The HGTV production Home Town Kickstart is set to air an episode featuring Buffalo this spring, one of six communities nationwide that will be featured. HGTV, which is producing the show in a partnership with People magazine, received thousands of submissions from people across the country in the hopes that theirs would be one of the chosen few to make it on television.
Buffalo Mayor Shane Schrader is excited about Buffalo’s selection. However, he admitted he was not involved in submitting Buffalo as a candidate community.
“That is an unknown mystery at this point,” he said. “I’ll be honest, I have no idea who submitted Buffalo into being featured on HGTV,” said Schrader.
All of the selected communities will undergo three transformations. According to Discovery, which owns HGTV, activities including “refresh[ing] the home of a local hero, giv[ing] a small business a beautiful upgrade and reinvigorat[ing] a public space to enhance the residents’ quality of life and engender community pride,” will be included on the episode.
"We revisited the casting submissions from the small towns that originally applied for Home Town Takeover in early 2020," said Jodi Scheer, Director of Production and Development for HGTV. "As we further explored the castings, Buffalo possessed many of the elements we were looking for in a town including an enthusiastic community to support the revitalization efforts."
Schrader doesn’t know what residence and business will be chosen by show producers. Due to logistical issues caused by the pandemic, the initial public improvement project to upgrade the city’s ice rink at Buffalo City Park was cancelled, with a new mural on the side of the city hall building being undertaken instead. The new artwork showcases four bison dwarfed by the Bighorn Mountains.
Schrader is optimistic that Buffalo will benefit from HGTV’s coverage.
“I think it’ll increase tourism, I think it’ll pinpoint for people that are looking for a place to go and visit that they may not have gone before [directing them] to our community,” he stated. “And hopefully, it may even spur somebody to move or create a new business here as well.”
No date has been selected yet for Buffalo’s Home Town Kickstart episode yet, but it will be sometime this spring.
The five other communities that will be featured on Home Town Kickstart are Cornwall, NY, Winslow, AZ, LaGrange, KY, Thomaston, GA, and Minden, LA.
For Schrader, choosing Buffalo was obvious.
“How can you not like Buffalo?" he asked.
