First TND in Buffalo area draws interest

“We are getting some serious interest now,” George R. Grasser says of the public’s response to The Gardens at Oxbow, the first traditional neighborhood development in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area. Three houses have been built in the six-acre development, just a three-block walk from Center Street, the main street of Lewiston, a village of about 2,800 people north of Niagara Falls. Grasser, a Buffalo real estate lawyer, is a partner with Paul Game and William Game in Oxbow Development Corp., which intends to erect a total of 23 custom-built houses. During the first year of marketing, sales were slow because of Lewiston’s small size, its distance from the main concentrations of population in the Buffalo area, and because of the region’s economic difficulties, among other factors. The development has 19-foot streets, which the developers are asking the village to accept as public streets. It also has 10-foot alleys and a centrally located bocce court and stormwater detention pond. The zero-lot-line houses with eight-feet-deep front porches have ranged from a 1,400 sq. ft., $230,000 dwelling to a $380,000 house of more than 3,000 sq. ft. Buyers can choose to have their house built with an accessory unit. So far, no one has contracted for an accessory unit.