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Thursday, March 16, 2006

Buffalo, New York — The property at 605 Forest in Buffalo was the center of attention at last night’s public meeting held at the offices of Forever Elmwood on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. Eva Hassett, Vice President of Savarino Construction Services Corporation, confirmed last night that the company will be seeking a variance for the 605 Forest property. Originally, both the 605 and 607 Forest Avenue properties were going to have variances placed on them. As it stands, 607 Forest will not be directly affected by the proposal, should it go forward. Both 605 and 607 are currently occupied by residents.

During Monday night’s meeting, Pano Georgiadis, owner of 605 Forest and owner of Pano’s Resuraunt at 1081 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, threatened to “sue” Savarino Construction if they tried to obtain a variance on his property to build the Elmwood Village Hotel.

The Elmwood Village Hotel is a proposal by Savarino Construction that would be placed on the corner of Forest and Elmwood in Buffalo. In order for the project to move forward, at least five buildings (1119-1121 Elmwood) which include both residences and businesses will have to be demolished. The hotel was designed by architect Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group. Although the properties are “under contract,” according to Hassett, it is unclear whether Savarino Construction owns the properties. Hans Mobius, a resident of Clarence, New York and former Buffalo Mayoral candidate, is still believed to own them.

Currently, none of the properties is zoned for a hotel.

A freelance journalist writing for Wikinews asked Hassett what kind of zoning permit they [Savarino] would be applying for and, if 605 Forest is included, what zone that would be.

“There is a ‘special development plan’ in front of the council, which changes only one thing about the zoning. It allows one permitted use for just a hotel. The rest of the zoning remains as it is under the current Elmwood Business District zoning. 605 and 607 Forest are not required for the project. They are not part of the footprint for the project. Let me answer this question again. This is on the record, in council: 605 needs to be rezoned in order to facilitate the project because of the sideyard requirement. Anything in C-2 is excluded besides the hotel. So we’ve taken the C-2 and included the hotel as a permitted use, and excluded everything else and everything else remains the same.”

However, during the February 28 Common Council meeting, Hassett was quoted as saying that the two properties were “off the agenda.”

“Now Karl said, at the last meeting, that they will build this hotel right on the borderline [property line]. If a wall forty-five to fifty feet high goes next to this house, of course it’s not right. You really have to go with whatever the city code says, so you have to get back as many feet as the city code says,” said Georgiadis.

“If you try to get a variance to change the code, I will sue you. This is my home, number one,” added Georgiadis. “First of all I think we are all wasting our time here, you [Savarino], have already made up your mind, but if you go against city code, and you try to do the most rooms with a minimal amount of parking, again, I will sue you. If you build a hotel, in my idea its going to fail. It’s doomed, ok. [If] it’s going to be a home for the disabled, for the homeless, for recovery people, but that’s another story. Then how is it going to be when we say, well I told you so? You will be over and done with. Its very hard to take a four story building [hotel] down.”

Georgiadis stated last night that he was against the proposal and signed a petition to stop it, jokingly saying, “this isn’t a paper to sign to build the hotel, is it? Don’t make me sign the wrong thing.”

Joseph Golombeck, district councilman, was at Monday’s public meeting and said, “we also did request this and the reason we are doing this as a special business district is so that it has to be this specific plan. They [Savarino] can’t go halfway through it and in six months decide that [the hotel] it’s going to be three floors. They can’t decide it’s going to be five floors. It has to be, per law, exactly what it is that they brought to us [the public] so far, and then ultimately to the City of Buffalo Common Council when it’s approved. So if it gets approved, it has to be this specific, exact project. They couldn’t make it fifty parking spots, they couldn’t make it thirty. It has to be specifically what they have right here.”

A man who lives on Granger Street in Buffalo attended the meeting, speaking in favor of the hotel development. He claimed, “There are a lot of low property values. Hopefully if we embrace development, our property values, for those of us who have property, will go up. There are a lot of people unfortunately, who are working hard, that do not get a chance to come to these meetings. I myself was at work and wasn’t able to go to the last two meetings. I express that we appreciate that you [Savarino] invest in the City of Buffalo and for what you hope, because I do not think Savarino is into losing money. These people are not in business to be losing money here. They are hoping for the success of this [the hotel] more than any one of us. They are hoping that the property values in this area will go up more than any one of us, because it will benefit them [the residents and business owners], more than any one of us. I want this city to develop. I don’t think anybody else is here understanding that we’re looking for development in this city, we are looking for the city to get better. The councilman here is not interested in Buffalo failing.”

