This is Buffalo. Want me to start listing projects that the city invested in and have fallen through?
Also, its great that he wants to rebuild all the buildings but where is the businesses that are going to occupy? We will soon have the giant (HSBC) tower downtown that will be vacant and pretty soon a bunch of other ones that are going to be empty. I have never heard of a company say “We would move to buffalo but we don’t have a place to hold us” so I think its putting the carriage before the horse to say. Buffalo needs to revamp their politics and work with businesses to get them here and keep them here. In 10 years we may have a lot of cool buildings that have been restored but 10 years from that, they will probably be still empty and need to be restored again.
Just my two cents coming from Rochester and Monroe County and even working in government there, I saw a lot of better politics there than the corrupt assholes running this part of the state.
But yeah, the city’s literally at 50% capacity. The population peaked from like 1920 through the 1950’s at somewhere just under 600k people, and it’s been declining ever since and it’s at like 275,000 now. That’s why I lolled at the crap about that aldis having to be close to the street to keep that urban feel. That urban feel comes from space being scarce. It’s not in Buffalo.
I have heard from some internal HSBC people that they are still trying to come up with an agreement before 2013 when both the law firm and HSBC’s leases run out in that tower. HSBC has sold of a good chunk of their branches here and made it clear they are not really invested in this area and think its only a matter of time before they move their 4,000 employees downtown and 1,000 in the suburbs to another area or smaller office if they keep any presence here.
Yes. This and the fact that the median income of the city is below 30k now. People in the city are getting poorer and more crime is starting. People who have money are not going to come into the city if they dick people around with parking, the BS crime, or a shady area. Look at the bigger, “classy” places that have been mentioned in this post before that have gone under. There is just isn’t the money or population here to sustain these types of places.
Sean, you know that i agree with everything you say about the city and redevelopment (except about artists) but i just voted no in the poll to piss you off.
buffalo is mostly just as dense as it ever was west of main. east of main is another story lol.
but since youre talking broadway market that couldnt be more true.
I would like to keep intact streetscapes on the eastside though, because maybe one day people will want to move back there. (and they wont be attracted by shovel ready sites and decimated commerical strips like broadway)
Haha ya. I do give the guy credit for putting $3 million by this year end into the project instead of just bitching for support from the government on it. He also has the possibility to succeed on two levels. One being that he got rebuilt a historic building into a profitable venture and two, was able to get the city of buffalo to put money into something that benefited the people.
Sorry, I was on vacation while this thread was developing. This is a place I come when things are slow at work, like during the ever increasing number of stupid conference calls I have to be on, not when I’m on vacation.
I was all for this until Brown decided to whip out the taxpayer checkbook and sign over 5 million dollars. And it’s not just Buffalo money, which I’m ok with Brown pissing away on his stupid poorly planned dreams because ignorant assholes in Buffalo continue to support him, but NY State money, which means some of it is MY MONEY being pissed away by a retard I have no ability to vote out of office.
Like Josh said, the high end nightclub is a proven failed business plan for this area. If this guy thinks he can succeed where many others have failed AND IS SPENDING HIS MONEY TO DO IT… great. Sometimes great risk brings great reward. But now he’s spent 2 million and Mayor Urkle wants to drop 5.3 million that the state doesn’t have into his pocket. Taking risks like that with taxpayer money is foolish when your state is in the black. It should be downright criminal when your state is as far in the red as NY is right now.
I could be wrong, but I’m fairly certain that the grant money will be going towards exterior stabilization and rehabilitation, not for outfitting the night club.
As far as the Dormitory authority grant, it was allocated years ago, and as far as the state is concerned it’s already “spent”, and has been for years. The request by the mayor to allocate the funds for this still has to be approve by the state.
It doesn’t really matter what line item it goes to, it’s money that will end up wasted if this project fails.
As for it being spent already, does that matter? It could be spent in BETTER ways than betting on something that has been proven likely to fail. I’m hoping it gets denied by the state.
If Croce didn’t buy the building, the city would still be footing the bill for stabilization, the key difference is that instead of using money from this DA grant, it would have to come out of the general fund.
Even if the night club fails, eventually fails, there’s still a pretty substantial amount of the proposed project that’s viable. I think one aspect that this proposed club has, that any of the other didn’t is a an 18th floor view.
In the end, the club isn’t even the most significant part of the project, it’s a pretty small piece. The city isn’t investing 5 million in a night club, they’re investing 5 million dollars(that’s earmarked for economic development) in a multi use development project, that has tie-ins to the convention center, and a key part of the cities sky line.
All that said, this is still cheaper than demolition(which would wind up coming out of the tax payers pocket).
