Buffalo Planning Board Approves Marilla Street Recycling Station

The Buffalo Planning Board — after listening to weeks of arguments between lawyers, engineers and sound consultants for American Iron & Metal and its opponents — approved AIM’s proposal Monday night to open a metal recycling transfer station at 267 Marilla St., where Niagara Metals previously abandoned its own business several years ago.

This follows AIM’s ongoing efforts to address concerns about its operations, including its agreement on seven specific mitigation measures and its willingness to sign a Community Benefits Agreement.

But no one expects the fight to end, as both sides brace for an expected legal battle between Niagara Metals and the neighbors, likely to challenge the city’s municipal review and approval process, which they say is flawed. Three such lawsuits have already been filed, and AIM’s lawyers noted that Niagara Metals “has specifically stated that it will pursue additional litigation” if the project is approved.

“Let the war begin,” Cynthia Schwartz, vice chair of the planning board, said wryly immediately after the panel voted.

Montreal-based AIM plans to open a modern facility that will receive scrap metal from dealers and “street vendors,” sort it and ship it by train or truck to shredding facilities elsewhere. It wants to reuse an 8-acre site at the corner of Marilla and Hopkins streets that served as a dump for more than a century, in a highly commercial area with nearby railroad tracks and two other dumps.

But that property now directly adjoins a residential neighborhood on both sides of the street, with homes next door. And those residents have long complained about noise, dust pollution and other factors related to the previous use.

Niagara Metals closed its doors in 2020, just a year after purchasing the property from Diamond Hurwitz Scrap LLC. Niagara, which had leased the property with an option to purchase, instead concluded it wasn’t worth the level of complaints it was receiving from neighbors.

AIM purchased the property from Diamond Hurwitz’s parent company, Liberty Iron & Metal, and continued the environmental cleanup that Liberty had begun. It then unveiled plans to demolish the few remaining structures and instead build an 11,200-square-foot recycling building on the northeast corner, plus a 4,800-square-foot “open-air peddler’s canopy” for deliveries and a 2,000-square-foot pollution abatement shed. It would also include new rail spurs and truck scales.

The proposed $8 million landfill would not accept cars or other large or heavy metal objects and would not crush, cut or shred metal. He promises nearby residents that the new landfill will look nothing like what they are used to and will operate very differently from any other junkyard.

AIM officials say most of the existing dirt surface would be covered with landscaping to minimize dust. The project would also include a 20-foot-high concrete sound barrier, a 25-foot-wide landscape buffer, extensive landscaping and a 10-foot solid wood fence to reduce visual and noise impacts. Officials insist that their acoustic studies — amended several times to address other questions — showed there would be little impact on neighbors.

But Marilla’s neighbors, who were thrilled about Niagara’s closure, aren’t buying it, fearing the operation will once again be noisy and stir up dust or dangerous contaminants. And they’ve teamed up with Niagara Metals, an AIM competitor, to hire lawyers from Phillips Lytle LLP, who have repeatedly challenged every claim and study submitted by AIM and its lawyers at Kavinoky Cook, even on questions of specific noise levels in decibels.

This has led to a series of tit-for-tat letters and arguments, with Phillips’ attorneys accusing AIM of “misleading” the city and residents, while Kavinoky’s attorneys say their counterparts are speculating, questioning the validity of AIM’s data and “distorting the sequence of statements and responses” with a view to claiming in “future litigation” that any decisions by the Planning or Zoning Board of Appeals were based on incomplete information.

“This is a tactic and the board should not tolerate being manipulated to achieve Niagara’s ultimate goal, which is financial,” wrote Deborah J. Chadsey. “To be clear, AIM is not trying to confuse the Planning Board or the public. We leave that to Niagara.”

Of the seven new dealerships, AIM said it would open at 7 a.m., but agreed to adjust its hours to close at 6 p.m. on weekdays and noon on Saturdays, with no hours on Sundays. It also plans to:

• Show video footage of a similar operation in St. Catharines, Ontario.
• Redirect on-site vendor traffic into the parking area in case there is a queue that spills out onto the street.
• Operate an on-site dust suppression program.
• Designate a designated contact person for neighbors.
• Install entry and exit signs to direct traffic into Hopkins, as well as cameras to monitor violators.
• Pay for a sign at the other end of Marilla, on South Park Avenue, to direct truck traffic to Hopkins.