Sep 4
2025
Process for police shooting range misses the mark
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Vacant community center sports mural of civil right champion John Lewis.
City of Buffalo officials failed to follow state law in their rush to turn a former East Side community center into a shooting range and training facility for police.
In July, the city failed to include a required environmental evaluation in a zoning change application for the proposed $5 million facility, in violation of state law.
City officials twice marked the application complete when it wasn’t, then moved it through the planning board, a public hearing, and the Common Council anyway. The missing environmental assessment was only made public two business days before the Council’s Tuesday meeting, where lawmakers voted 6-2 to move the project forward.
Furthermore, the city relied on a block club to solicit public input on the project, rather than soliciting feedback itself — then presented the block club’s approval as evidence of community support.
“Absolutely no one from City Hall reached out to me about this,” said Brian Borncamp, who lives blocks from the site of the proposed shooting range.
“I don’t want guns flooding my neighborhood, and I especially don’t want guns in place of what was a community center that kids used to get food and play basketball at.”
The city plans to build the facility on the 1.2-acre lot at the corner of Memorial and Paderewski drives, across from the Central Terminal. An existing building on the site — formerly home to the Matt Urban HOPE Center — is already in use by department administrators and will be rehabilitated to make room for classrooms and a gym. A new back building will host an indoor shooting range.
For the last month, Borncamp and neighbors have mounted a campaign against the project. They say they’re frustrated that tax dollars are going toward a shooting range instead of social services, like those the previous community center provided. Others say that they had no chance to offer input.
“Our community is lacking and the city is not helping or hearing us with what we need,” said Marva Threat, a Broadway-Fillmore resident of more than 40 years and president of a block club the city did not consult about the project.
Chris Hawley, president of the block club that ultimately supported the project, said he was initially “alarmed and horrified” by the proposal, but he and club members eventually gave the project their blessing after wrestling concessions from the city.
Hawley also said his organization, not the city, conducted the only meaningful outreach to neighbors.
City efforts to secure site
The city has owned 379 Paderewski since 1992. Most recently it housed the HOPE Center, which provided housing, a food pantry and youth services, among other programs.
The police department’s effort to take over the property began after a plan to build a new training facility at 341 Seneca failed in 2023.
The police department lost its shooting range when it moved headquarters from Franklin Street to Court Street in 2018. For $175,000 per year, the department has since rented Cheektowaga’s facilities for state-mandated firearms training.
City officials began securing bonds to fund a new facility six years ago, according to Council Member Mitch Nowakowski, who represents the Fillmore District, where the project is located. When the Seneca Street plan didn’t work out, he said, the city turned its attention to the recently closed, city-owned community center.
“The [Brown] administration started moving in that direction, and so did the police department,” said Nowakowski.
Notice in front of community center was one of the city’s few efforts to inform neighborhood residents.
In April of this year, Nowakowski brokered a meeting with Hawley, a city planner with the Office of Strategic Planning and president of the Central Terminal Neighborhood Association — the only block club in the immediate neighborhood — along with officials from the police department and the mayor’s office.
Hawley said the block club’s biggest concerns were noise and security. Many were concerned those nearest the facility would be bombarded by the sound of gunfire. He described the initial meeting as tense.
Block club members were assured the facility would be soundproof. Officers would watch training PowerPoints in the front building and practice shooting in the back.
“My neighbors are very pragmatic people. We know we only have so much leverage over this conversation. We determined even before that meeting that we couldn’t stop the project,” he said. “And we were determined to try to get the best possible outcome for the neighborhood and attempt negotiation over agitation.”
Hawley said the department agreed to protect neighborhood trees, remove and replace a rusty chain link fence, possibly open the site’s gym for youth, and preserve a mural of civil rights icon John Lewis.
The department did not commit to these stipulations in writing.
Hawley said he wishes the site could’ve been used for a community center or a library, but considered the building being occupied after being vacant for nearly two years as a step forward for community safety.
Few neighbors knew about project
Hawley said that the block club did its best to inform neighbors about the project. They printed and sent out flyers to roughly 150 households on their own dime, even though the club has no money and no bank account.
Without Malay or Bengali interpreters, it was hard to connect with immigrant neighbors, but he invited two leaders from Masjid Al Ansar, a local mosque.
Hawley said that the only meetings in the neighborhood about the project were held by his block club.