Evelyn Bencinich, resident of Granger Street, would have the hotel directly behind her home, if it were to be built.

“What about construction [time]? Is that just for the exterior, the nine months? Or does that include the interior? Is there going to be blasting through bedrock? Is there property protection for damage? Are you [Savarino and the Frizlen Group] responsible?”, asked Bencinich.

According to Frizlen, there is a layer of solid bedrock at least 30 feet from the surface of the land saying, “we anticipate that the bedrock is at least thirty feet down.” He also admitted that “we haven’t done any soil sporrings,” but did say “the bedrock is somewhere in between twenty-five and thirty feet [down], we don’t need to go that deep. So blasting is most likely out of it [the question].”

“Personally, I can only speak from the city side, but a few years ago we rebuilt Vulcan Street, in the northwest corner of Buffalo, and there were a couple of properties that were damaged and they [the owners] were able to file a claim against the company that did the work and they won in each case. It was the same thing with a school that was built on Military Road. There were a couple of problems with foundations on a couple of properties, and they weren’t sure if caused by the school or not, but the insurance company ended up paying them,” answered Golombeck.

“I would assume that Savarino is insured with someone. So if there is a problem with anything that happens to your properties, what I would recommend is that anybody that lives on Granger Place, if this does go through, that you get pictures taken of your basement and of your foundations, because God forbid if there is a problem, you want to have an^[sic] before and after [picture]. You don’t want to come afterwards and there’s a crack in there [foundation] and you have no way of proving that it happened,” added Golombeck.

According to Golombeck, the properties that Mobius owns have been “in housing court on several occasions, but has a date of April 11, 2006 that he is going back [to court] for these properties. So it is in housing court and I wouldn’t know Mr. Mobius if he walked in this room right now,” stated Golombeck.

“I’ve gone after him on numerous occasions and everytime he gets out of housing court with a slap on the wrist. If I am a conspiracy theorist and say that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. I can only get him into housing court. Once he’s in housing court, the judge rules on it. Now I don’t mean to take any shots at previous administrations, but I am hoping with the new administration, being in here, that the inspections department is going to be a much better department than it has been for the previous several years.”

The city’s Planning Board on March 14, 2006, agreed to send the Elmwood Village Hotel proposal back to the Common Council so that it may “be opened back up to discussion from the public.”

On March 2, 2006 the Common Council sent the proposal “to committee” for further discussion and also requesting that the public be “engaged further.”

During that meeting, Justin Azzeralla, Executive Director for Forwever Elmwood, said that the organization “supports the hotel project.”

Also on March 2, the planning board agreed to table, or postpone, any decision on the hotel proposal for at least thirty days, also citing the need for the public to be “more engaged.”

The Common Council is expected to meet on March 21, 2006 at 2:00pm local time where they may approve or deny the proposal.

According to The Buffalo News, at least six Common Council members support the hotel project and are pledging to vote to approve it at the meeting on Tuesday, March 21.

However, the city’s Planning Board will get the final say on the project.

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

The British national airline, British Airways has announced that the former CEO of Aer Lingus, Willie Walsh is to be their new CEO. Mr Walsh is to replace the current CEO, Australian-born Rod Eddington in September after his retirement.

Willie Walsh started as a cadet for Aer Lingus at the age of 17, later becoming a captain of the airline. In 1998, he became the chief-executive of the airline’s charter subsidiary Furtura, and later in 2000 chief finance officer. In the wake of 11th September 2001, he became the chief-executive of Aer Lingus, itself. Worried about what happened to Swissair and Sabena, he looked at the rival Irish airline Ryanair for inspiration and made Aer Lingus in effect a no-frills airline, such as replacing the infamous turquoise uniforms with polo shirts and promoting via the Internet.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

A trustee of the estate of the late author Adrian Jacobs filed a lawsuit against the US publisher of the Harry Potter series, Scholastic Inc, on Tuesday. He claimed that J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, had copied scenes from Jacob’s novel, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard, to the fourth novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The suit followed a similar case last year, in which the trustee sued the UK publisher of the series, Bloomsbury Publishing plc. Both of these cases are currently pending.

