By Karen Robinson
The Buffalo News
EAST AURORA, N.Y. — Nearly 30 volunteer firefighters from East Aurora demonstrated their support Monday night for a new firehouse off Main Street by showing up at Village Hall in their gear at the same time that neighbors on nearby Fillmore Avenue filed a petition opposing the site.
Firefighters pressed the need to replace their 1954 firehouse on Oakwood Avenue, emphasizing that it no longer can keep up with the size of today’s firefighting equipment and that it is falling apart.
What emerged was a sense that there may be growing interest in studying whether a new firehouse should be built to replace the current one at its Oakwood location, but this would mean that the Aurora Senior Citizens Center would have to move.
The village owns the Senior Citizens Center building but rents it to the town for $1 a year.
“We’re not looking to take over your neighborhood and ruin it,” Firefighter Thomas L. Ess said. “We are now dealing with a building that is falling down. Someplace has to be made into a firehouse. We are done with the excuses.”
The Fire Department and the village have been searching for a suitable site for eight years and have been studying the preferred 3.4-acre site on Whaley Avenue since last fall, as well as negotiating to buy it. The project is estimated to cost $4 million to $5 million.
“Every firefighter, we’re all taxpayers in East Aurora. They bust their butts daily,” Fire Chief Roger LeBlanc said. “We’re not here for glory. We do this out of the goodness of our hearts.”
LeBlanc said he understood residents’ concerns but wished that they would have reached out to the department before waiting to criticize the project now. He challenged local real estate agent Michael A. Campanella, who spearheaded the neighborhood opposition, to prove that property values would be lowered if the firehouse were built near Fillmore Avenue, particularly where dilapidated buildings now exist on part of the site.
Some neighbors expressed concern about the noise from fire sirens, while another said that putting a firehouse into a new area of the village would alter the complexion of his neighborhood. Campanella, who lives on Fillmore, said little publicly but submitted a petition signed by 43 residents opposing the site. “It sounds like it’ll be an expensive thing,” he said.
Whaley resident Tony Gonnello said that he wants to see a new firehall built but that communication needs to improve among the village, firefighters and neighbors.
After significant debate, LeBlanc later said that the Whaley site — which is the most ideal location available in the village — probably is dead now and that a search will be on again for yet another site. “Where are we going go now?” he said.
Despite impassioned pleas by LeBlanc, who cited his department’s dedication to helping others, he vowed he would never take someone’s home from them to make room for a firehouse. “We’re the good guys,” he said.
The Whaley plan calls for the village to buy two homes. One of the homeowners, Elizabeth Ashman, told the board that she and her husband are unwilling to sell their home and couldn’t afford to move.
“The Fire Department is there whenever you need help. I’m asking for the community’s help right now. We need your help,” LeBlanc said.
Mayor Allan A. Kasprzak was irked by Campanella’s involvement in the neighborhood criticism, saying that the project had been well-publicized for several months and that he had recently offered for Campanella and Fillmore residents to meet with him, village staff and firefighters to discuss their concerns but that nothing materialized.
“Everything has been done aboveboard, and nothing has been done in secret,” Kasprzak said. “Every day we wait, costs us more and more.”
The mayor later said he didn’t feel the Whaley site, which contains a deteriorating former bowling alley and old Agway building, is dead. “It’s a project that needs to get done, and we’ll look to see if the property still is adaptable,” he said.
LeBlanc said that he would be willing to stay at the Oakwood location but that it would likely require a new build and the relocation of the Senior Citizens Center to Town Hall.
“Can you imagine the uproar that would cause?” he said.
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