When Investigative Post surveyed the neighbors on Playter Street — from nearly any point on which you can see the future shooting range — almost all of them said they were unaware of and ambivalent about the project. Some hoped that maybe just the sight of a cop car would deter criminal behavior on the block. Many raised concerns about open-air drug use, prostitution, and even a recent break-in at a house on the street.
“I don’t think they should have a shooting range down the street, but then again, it might turn out to be something good,” said Kevin Asturias, a home health aide who’s lived in the area for over 20 years. “It might calm stuff down around here.”
Isaac McAdory lives across the street from the proposed site. He’s the only neighbor Investigative Post spoke to who knew about the project.
McAdory said he has no problem with it. But he believes a community center would’ve suited the neighborhood better.
“We’ve got a million kids in the neighborhood now,” McAdory said. “The police already have shooting ranges.”
Borncamp has lived on Paderewski for more than 12 years. Since the end of July, he has gathered more than 100 signatures against the site’s development.
Borncamp was incensed by the lack of outreach.
“This process requires neighbors to be notified. It requires a certain degree of public engagement, transparency, and accountability,” Borncamp said. “[Councilmember] Nowakowski explicitly bypassed that process.”
Threat, president of the Greater Eastside Field of Dreams block club, hoped the center could be instead used as a shelter, recreation space for children and adults and a tutoring hub.
“A gun range right across from a playground is not ideal for the community,” said Threat.
McAdory, the Playter Street resident, is used to car break-ins and hopes greater police presence might help with that. But he considers more cops in the neighborhood a mixed bag.
“It’s a blessing on the one hand,” McAdory said. “And a pain in the ass on the other.”
Missing paperwork before vote
For the project to happen, the city had to rezone the facility from a residential designation of N3-R to mixed-use N3-E.
An applicant for a zoning change is required to do an environmental self-assessment per the State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA.
According to the city’s Green Code, once an applicant submits this environmental assessment with their zoning map amendment application, the city clerk must certify that the application is complete before the planning board makes a recommendation.
Shanntina Moore, a city architect, completed the self-evaluation in December 2023, but the document was not included in the city’s July 2 application to rezone the site. The application also failed to note the city owned the property.
Two weeks later, Moore amended the application, noting the property owner, but did not include the assessment form. Tianna Marks, the city clerk, marked the application as complete anyway.
Planned training center on Paderewski Drive.
The planning board on July 14 recommended the Council approve the rezoning, despite the missing document. The Council on July 28 held a public hearing on the project, with the paperwork still missing from the public record. On July 29, the day before lawmakers went on summer recess, they moved a “negative declaration” for the site — indicating no significant environmental impacts — through the Council’s Legislation Committee, setting up Tuesday’s vote.
According to the city clerk, the environmental assessment didn’t arrive in the clerk’s office until Aug. 28.
There are contradictions between that 2023 environmental assessment and the negative declaration the Council approved Tuesday.
The 2023 assessment indicated that the site would see a significant increase in traffic, but the city’s negative declaration omits this from its “impact on transportation” section.
The 2023 assessment also notes the project site is contiguous to a nationally registered historic site — another significant consideration under the state’s SEQRA law — but the city omitted that from its negative declaration as well.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomMoore in 2023 marked “no” in response to a question about whether adjoining properties were the subject of remediation for hazardous waste. But a brownfields tax credit application for the Buffalo Central Terminal — considered a “contiguous property” to 379 Paderewski — includes soil samples revealing carcinogenic compounds.
Matt Austin, a Fillmore District resident, wrote in a letter to the Council that James Morrell, the chair of the city’s planning board, “should have been fully aware of these environmental conditions,” since Morrell is also board president of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp.
Nathan Feist, a paralegal and city government watchdog, wrote in an August 29 letter to the city clerk that the declaration was “deficient and defective,” adding that it would “likely not survive the scrutiny of judicial review.”
Arthur Giacalone, a veteran environmental and land use attorney, said the city skirting environmental regulations is nothing new. The only way to hold the city to account is through the courts — “a mechanism rarely used because of the expense,” he said.
Under state law, the agency sponsoring a project must consider a broad range of environmental impacts, including traffic, air quality, noise and the character of the community.
“The whole purpose of SEQRA was to provide enough information so both the public and the decision-making agencies have enough information in front of them to make a rational decision,” Giacalone said.
Because at the time of the application filing there were missing documents, “the community had no way of being fully, intelligently informed,” he said.
On Tuesday, two Council members voted against the rezoning: Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope, who represents the Ellicott District, and the University District’s Rasheed Wyatt.
