Published: September 11, 2008 11:14 pm            

HAMILTON: Is HOPE a pile of ashes?

James Curtis indicated he thought that it was a joke when he put up a hand-printed “whites only” sign. above a water fountain in a Niagara Falls Department of Public Works locker room. While it was likely funny to him at the time, no one is laughing now. He shall suffer dearly for his apparent momentary lapse in judgment. I feel sorry for him. If he was a corporation, it seems that the outcome would have been remarkably different for him.

If Curtis was serious about hurting African-Americans, then he would not even have to have posted a discriminatory sign at all. All he would had to have done was to have a ground-breaking ceremony and invite dignitaries from Washington, Albany, Lockport and City Hall to it, give them all new shiny shovels, take away a park that was built over a landfill, excavate the landfill and move it a few hundred yards to the south, and build a new public housing project on it. One has to wonder if Sen. Charles Schumer, who had to trade in a lot of favors for the project, knew that the dirt that he ceremoniously dug in came from a landfill.

Curtis will be done with this mess soon as he is done standing front and center before a judge in court. He may have to start his life over — just one more time. But for the city’s African-American community, it is easy to judge the public housing project at Centre Court as a case of, “Here we go again ... and again ... and again.”

The irony is Sen. Antoine Thompson recently had a press conference where he proclaimed a clean-up of underground wastes in the brownfields just north of Norstar’s Centre Court HOPE VI project.

While Thompson’s proclamation was taking place, at the strong urging of the Niagara County Health Department, was Norstar developing plans to excavate a public park and to bury the wastes just south of their project on property that they want the city to give them? Reports say that they want to do this because it would be too expensive (less profitable) for them to properly dispose of it in a certified landfill. Now, correct me if I am wrong; but wouldn’t that be like creating yet another brownfield in the neighborhood? Is hope a pile of ashes?

In Curtis’ case, the sign was removed and the harm that it did, though compounding evidence for the Niagara Falls Six’s discrimination case, will soon be over. But this project, which gets more and more bazaar with every shovelful of dirt that they dig, is the expansion of a legacy of ill-treatment to people who are least prepared to protect themselves.

In the early ’40s, when the Niagara Falls Housing Authority decided to build two separate-but-equal housing projects in the city, they chose Packard Court for whites coming out of the coal mines of Pennsylvania and an area next to the old city dump for the African-Americans coming from the south. While both projects were identical, and six-months different in age, Packard Court gets a face lift and Centre Court gets an ash dump. And Curtis is the one that is likely getting the severe discipline?

While we all should abhor the development of a new brownfield in the city, the NFHA owns enough property just north of its Packard Court properties to accommodate the ashes. It is the area where schools superintendent Carmen Granto considered placing the new Niagara Street School, so that it may share the athletic facilities and other amenities at the high school. Reports are that NFHA wanted too much money for it. Apparently they are land-banking it. Leaks indicate that they did likewise for the Mt. St. Mary clinic expansion next to the Resource Building until they got the price they wanted.

In fact, Packard Court was a better site to have built the HOPE-VI “Beloved Village” project. There, instead of taking a park, the residents would have been close to Hyde Park, Nicoletti Field, more frequent bus service, all of the amenities of the Pine Avenue Business Strip, and within walking distance of all of the schools that their children could attend.

But, when I asked one of the highly-compensated HOPE-VI consultants why Centre Court was chosen over Packard Court, he said, “Because it was easier.”

Easier because Centre Court was in an African-American neighborhood and, even though it is largely black, Packard Court is not?

But it looks neither easy nor funny now for the no profit/no project Norstar, unless they think that city council is an easy touch, and the rest of us are fools.

Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. His columns run Fridays in the Gazette. He welcomes feedback at Ken Hamilton930@aol.com.

        

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