The complaint stated that in both books, the protagonists “are required to deduce the exact nature of the central task in the competition”, and had done so in a bathroom. Both books also involved “rescuing hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal creatures.” The suit also claimed that Christopher Little, a literary agent of Rowling, was originally the literary agent of Jacobs. The claim was denied by Scholastic.

Scholastic called the claim “completely without merit”. They pointed out that Rowling had said in February that she had never read Jacobs’ book. The trustee said that the US was the world’s largest foreign market, so they brought their first overseas action there. He demanded that all copies of the Harry Potter novel be destroyed, and all the profit made by the book given to him.

Monday, October 9, 2006

Controversy is being expressed over Stephen Harper’s decision to skip the House of Commons vote for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change on Wednesday for a hockey game at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. Liberal MPs say that this reveals Mr. Harper’s true attitude toward the environment. “It shows the importance he gives to Kyoto and climate change,” said Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez. “What kind of example does that send to Canadians?”

Harper was with his ten-year-old son Ben cheering on for the Toronto Maple Leafs and sat in seats in the platinum level of the Air Canada Centre, next to Larry Tanenbaum, head of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the Leafs. Also seated with Mr. Tanenbaum was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his wife, Terri.

“You know I’m dead meat if I make those kind of predictions in hockey,” said Harper, who must juggle support from voters in six Canadian NHL cities. “I think Ben will be cheering for the Toronto Maple Leafs,” Harper told The Canadian Press. “That’s his team.”

Harper and his son met with the members of the Toronto team after the game was finished.

Opposition MPs say that “the decision to put pucks over Parliament shows that environmental issues rate as a low priority for Mr. Harper, who had no other reason to be in Toronto the day he attended the NHL season opener between the Maple Leafs and the Ottawa Senators.”

Members of Parliament and the prime minister are not required to attend votes in the House of Commons and routinely miss them when dealing with other business. If Mr. Harper was there, his vote would not have changed the outcome.

The PM will be writing a whole book on the history of the game. But demands of his day job have slowed down the project.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Steve Wright, yesterday convicted of the murder of five women in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, has today been sentenced at Ipswich Crown Court to life imprisonment. The bodies of the five women who worked as sex workers in Ipswich were found around the town in December 2006.

The judge, Mr Justice Gross said that a “substantial degree of pre-meditation and planning” was involved meaning the requirments for a whole life sentence for Wright was met. He said, “This was a targeted campaign of murder. It is right you should spend your whole life in prison.”

Speaking after the sentencing, Deputy Chief Constable of Suffolk Police, Jacqui Cheer said, “At the start of the inquiry we could not have asked for anything more. It is a tribute to all the people who have been involved – not only police officers but their support teams and all the members of the public who phoned-in offering information.”

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Monday, March 19, 2007

A methane gas explosion occurred at the Ulyanovskaya Mine near the city of Novokuznetsk in the Kemerovo region of Siberia. At least 106 people have been reported to be killed in the blast. Conflicting reports say that at least thirteen to forty-three miners are still trapped underground or missing, as well as 75 to 93 have been reported to have survived the blast.

The mine disaster is the deadliest accident in Russia’s mining industry in over a decade. The mine, which was opened in 2002, had around 200 miners inside at the time of the methane gas explosion.

The Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev said that when the blast occurred, the mine’s management was underground inspecting a newly installed safety system made by a British company. British experts and representatives of a management of the mine have gone down under the ground shortly before explosion. Tuleyev stated that on mine start-up, “the newest English system on a safety of conducting mountain works under the ground” should take place.

The operator of the mine is Yuzhkuzbassugol, Russia’s biggest producer of deep-mined coal. The spokeswoman of the Emergencies Ministry stated that the blast occurred at 08:00 GMT, and that eighty-three miners had been safely evacuated from the mine shaft.