Remember the Rest of the ResulTech Story
Today’s Buffalo News features a story about Rev. Darius Pridgen’s plan to convert 998 Broadway into a banquet hall and performing arts facility. We spoke with Pridgen about his plan a few weeks back and we wish him the best in bringing new life to these six acres on Broadway that have been vacant for so many years.
The News story says that until Pridgen came along, “the only serious interest in the structure came from the Buffalo School District. The district had been reviewing plans to renovate the old Kmart building into an alternative school, but that plan has yet to be finalized.”
Yet to be finalized? Not quite. We first wrote about the owners of that real estate last May. ResulTech, the Maryland company that finally lost its contract with the Buffalo Schools after dismally failing the students at Academy School 44 for three years, is the current owner of the property. They bought it in 2007 for $1.25 million with the hope that they could fix it up and lease it back to the school system as the new Alternative school.
That plan has been dead for about two years. Here’s ResulTech President David (Pat) Wright, quoted in Business First in May, 2007 saying “a definitive development plan will be decided in the next few weeks.” Sure it will. In the same article, he envisions the place as a school, a distribution center, or a health care facility. It didn’t really matter to him then, and it doesn’t matter to him now that he’s leaving town in disgrace.
ResulTech made off with $7.1 million dollars from the school district while failing our most at risk students. They simultaneously spent the last couple of years sitting on the “most famous address” in Buffalo, doing nothing to bring it out of its currently blighted state. Let’s hope they don’t drive too hard a bargain with Pridgen.
Remember, ResulTech used $1.25 million of the school district’s money so they could play real estate mogul now.














