The future of the former St. Ann’s School hangs in the balance after a four-alarm fire ravaged the building’s interior, but Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan wants to assure the public that the costs of demolition or rehabilitation won’t come out of residents’ pockets.
“Part of the old inertia would be, if we knock it down, we the taxpayers pay for it. So we're going to be out of the business of demolishing or repairing privately owned structures at the taxpayer expense,” Ryan said Thursday afternoon in front of the former school at 468 Emslie St.
City officials note that they’ve been in contact with the building’s owners, who have been identified as affiliates of a not-for-profit called Muna Center of Buffalo Inc, and that those individuals have been informed of their financial responsibilities for costs associated with rehabilitating or demolishing the structure. The latter could come in at upwards of $2 million based on current demolition estimates, and Ryan said that type of money would be better spent elsewhere.
“Two million dollars – that provides a lot of youth programming, that provides a lot of sports, that provides a lot of senior services. So we're not taking money that should be going to serve the people of the City of Buffalo and paying for a private company's problems,” he said.
Ryan was joined by Deputy Mayor Thomas Baines, fire commissioner Daniel Pizarro, Department of Permits and Inspections Commissioner Lou Petrucci, Preservation Buffalo Niagara chair Gwen Howard and Kevin Connors of architecture and engineering firm eco_logic STUDIO.
New approaches for historic structures
The mayor said the different factions of city government and public service are working together to produce the most calculated results, given the building’s historic designation. While an emergency demolition was considered early on, the new administration is emphasizing new approaches to handling structures throughout the city and holding property owners accountable.
“Our objective is to slow the process down and make sure that we're not making knee jerk reactions to demo buildings, but [that] we do things with intention and with a level of calculation that I don't think was shown before,” Baines said.
Officials from the fire department still have not identified the fire’s cause of origin. Pizarro said the department’s investigation has been halted because the building remains inaccessible due to safety concerns, although there was activity in the building before the blazes.
“There is confirmation that there were squatters in the building prior to that day; whether or not this was a result of some type of incendiary device, like a candle, we actually can't get in there to confirm,” Pizarro said.
Portions can be salvaged
Barricades remain around the building due to its structural unsoundness, but preservationists say that a significant portion of the exterior walls can be saved and even the significant internal damage could present new opportunities for structuralization, making an argument against demolition.
“This unfortunate incident may give them the opportunity to clear out the inside, rebuild the floors and put in walls and partitions wherever they need them, rather than having to deal with the existing interior fabric so they can restabilize the the building laterally with with new floors in there, and then put partitions in. So there's a lot of hope,” Howard said.
Confusion over property ownership
Public records of property sales create some confusion as to who legally owns the property at 468 Emslie St., along with a few related ones.
The Buffalo Catholic Diocese sold the St. Ann Catholic Church complex – which consisted of the church at 651 Broadway St., along with a school and former convent at 466 and 468 Emslie – to Buffalo Crescent Holdings Inc. in 2022 for $250,000, according to property records. The company is affiliated with a Muslim group that owns and operates the Downtown Islamic Center.
The group released a video that showed plans to use the complex for the expansion of the Islamic Center, which would include a mosque, along with a shopping plaza, a funeral home, a school boarding house, a college and a 19-unit apartment building.
Buffalo Crescent Holdings Inc. also bought the former St. Ann’s Rectory at 371 Watson and an adjoining vacant lot at 373 Watson Ave. in a separate transaction for $1 and $100,000, respectively, city records show.
There were early reports that the former St. Ann’s School had changed owners the week of the fire, but the city never gave a public confirmation.
Baines told BTPM NPR that Muna Center of Buffalo Inc. now owns all of the structures formerly associated with St. Ann’s Catholic Church, even though property records, along with a Buffalo Housing Court case from January following the Emslie Street fire, all continue to list Buffalo Crescent Holdings Inc. as the present owner. Baines said it’s possible that the organizations could have some relation.
“In some organizational structures, they'll have multiple owners, but ultimately, it's the Muna nonprofit organization that owns this actual building,” he said.
Baines also said that the representatives for the MUNA center expressed conceptually similar plans for the properties as those outlined by the Buffalo Islamic Center, with an emphasis on rebuilding 468 Emslie St. as a school for the advancement of technology.
The not-for-profit owns the identically named MUNA Center of Buffalo, an “Islamic education facility with dormitories & Islamic Center in the heart of Buffalo, NY,” according to the organization’s Facebook page, which had been active in 2023. The page also shows and lists the former St. Anne’s Catholic Cathedral as its address.
BTPM NPR reached out to the center by phone but could not get in contact with anyone.
