split down the middle
The 16.9-acre campus is owned by Ryan Mulvey of Switzer Buildings LLC in Hamburg. City chief building inspector Jason Dool told the Journal the property is divided north to south between the city and the town, and that the boundary runs through the Switzer Building facing Davison Road. Mulvey could not be reached by the Journal.
Niagara County built the campus in 1914 to shelter the poor and sold it in the 1990s after closing its remaining offices there, according to an article by deputy county historian Craig Bacon cited by the Journal. The fire-damaged chapel on the grounds sits on the city side.
Town Supervisor Mark Crocker has kept the housing plan from advancing to the town planning board until the city proves its line can handle the new homes. Last December, he told the Journal the town would not add to a line he described as already at capacity.
“We’re not going to be part of adding pressure and volume to a sewer line that is already maxed out,” Crocker said then. “They need to show us that it can sustain approximately 72 single-family homes.”
Crocker said at the time that about 85% of the property is in the city, while only about 30% of the Switzer Building is in the town. He also said the town board might agree to annex part of the site into the city if the owners provided the answers the town wanted.
‘Useless to us’
Crocker told the Journal that Lombardi informed him on July 23 that video of the line would be provided. What arrived, he said, was a poor-quality “partial video” with no information on where it had been filmed.
“Our engineer said it was useless to us,” Crocker said.
The town met with Mulvey on Oct. 6, and Crocker said the project remains on the table. He also said the problem reaches beyond one development.
“The line needs to be opened for the good of the city and the town. Carlisle Gardens feeds into that line, too,” Crocker said.
Open windows on both sides of the line
While the paperwork waits, the buildings keep deteriorating. In a follow-up story published Saturday, the Journal reported open and broken ground-floor windows on both the city and town sides of the Switzer Building, graffiti inside, and drywall broken through by trespassers. The town’s Anjo baseball facility brings families to the campus, where they use the parking lot.
The Journal reported that emails with photographs sent to Crocker, city Fire Chief Luca Quagliano, Dool and 5th Ward Alderman Jon Wiley, who chairs the city fire board, drew no responses by Friday evening. Crocker told the paper he would bring the matter to town code enforcement and the fire marshal.
Andrew Nemi, deputy chair of the fire board, told the Journal there are frequent police calls to the address for trespassing.
“We’ve already had a close call with fire there,” Nemi said, referring to the charred chapel. “I think most people that drive by there think the condition of the building is unacceptable.”
Tom McKinney, who chairs the standards and codes committee of the Firefighters Association of the State of New York, told the Journal the state property maintenance code requires vacant buildings to be secured.
“The building has to be secured,” McKinney said. “The property owner is responsible for it.”
What to watch
The city says it will try to film the line again once flows drop later this fall. Until the town has video it considers usable, the housing plan stays off the planning board’s agenda. The Buffalo Chronicle has asked the city and town for an update on the sewer inspection and on any code enforcement at the site.
Lockport’s other infrastructure fights have played out at the federal level, too. Read our earlier story on the Falls Road Railroad’s $9.6 million rail grant.
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