By Kevin Ostrowski
KENMORE — The old Kenmore Presbyterian Church on Delaware Avenue has a demolition permit, a buyer’s plan that includes a Shake Shack, and a neighbor who says its brick walls are coming apart. What it does not have yet is a date.
At the Oct. 6 Village Board meeting, Patrick Mang, the mayor, told residents that the demolition permit has been obtained and that the building will come down as soon as abatement is completed, according to the board’s official minutes. The minutes add that the village was not aware of a start date.
That leaves the 2765 Delaware Ave. property in limbo: approved for redevelopment, long vacant, and waiting.
A neighbor’s warning
The safety question came from the public comment period. Greg Kuhaneck, who lives on East Hazeltine Avenue, told the board he is worried about the church building, according to the minutes. He said mortar is missing from the walls, the bricks are shifting and a back window is gone, and that he believes the walls are ready to collapse. He presented photos of each wall and said he had notified the police and building departments.
The minutes record that Building Inspector Michael Berns was to notify the parties of those concerns. They do not say what, if anything, has been done to secure the structure since.
What the village approved, and why
The board approved the project as a Planned Unit Development, or PUD, before Mang laid out his reasoning in August. In an opinion column in the Ken-Ton Bee, Mang wrote that the property kept its PUD status after a prior developer, who had wanted to turn the church into mostly apartments, abandoned that plan in January 2023.
He argued that the classification gave the village leverage it would not otherwise have had.
“It’s important to note that the current project would have been allowed in our Restricted Business Use district. Without the PUD designation, the village would have had virtually no input into the project,” Mang wrote.
The approved plan has two phases: a stand-alone restaurant building, and a second mixed-use building with storefronts on the ground floor and apartments above. Mang wrote that the developer agreed, in a Restrictive Covenant, that a mixed-use building will be included on the property as a condition of any future development.
Many residents had hoped to save the church itself. Mang wrote that the board did too, but that a building-condition report put the cost at “$11.7M just to do needed work on the building, before any rehab could start.”
“We, too, shared that concern and would have preferred to reuse the existing building,” he wrote.
Shake Shack, a block from the candy shop
The restaurant tenant is Shake Shack, WKBW-TV reported in September, and not everyone on Delaware is cheering.
Adriana Hall, who helps run King Condrell’s Candy and Ice Cream about a block away, told the station her family has been in business there for about 30 years.
“We personally are a little bit worried about it just because like they’re going to make milkshakes and it’s like exactly what we already have,” Hall said.
Scott Lewandowski, co-owner of Flowers by Johnny, saw an upside in the housing. “There’s always housing that can benefit the community,” he told WKBW.
Mang told the station the village weighed the building’s deterioration, mold, the need for a new roof and a developer-funded traffic study.
“It’s going to bring traffic, but we’re also hoping that that traffic that comes in will benefit the other businesses that are coming into the village,” Mang said.
WKBW reported that Shake Shack’s public relations team had not responded to its questions.
The questions still open
Several things remain unclear from the public record. The minutes do not say who is doing the abatement or how long it is expected to take. They do not say whether the building inspector found the walls to be a hazard, or whether fencing or other protection is planned while the building stands.
It is also not clear when the second, mixed-use phase would be built, or how the village would enforce the covenant if the restaurant opens and the rest of the lot sits idle. WKBW reported in September that the developer still had to record required legal documents with Erie County before the demolition permit could be issued, and that the detailed site plan would then go to the village Planning Board.
The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking the demolition schedule, the results of any inspection of the walls, and the timeline for the second phase from the mayor’s office, and will update this story with any response.
Residents can raise the issue themselves at the next Village Board meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Kenmore Municipal Building.
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