CITY CENTRE: Locked gate at Heritage alley irks Pine Street business owners.

By Joyce Miles<br><a href="mailto:milesj@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Joyce</a>

A chain link gate at Ulrich City Centre has some downtown business owners concerned about access to their stores.

The gate spans a section of Heritage Court, an east-west alley between Locust and Cottage streets, west of the City Centre complex.

With one end sunken into concrete about 6 inches from the back side of the old Lerch & Daly building owned by Elmer Granchelli, the gate prevents vehicles getting to Pine Street by cutting through the complex.

Where the gate is sited, the street and sidewalk abutting the building are not public, since the city deeded them over to developer David Ulrich in 2004, when he also received 80 Main St. and a city parking lot to build City Centre.

Ulrich had the gate installed this past June, ahead of the Canal Concert Series, to aid crowd control in the courtyard Friday nights.

The series ended in August, but the gate remains, its doors shut and locked Monday through Friday.

The gate turned out to be a good way to stop locals’ use of the old alley as a thoroughfare, Ulrich said last week. Vehicles backing out of City Centre’s north-south parking spots are in jeopardy when traffic rushes the opposite way toward Pine Street.

“When our customers are backing out and the (cross) traffic is flying through at 30, 35 miles an hour, it’s dangerous. There’s been a lot of near misses there, including my own,” Ulrich said. “That alley was never designed to be a through street.”

Various business owners and Kelli Alaimo, property manager for Granchelli-held companies controlling a lot of Pine Street real estate, have complained to City Hall about the gate and its effects on them.

Questions have been raised about the gate possibly being a retaliatory move by Ulrich against Granchelli — the two are understood to be arch rivals — and about an impediment thrown up on property that, although technically private, is supposed to remain accessible by the public under the terms of the city’s deal with Ulrich.

Ulrich said he hasn’t heard any complaints about the gate in the three months it’s been up.

“Nobody has complained to me about this. If they did, we probably could work something out,” he said.

The gate might be in violation of building code. Cynthia Hinton, the city’s zoning enforcement officer, said Friday that there is no building permit on file covering installation of a gate/fence at City Centre, and one would have been required. Ulrich said he would quiz his fence contractor about that.

Tight squeezes annoy shopkeepers

The block of Pine between Main and Walnut streets typically is traffic-heavy during the day, and on-street parking is sparse. Business operators say the gate across Heritage alley has created new inconveniences for them.

The gate does not prevent non-City Centre customers from parking in the City Centre lot, but if they want to get to Pine Street from there, they’ll have to walk over a grassy median abutting the gate.

Imagine that median piled with snow and it’s not a pretty picture, suggested Cheryl Blacklock, executive director of Mental Health Association in Niagara County, 36 Pine St.

“It’s inconvenient for a lot of people,” she said.

The gate also blocks the sidewalk next to the alley, Michael MacDonald, owner of Sylvia’s School of Dance, 33 Pine St., observed. For people parked at City Centre, it means there’s no clean foot path to Pine.

Delivery trucks bound for LaPort’s Restaurant, 48 Pine St., use an alley behind the restaurant to get there. The alley starts at Walnut Street and ends at Heritage a few feet from the gate. A LaPort’s shift manager said delivery drivers don’t like coming in from Walnut and exiting at Heritage and Pine, because traffic is heavy and lines of sight are bad, but the gate prevents trucks from turning around and heading back to Walnut. Some are backing in from Walnut instead.

A.M. Smith Group Inc. insurance company, 42 Pine St., has done business right next to Heritage alley for almost 20 years. Owner Marc Smith said he’s always used the alley as a safer place to photograph customers’ vehicles, but since the gate went up, the alley seems clogged with vehicles. When LaPort’s takes deliveries, both alleys are tied up.

“I understand (Heritage alley) is private property, but Mr. Ulrich promised a room full of people, when he wanted that land from the city, that it would remain public; he promised no one’s interests would be harmed. That’s why so few people complained,” Smith said.

Ulrich’s explanation of the gate’s purpose, to stop Locust-to-Pine travel through City Centre, doesn’t wash with Smith or Alaimo. They both said the gate is locked only on weekdays; on weekends the alley is unimpeded.

“Bar patrons (at City Centre) must like to use it,” Smith said.

City: It’s a private matter

The City of Lockport took possession of 80 Main St., the old, so-called south block, from Granchelli for failure to develop it. Then it gave that lot, an adjacent city parking lot and the portion of Heritage Court between them to Ulrich for City Centre.

The city later sold a second municipal parking lot, behind Granchelli’s commercial property at 120 Main, to Ulrich — making landowners including Granchelli essentially dependent on Ulrich’s OK to use the lot.

When other businesses are stuck in the middle of the rumored enmity, it’s not a good place to be, Smith said.

“If there are individuals who have problems,” he said, “it would be nice if they worked out their issues privately rather than causing everybody else problems.”

Ulrich denies rivalry drove the gate’s placement near Granchelli holdings — or that there’s a struggle between him and Granchelli. Questions about the gate are “a controversy that isn’t there,” he said. “It’s not directed towards anyone. I don’t get it. (The alley) is a hazard.”

As for the suggestion that he’s scaling back his pledge to keep City Centre’s grounds public, he said it isn’t so.

“We are the only developer that does not block lots and put up signs saying ‘violators will be towed.’ We are the only ones who leave our lots open,” he said.

Alaimo refused to discuss the relationship between Granchelli and Ulrich. Her concerns about the gate are the concerns of Granchelli’s tenants only, she said.

“Yes, there is public parking in (the City Centre lot) but the fence is in the way. I am concerned about my customers’ convenience, and their liability if something happens to their customers because of the way this is set up,” she said. “My customers all have asked me, ‘why is that fence there?’ and I can’t tell them. I don’t know. So I’m telling them all to call the mayor. The city let this happen.”

Mayor Michael Tucker said the city can’t do anything about the gate because it’s on private property. He planned to ask Ulrich to open it back up voluntarily, he added.

Text Only