Yesterday, Peace Bridge general manager Ron Rienas, in reaction to this article on the PBA’s intention to demolish some properties that the city ordered it to repair, sent the following email to me and 45 of his closest friends, including the mayor and members of the Common Council:

Geoff,

Back in February you e-mailed me and said : “…we are, in fact, a reputable newspaper in this community”

So perhaps you can you can answer the following questions related to your article “Demolition Derby” (below) in this week’s Artvoice:

1. Would a reputable newspaper write an article about demolition, and show in the accompanying picture, houses that are on a different street, will not be demolished, and are not even within the Peace Bridge project boundaries.

2. Would a reputable newspaper say; “Rienas did not respond to numerous requests for comment…” when you did not call or e-mail me even once?

3. Would a reputable newspaper deliberately exclude the fact there was a 2004 agreement with the then Mayor Masiello and Common Council whereby the City was to demolish the Busti Ave houses and that the reason for demolition had nothing to do with the capacity expansion project?

4. Would a reputable newspaper ignore the fact that the majority of residents in the neighborhood impacted by these houses and the Peace Bridge project are supportive of the demolition of these houses?

5. Would a reputable newspaper exclude information from a professional structural engineer’s report, agreed to by the City, that recommends the demolition of three of the six  (not seven) vacant  houses?

I could go on and on about the misrepresentations and inaccuracies contained in your article but I think you get my drift. One last point – a reputable newspaper would print an apology or at least a correction when made aware of errors or omissions. Will you??

Maybe you could actually call me (884-8636) or meet with me to get the facts.

Ron Rienas

Ron Rienas (Photo by Bruce Jackson)

The February email he refers to was part of an exchange in response to a nastily worded complaint Rienas sent regarding a blog post I had made the previous summer. The blog post was in fact just a link and a quote from somebody else’s blog, but Ron directed his belated ire at me rather than at the author herself.

In any case, I replied last night to Ron (alone, not to his entire list of friends) that I had in fact emailed him three times asking for comment, to the same address from which he had sent his whinge, and had received no reply.

This morning I forwarded him the emails (which I’ll paste after the jump) and this reply to his other complaints:

Hi Ron,

Please find below the three emails I sent from mu work computer asking for comment on this issue. I can’t imagine they were caught in a spam filter, as you and I have corresponded frequently in the past with no trouble at all, using these addresses.

As for your other complaints:

5. I specifically mentioned that three of the properties had “major roof issues” and that the city would consider agreeing to demolition of those properties. It’s in the article, Ron, what more do you want? Especially given that you did not respond to me and so forfeited the chance to share the details of the report—which I likely would have summarized in exactly the same way, anyway?

4. I’m unaware of any poll of West Side residents conducted on the issue of demolishing these houses. What independent body did the poll, Quinnipiac? Feel free to share the numbers and the sample parameters with me. (E.g. If it was a survey of residents “impacted…by the Peace Bridge project,” did it include the entire West Side or just property owners in the immediate vicinity? Which property owners?)

3. The 2004 agreement is immaterial to this article; that was five years and a mayoral administration ago. This article was about this mayoral administration’s current demand that the PBA address the houses’ code issues by May 1, and the PBA’s reaction to that demand. That is the crux of the article, and I note that in your email contains no corrections of my apprehension of the core issue.

2. See emails below.

1. I used that photo, which is the one used by the National Trust to illustrate the neighborhood’s profile on its Most Endangered list, because I thought it made sense to show the neighborhood that the opposition to plaza expansion thinks is in jeopardy. Perhaps that misled some readers to believe these were the houses that the PBA owns and wishes to demolish. I’ll print a clarification in next week’s paper.

In summary,  one of your complaints (#1) has some merit, two (#4 and #3) are senseless, and two (#5 and #2) are false. Please note that I replied to you alone, not to the entire list you compiled yesterday. That seemed to me the adult thing to do. It also seems to me that an adult would write back to that list today and apologize for being wrong and for wasting their time. Please let me know if you intend to do so as soon as possible.

Best

Geoff Kelly
Editor, Artvoice
office: 716.881.6604
mobile: 716.480.0723
www.artvoice.com

Forgive the typos. I wrote quickly.

I have not heard back from him, so I guess he’s not going to apologize for calling me a liar, as I suggested he ought to. Thus, I’m posting his email and mine and welcoming Ron into the company of churls who fail to respond to Artvoice’s request for comment and then whine publicly that we never tried to talk to them. That company includes Brian Davis, the check-bouncing councilman; Steve Casey, the bullying deputy mayor; and even Mayor Byron Brown, who has not once spoken to this reporter in three and a half years, despite many invitations to comment on numerous subjects, many of which represented opportunities to cast the administration in  a positive light.

Welcome, Ron. I’ll send you more questions regarding the proposed demolitions this weekend. I expect you’ll ignore them.

After the jump are the three emails I sent soliciting comment from Rienas.

(more…)

Yesterday a letter went out to the displaced neighbors of the crumbling White Brothers Livery on Jersey Street from Empire Building Diagnostics, the company that’d doing the “therapeutic demolition”: Be prepared to spend another three weeks living with relatives or in hotel rooms.

Empire will soon begin removing the massive roof trusses. Meanwhile, developer Sam Savarino—who bought the building for $1 from Bob Freudenheim, who let the historic structure decay to the point of collapse—is working on a rehab plan.

The court order that halted complete demolition of the former White Bros. livery on Jersey Street has not prevented the city’s demolition contractor from picking away at the building, piece by piece. As these picture show, most of the roof on the Jersey Street side of the hulking brick structure is gone. The peak of the front facade has been taken, too.

According to Commissioner Rich Tobe of the Department of Economic Development, Permit and License Services, the court initially agreed—and continues to maintain, as of yesterday’s hearing—that the city’s contractor, Empire Dismantlement, could continue to do demo work deemed essential to prevent imminent dangers: falling bricks, leaning walls, falling roof.

The group of neighbors trying to save at least some part of the livery building will meet the city and the building’s owner, Robert Freudenheim, in court again this morning at 9:30am. (You can watch interviews with the neighbors and Freudenheim here.)

The initial collapse of the wall on the building’s east side was caused when a massive truss, from which parts of the floors are hung, failed and swung out, knocking out a hole and dropping parts of two floors, according to initial reports by a city inspector. (On entering the building, the inspector saw a yellow VW bug embedded in floor, ass end up; the car had been on the third floor before the collapse.) Five houses were evacuated, the residents forced to stay with friends or relatives or in hotels (at their own expense). The emergency demolition, bid out last Thursday morning at close to $300,000, is expected to take two to three weeks.

The demo contractor was supposed to come to Tobe on Wednesday with four demolition options, reflecting various possible outcomes, ranging from complete demolition—in which the entire building would be pushed into a hole and bulldozed until flat—to preservation of, perhaps, the front facade, parts of the walls, or the tower in the northeast corner of the building (pictured below, appearing more or less intact).

More news soon.

UPDATE: The brick-by-brick demolition will continue, per  this morning’s court session. Nothing else is resolved.