Buffalo Pals

It's a city with an economy as wintry as its climate. But those who stick around Buffalo are building flourishing businesses by mustering -- and managing -- the one resource that's still in ample supply: one another.

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It's a city with an economy as dependably wintry as its climate. But those who stick around Buffalo build flourishing businesses by mustering -- and managing -- the one resource that's still in ample supply: one another.

The Butler, as everyone calls it, doesn't look much like a business incubator.

That's partly because the neighborhood it's in, on Buffalo's West Side, is packed with houses, and the lone business nearby -- the Bubble Brush Car Wash -- doesn't exactly scream "office park." Then there's the absence of the much-vaunted business fertilizer known as change. The Butler -- or to invoke its formal name, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Buffalo, Butler Mitchell Clubhouse -- has changed very little since the day it opened on this spot, back in 1955. Only the driveway, which was long occupied by broken-down fences and rusted-out poles, is gone, replaced by a 10,000-square-foot park dominated by a wooden climbing structure and a colorful mural of children at play in the sun. Sunshine Park, the local kids named it.

It was local kids who built the park, too, during a five-day spurt in June 1994. Granted, they were kids of an earlier era. People like Ronald A. Raccuia, now 31, president of Integrity Distribution (#39), an office-supply and furniture business on Buffalo's South Side. And Chris Delprince, 37, founder and president of Lifestyle Street Gear (#65), whose five stores sell hip-hop duds. Ask these business builders to retrace the roots of their thriving inner-city enterprises, and they'll point their respective vehicles toward the Butler. Outside the building, sitting in their idling cars, they'll muse on how much help they got, and still get, from this unlikely business resource. The Butler is where Raccuia found Tom Naples, who became his business partner last September. And, in 1985, Delprince was able to put his retail headquarters up on blocks -- it was his car -- and open his first 400-square-foot store, thanks to a $500 loan from former club director Joe Biondolillo.

Growing up, though, what these future members of Buffalo's business community got from the Butler was a sense of refuge. Raccuia's household bulged with 11 family members, including a pair of great-uncles who shared a bedroom for close to 80 years but barely spoke to each other. Because he lived 10 blocks from the club, Raccuia would get dropped off on summer mornings and spend entire days minding the outfield. Delprince could be found here every day, year-round, playing Bingo, seeing what he could saw in the wood shop, or whacking around a Ping-Pong ball. Sometimes he'd run away from his mother, who was only 15 when he was born, and seek asylum with Dominic J. Bonifacio Jr., then the club's director. " 'I can't stand it,' he'd complain," recalls Bonifacio, a paterfamilias at the Butler for 32 years. "I'd kick him in the ass and send him back to mom."

Delprince never stayed away for long. Nor did he stray far, a decision that served him well as he built what by last year had grown into a nearly $5-million business. Indeed, those boys -- the club resisted admitting girls until 1989 -- who stuck around Buffalo despite an economy as dependably wintry as its climate, emerged from the Butler with personal bonds and community-building skills that have helped shield them from the city's frigid fortunes. "We taught people to care about other people," says Bonifacio. And while few of the Butler's alums became athletes (much to its director's surprise), many developed supreme agility at mustering and managing the single resource in plentiful supply around them: one another. "We've taken what we got there into our lives and into our businesses," says Delprince.

In doing so they've come away with tangible payoffs. Much has disappeared from Buffalo, including its once vibrant industrial base, which was destroyed two decades ago, and 8% of the population, which evaporated between 1990 and 1998. But Raccuia and Delprince -- well schooled in the art of unearthing hidden resources -- stay intently focused on what remains. Delprince, for example, attends liquidation sales as if they were job fairs. He found vice-president of operations Cal Lawson in 1996 while Lawson was helping liquidate the assets of retailer Merry-Go-Round Enterprises. Store manager Jeannette Murray was closing down the children's retailer where she had worked for 17 years when Delprince hired her. The CEO met longtime adviser Peter M. Cammarata at yet another business closing, and Cammarata introduced him to Carolyn Dearth, who became Delprince's vice-president of merchandise. "I may not have known where to look for the things I needed," says Delprince, remembering his earliest days as an entrepreneur. "But I knew how to keep looking."

The Butler's graduates know how to work the town for new connections, often starting with the old ones they value so highly. That kid who played left field next to Raccuia? He works in the mayor's office now. When the city's snowplows block access to Integrity Distribution's loading dock, Raccuia also knows somebody he can call to make sure those mountains are speedily reduced to molehills. Delprince, too, has Butler chums in important places. Hoping to move his flagship store this summer, the phat-faced mogul knows where and how to "plant the seeds" that will let him tap city funds to rehab a building.

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