Published: November 01, 2009 01:11 am      

KENMORE: Village gets award as one of nation's top 10 neighborhoods

KENMORE — Despite rainy, windy weather Saturday morning, more than 100 people turned out to see Kenmore accept its award as one of the American Planning Associations “Top 10 Great Neighborhoods.”

The event was timed to correspond with the village’s Halloween festival, which offered children games, treats, coloring, painting, gluing and necklace-making among other activities. The ceremony also commenced near the end of the Saturday farm market, and despite the gray and dismal day, locals still lined up to see what kinds of fresh produce they could take home.

On the steps of the Municipal Building, alongside elected officials from all levels of local and state government, Mayor Patrick Mang led into his remarks on the award with a little background on his family, one of the first to settle in Kenmore. The mayor said his family is only one of many who can lay claim to living in the village for three, four or even five generations.

But Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, D-Kenmore, pointed out others were drawn to the area only when starting their own adult lives. Schimminger was raised in North Tonawanda, then migrated south through both the City of Tonawanda and Town of Tonawanda before ending up in the village.

“In 1978, when I married my wife Mindy, we bought our home in the Village of Kenmore,” Schimminger said. “I made a wonderful choice then.”

Gary Palumbo, who presented the village with the APA award, said he and his colleagues work to quantify what it is about an area that keeps residents as satisfied as those living in Kenmore. The group gives out awards each year for what it considers to be the 10 best neighborhoods, streets and public spaces, and often those awards go to newer developments.

Palumbo explained that’s because good local planning is the key to features like walkability and adequate green space. Most areas settled more than 100 years ago were more concerned with progress than planning, and usually the places taking top honors are individual neighborhoods rather than entire municipalities. But Palumbo said Kenmore is a shining exception, making it the only one of its kind on this year’s list.

“Kenmore is the only municipality named in its entirety,” Palumbo said. “This award is for the entire Village of Kenmore, not just one neighborhood or street.”

Village Historian Ed Adamczyk, also a Tonawanda News columnist, said the “New Urbanism” movement, started in the late 1980s and promoting walkable neighborhoods with housing for various income brackets, might as well be modeled around the design Kenmore perfected on its own during more than a century of give-and-take in development. That blend of the best city planners would have to offer and the community history that comes from not being a brand new development isn’t lost on those looking to settle in Western New York, made evident yet again by the historian’s newest neighbors.

“The man is from Montana, his wife is from England and their son will be from Kenmore,” Adamczyk said.

Plenty of other sons and daughters, dressed up in their Halloween costumes, went on about their business quietly in the large tent set up nearby until just before noon. That’s when the costume contest was set to begin, and as the speakers brought their remarks to a close the volume in the tent picked up noticeably.

One young girl, dressed as a fairy and in a hurry to get on stage, told her mother that they didn’t have time to answer a reporter’s question.

“Come on, I want to win!” the girl exclaimed, blissfully unaware that she and everyone else who turns out on the Village Green every Saturday morning to renew their sense of community could already be counted as winners that day.

Contact reporter Daniel Pye at 693-1000, ext. 158.