Opponents of Amherst’s plan to build a new MusicalFare Theatre at a former golf course, emboldened by their successful effort to force a special election on the Town Board’s vote to borrow up to $11 million for the project, soon turned their attention to another town institution.
“Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village & Carrie Stiver … hope you are watching,” Amherst Budget Minder, a diligent anonymous monitor of town financial decisions, wrote on Facebook. The post came hours after residents dropped off MusicalFare petition signatures with the town clerk on April 24.
Stiver, executive director of the museum that honors Amherst’s history and agricultural heritage, is paying attention.
She said she still strongly supports a roughly $8.5 million proposal to move the museum, its historical and replica buildings and its farm animals to new, centrally located space in the former Westwood Country Club.
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Decades after they were carefully hauled to the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village site in northeast Amherst, the historic structures are now part of the museum’s planned move to the former Westwood Country Club along Sheridan Drive.
And, Stiver said, rising objections to the town’s ambitious plan to transform the Westwood site into a recreational and cultural hub haven’t changed her mind about the project’s value to the museum and the public it serves.
“I know that there’s a lot going on right now. And we’re just excited to keep working toward our goals and working toward Amherst Central Park,” Stiver said in an interview Friday. “We think it’s going to be great for the community.”
Criticism of the broader Amherst Central Park plan is focusing on two project pieces: the moves of MusicalFare Theatre and Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village.
Proponents say the facilities will serve as public assets. Opponents say they are ill-advised uses of taxpayer money, to the benefit of the nonprofits, at a time when Amherst’s 2024 town budget included an 11.4% tax levy increase.
And some are asking new questions about whether the golf course, which was listed as a state brownfield site because of pesticides and other chemicals used to treat the property, is a safe future home for the museum’s animals.
“I’m also concerned about the millions of dollars in costs to move this on top of $11 million for a theater,” Amherst resident Julie Van Lente said, adding, “let alone the animals, let alone that part, when they are safe where they are right now. And it’s a beautiful property – historically significant.”
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The Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village and its historic buildings, many of which date to the 1800s, are set to move to the future Amherst Central Park site.
Under the proposal, announced last summer, the Heritage Village’s 10 historical buildings, two replica buildings, a gazebo, its cache of artifacts and a group of farm animals would move from the museum’s home at Tonawanda Creek and New roads to the former country club at Sheridan Drive and North Forest Road.
Plans show the Heritage Village buildings surrounding its gazebo on a 22½-acre plot in the 170-acre park’s southwest corner.
The village’s museum and collection of more than 60,000 artifacts would move into a new building originally expected to open by spring 2026.
Fields for its farm animals line the Frankhauser Road side of the site. A small section at the top of the plot is labeled “future BNHV expansion.”
The project requires the museum to arrange for the move of a one-room schoolhouse, woodworking shop and eight other Amherst buildings that date as far back as the 1800s from northeast Amherst to the Westwood property about 9 miles away.
While some residents have raised concerns about the fragility of the historical buildings, Stiver said they were moved previously to their current location, and they are sound enough to move again.
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Amherst Supervisor Brian J. Kulpa discusses the latest plans for the future Amherst Central Park as Carrie Stiver, executive director of the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village looks on during a meeting at the Amherst Municipal Building last year.
Building the new museum initially was estimated to cost about $6 million while moving, and refurbishing 13 buildings was expected to cost another $2.5 million.
The move allows the town to shift its growing archive center from temporary buildings at an old Nike missile base to the current Heritage Village museum. The rest of the site would be combined with the former Oakwood Golf Course and used for cricket fields and pickleball courts, officials said.
Stiver said the move would make the museum more accessible and allow the nonprofit to expand its offerings.
“We’re really excited for the cultural impacts and the economic impacts that are going to come from this project and our opportunity to build the museum that we are planning to be,” she said.
Opposition to the overall Central Park plan has stiffened, with a group of residents in January filing a court challenge known as an Article 78 petition. Crit
Amherst Town Clerk Francina J. Spoth said her office will coordinate with the county Board of Elections on the logistics of the special election, which must be held within a 15-day window in late July or early August.
The theater had promised to cover $3.3 million of the cost, and Supervisor Brian J. Kulpa previously said a no vote would require finding a new funding strategy.
Now, attention is turning to the Heritage Village move. Residents have complained at Town Board meetings the animals would prove disruptive in their new location, which is closer to neighbors.
The Heritage Village keeps heritage breed sheep – two rams and a few ewes – along with chickens and an apiary that holds several beehives, Stiver said.
“These animals are an integral part of our programming and our mission, and so they are coming with us,” she said.
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The Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village's animals would move with the museum to the former Westwood Country Club site as part of plans for an Amherst Central Park recreational and cultural hub on the property. Bob the rooster is shown in this summer 2023 photo.
Now, at least one resident is asking whether it is in the animals’ best interests to move because the Westwood property was included in the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program under its prior ownership. It was removed following the sale to the town.
Previous testing found traces of arsenic, mercury, lead and zinc from decades of spraying the golf course.
“We have completely unknown costs, that could run into millions, for that whole property to be remediated properly,” said Van Lente, who has checked in with state environmental regulators about the site’s condition.
An investigation conducted by C&S Companies found concentrations of contaminants generally were “low” in the southern portion of the golf course targeted for the first phase of reuse, according to a report released last month. Only
“We wouldn’t do anything that would be a danger to our animals,” Stiver said.