North Tonawanda History Museum © Heritage Park

Fences sometimes are built to divide people.

But a new fence that went up in North Tonawanda on Tuesday is meant to bring people into Heritage Park, a little-used area along Oliver Street that now has a big, wrought iron gate and fence awaiting visitors.

"I love it. I think it looks terrific," Linda Jufer of Oliver Street Community Pride said after she saw the finished product. "When Oliver Street Pride plants flowers there in the summer, it's going to look great."

Funding for the fence and gate -- from a federal grant administered by the state's Governor's Office for Small Cities -- had been sitting unattended for years. The money was to be used for facade repairs, and James Sullivan, the city's community development director, took the initiative to get that money spent.

"The state was telling me we had to spend the money," he said. "So I asked the Council to allow me to allocate the money to do things I knew we could get done."

The Council set aside about $100,000 for the facades project, and projects continue to be approved.

"It's going to take some time," Sullivan said. "Now we can concentrate on it and get most of it done by in spring or summer."

For Jufer and Oliver Street Community Pride, Sullivan has been a blessing for a group that had sought grants for various projects for years, but to no avail.

"He gets the job done," she said.

As for Heritage Park, Jufer and her group have high hopes for beautifying the area neighboring the Railroad Museum. "We have plans to put Carrousel ponies over there," she said. "... I don't think people understand there is a park over there. Now, they will see it."

Credit: Tonawanda News - 2004