City Losing a Preservationist

Michele Brozek Knoll, a senior planner with the City of Buffalo and an important supporter of Buffalo’s preservation movement, is leaving Buffalo.  She is moving to Beaufort, South Carolina, where her Navy officer husband is being stationed.

Michele, a Buffalo native, returned to Buffalo in 2006 after earning a masters degree in historic preservation and working in preservation for several years in Kentucky, including a stint as a Main Street manager.   In Buffalo she worked with a preservation firm and then started with the City in November of 2007.  Her principal duty was to administer the city’s preservation code that provides oversight and protection for over 3,000 buildings and sites.  She has processed and reviewed at least 2,000 applications impacting on these historic structures.  While many were routine, others required hearings and determinations by the Buffalo Preservation Board.

Extra efforts made by Michele helped facilitate National Register nominations in Black Rock and the creation of the University Park National Register Historic District, the first new National Register district in Buffalo in over 25 years.  Recently, she obtained funds and created text and maps for an brochure providing important information for property owners of historic buildings and sites in the city. 

Michele was serving on the board of the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier when the Landmark Society and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County initiated discussions about merging.  She then became a founding board member of Preservation Buffalo Niagara.  For three years she served on PBN’s Awards Committee, co-chairing that committee in 2009 and 2010. 

PBN expressed its gratitude to Michele at its November 14th Annual Meeting.  PBN’s executive director, Henry McCartney,  stated that Michele’s work “has been extremely helpful to everyone working in historic preservation in Buffalo and she will be sorely missed.”