Woman's Death Spurs Mall Stop For Bus From Inner-City Buffalo

A SINGLE MOTHER was killed as she crossed a busy highway to reach her job at an affluent mall. Only then did officials allow mall access to a bus from minority neighborhoods.

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. - At 6:15 yesterday morning - after seven years of frustration, two weeks of angry public debate and the untimely death of 17-year-old Cynthia Wiggins - a small measure of justice came to Cheektowaga's Walden Galleria Mall. For the first time, the No. 6 bus that runs to this suburban town from the inner-city, minority neighborhoods of nearby Buffalo was allowed onto the mall property.

Since the upscale Galleria opened in 1989, charter buses from Canada have stopped daily in the parking lot. Buses from the neighboring town of Amherst have been permitted by the mall to let off passengers at a bus stop just across the parking lot. But not the No. 6.

According to regional transit officials, the mall's developers refused to allow it on their property, which meant anyone coming from central Buffalo had to disembark 300 yards away, on the other side of seven-lane Walden Avenue, a highway feeding into the New York State Thruway without a sidewalk or crossing.

Then, just before Christmas, a young, single mother from Buffalo was killed by a dump truck as she walked from the No. 6 bus stop to her job at the mall. Cynthia Wiggins became a cause celebre. Her death was taken up in local newspapers and on talk radio. A boycott was threatened. Yesterday morning, after a concession by Galleria officials, the first No. 6 bus stopped in front of the Lord & Taylor department store.

"Does it make a difference?" asked Michelle Simmons, as she stepped off the bus after the 40-minute ride from downtown Buffalo. "Yes, it makes a difference. I don't have to cross that damned street any more and then walk across the parking lot."

The mall's policy toward the No. 6 dates from its opening. Because shopping centers are privately owned, local governments can put a bus stop on mall property only if the mall agrees. According to memos from 1989 released by Niagara Frontier Transit Authority last week, when transit officials asked to route the No. 6 through the Galleria, mall officials refused. "They just said no," said Transit Authority spokesman Daryl Rasuli.

Officials of Pyramid Corp., the Syracuse-based developer that built and manages Galleria, said yesterday they had no recollection of any specific prohibition against the No. 6.

Throughout the country, urban experts say suburban communities have increasingly used everything from special zoning ordinances to artful placement of bridges and highways to separate themselves from the problems they associate with neighboring cities.

"I call it defensive localism," said Margaret Weir, an urban expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Communities are trying to put up walls and contain problems as much as possible." The consequences, economists say, is not just to separate rich from poor and black from white, but to cut off poor minorities from the opportunities they need to escape poverty.

When Wiggins began looking for work last fall after the birth of her son, she wanted a job at her neighborhood fast-food restaurant, according to friends. It wasn't hiring. So she trekked each evening to the suburbs, which is where, in economically depressed Buffalo, new jobs are almost entirely to be found.

Wiggins died Jan. 2, three weeks after the accident, without regaining consciousness.