Vidler's five and dime in East Aurora, from America 24/7
I loved this article from the Buffalo, New York area. Upstate New York experiences very little economic vitality, especially compared to New York City. However, one small town outside of Buffalo, East Aurora, finds its own strengths and builds on them.
As the Village Trustee, Elizabeth Cheteny says,
"All too often, developers want to impose faceless, nameless architecture anywhere. They hit a wall here. We don't want to be anywhere; we want to be East Aurora."So far, East Aurora has successfully kept out Wal-Mart, even beloved upstate grocery chain Wegmans, and most recently banned drive-through restaurants in its main street corridor. And,
"Talk of the drive-through restriction sparked immediate results, even before the Village Board enacted it. Starbucks Coffee and Dunkin' Donuts revised their plans, eliminating drive-throughs after the village initially rejected their proposals."The community has been key in guiding development in a way that suits their vision for their hometown, forming a citizen's committee to define its goals while other surrounding villages were being swallowed up by generic development.
"I don't think it's a matter of development or no development, but development that's shaped for the community," Cheteny said. "A village's character erodes slowly, and you don't realize it right away. It's rarely one project. It's a series of small decisions - a gradual erosion of what makes a place special."
4 comments:
Wow. Sounds great. Wish more communities had this vision.
The only question: Is East Aurora an affluent suburb? Do people do their daily shopping, that is, the staples that big boxes supply so cheaply, outside the village?
I live in East Aurora, NY. All most all of the people who live here do their shopping in East Aurora. Either at Tops, or Jubilee
I also live there; besides groceries, unless someone can find what they need at one of the small stores on Main Street (mainly but not all boutique-type stores) they end up driving a ways, about 15-20 minutes or more.
Calling East Aurora an "affluent suburb" doesn't do it justice. Yes, it's a suburb, and affluent at that, but originally East Aurora was far enough from Buffalo that it existed on its own, with its own manufacturing base and surrounding farms. I grew up in EA and, if it weren't for Western New York's winters and overall economy, I'd move back in a heartbest.
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