All is not fair in development

*Image courtesy of BuffaloPundit

Sad news coming out of the most recent Buffalo Place meeting as local developers are expressing outrage over the potential mass amount of subsidies coming to Rocco Termini for his rehabilitation of the AM&A’s flagship store.

Paladino, Hotung, and Sweet are united in their opposition to the heavy amounts of funding coming Rocco’s way stating the ample vacancies in adjacent structures owned by the three developers-specifically seeing BuffaloPlace giving money to the project.

Paladino’s staunch opposition is a surprise to me seeing as he lobbied for and landed a 10-year tax exemption for condo owners at The Pasquale, a greenfield development with little potential to spurn new adjacent development while depriving the City of desperately needed tax income.

Hotung complains about the massive vacancies at his properties but anyone and everyone can easily show that the Liberty Building is clearly class-B office space at best, Main Place tower is outdated and mediocre, while the mall has been intentionally managed to push out retailers while focusing on data centers occupying former retail spaces.

Termini’s project from all reports suggest it will not hold office space but a hotel, banquet facilities, and a food court-only Hotung is in the food court business while Sweet and Paladino’s downtown properties have mostly office and retail space primarially used by food services.

I am not a commercial developer but I know that a fully rehabilitated, healthy AM&A’s Flagship Store will have a profound impact on the image of downtown. The project will generate large tax revenues and increase the values on adjacent properties while putting pressure on those same properties to be put in better care.

BuffaloPlace is a Business Improvement District and with the extra taxes that come with being in a BID you want your money to add value to your surroundings-a rehabbed AM&A’s will do the trick.

I know these developers are not against a new day for the building but are upset about the substantial amounts of subsidies. Truth is, anyone who is crazy/bold enough to take such a serious risk on such a project deserves whatever subsidies required to cover the financing gap. Paladino, Hotung, and Sweet all would have gotten the same treatment. If AM&A’s works out, perhaps these three developers will take just as big a risk as Termini…the 500 block of Main is a short distance away if anyone is interested.

It ends up urban in the end

I’ve been sitting on this thought for a while without being able to spell it out verbally. At some point during the modernist/industrial period of the US, Cities became not only vilified but easy to depart thanks to housing policy and infrastructure projects in response to new market demands. The idea of different things closely next to each other became old fashioned and unwanted. With these ideas mainstream, development patterns focused on large open spaces with single-use zoning. Images of subdivisions and shopping malls should be in your head now. Now that ideologies of modernism have become more and more rejected in regards to land use and urban design, we see transformations in large-scale suburban development projects from that era.

Locally there are two projects that are undergoing significant transformations that exemplify the acknowledged failures and planned/implemented changes to assure its success: UB North Campus, and the Eastern Hills Mall.

UB’s North Campus is constantly acknowledged for its poor design and anti-social, siberia-esque feel. SUNY built large suburban campuses all over the state because the land was cheap and future development could be done without controversy or complications like what would be faced in an urban area. What everyone got was a cold and isolated space where people without cars were screwed and left to go crazy because the only social activity around was studying. Now UB wants to be more attractive and viable so what do they want? A new retail corridor, a hotel, a better shopping area, turning the lake into a public space for boats and skating, more welcoming architecture, and better public transit. North Campus will be its own vibrant city if UB2020 pans out.

The Eastern Hills Mall was on its death bed a few years ago and realized that it could not depend on landing the same kind of tenants every mall used to be able to get. The market was saturated and spoken for at Galleria, Boulevard, and McKinley so what could they do? They diversified. Now, a walk around Eastern Hills Mall can be as efficient as walking around downtown to accomplish your list of tasks for the day. Various social services now take space (DMV, SPCA), an athletic facility, tax service office, and a focus on making space available for community events is what makes up for the previously empty space of the mall.

Even the City of Buffalo is a victim of this. Delaware Avenue used to be a row of nothing but opulent homes for strictly the wealthiest of families in the region-now these mansions host mostly non-profit organizations’ offices. Who is to say Spaulding Lake won’t eventually have a NFP setting up shop in a house that has been on the market for too long as the area’s rich move further out to undeveloped areas?

Evolutions of spaces like these suggest humans need a variety of people and places around them. These spaces also suggest that no condition is permanent. Exclusionary zoning is not sustainable because once market conditions lead to a new concept for a shopping center, or changed neighborhood demographics, everything changes and instability occurs as the original business and people leave. What we see at Eastern Hills mall is very common for older shopping centers that saw death approaching: now they are turning into indoor downtowns in areas with no actual downtowns. Suburban college campuses cry out for a more neighborhood feeling with a variety of services that was unheard of at the time of these campuses construction. Formerly wealthy areas decline in value as the wealthy seek out isolation once more. Humans need balance for realistic long term success of inhabited spaces but we constantly want to carve out our own, new territory that is better and more exclusive, refined, and predictable than what has been done before us. Nothing suggests that we will change, so thankfully about 90% of land in the US is still undeveloped.

Construction roundup: November 2009

BRO is owning me this month in construction photo updates to the point where I’ve lost track so let’s just do a quick roundup for some projects I’ve been keeping an eye on…

The Kaleida/UB Vascular Center is under-construction downtown but it is at risk with a new state budget cut proposal that would leave the structure in a similar appearance to that of the Buffalo Creek Casino. Until the project halts, check up on FixBuffalo for monthly updated images.

A few block south, the Innovation Center-an office structure connected to the Trico plant-is nearing completion. While this project is great, its disappointing to know that once the innovation stage is over and the “make large profit” stage begins, the companies leave town thanks to NYS taxes.

Next door, Ulrich’s has a new look as the BNMC’s food/drink anchor.

The Genesee Gateway project is coming along well. A new roof is being put up while windows, masonry, and interior work continues. Only months away from completion it seems.

The Federal Courthouse will have its opening delayed until Feb. ‘11 thanks to new testing that needs to be done on the glass that will cover the bunker. A wall-extension has emerged along Delaware Ave. which looks like is intended to conceal the surface lot/security area behind it a la 285 Delaware.

The outlines of the new street grid at the Inner Harbor have been placed. It is much easier now to visualize what this long fenced-off wasteland will look like come August.

Ellicott Development is slowly moving along with its Fairmont Creamery building in the Cobblestone District. The structure will host one commercial tenant, occupying the balance of the space inside. The district has surprisingly become mostly geared towards office space as opposed to the residential neighborhood most people envisioned in the beginning of the decade.

Ellicott is also about to blow dust of its plans for the Baker’s Shoes building and the Greystone Hotel. These projects have been stopped and started for the last decade so we’ll see if this time is for real.

Team picture

The HSBC Arena walkway has become an icon unto itself these last few seasons since the Sabres have placed a team photo over it every season. We’ve been getting a lot of requests and questions for and about when the new team photo would be put up and your answer is…

today.

Hotel concept

Rocco Termini has been kicking around plans for purchasing and redeveloping the AM&A’s flagship store into a hotel with banquet facilities. Its an exciting plan but met with skepticism due to the mostly the building’s past and market conditions. Who knows whether or not it will happen but if it does indeed become a hotel, it will have to be a unique one that potential guests couldn’t find otherwise in the area.

So I introduce to you, Hotel Minneapolis. Its owned by Doubletree but has very little similarity to the Doubletree nearby. The hotel is a former bank building that is bland in an endearing way that only modernism can achieve (see: AM&A’s Main St. facade). The developers kept all the safes in place and turned it into a hotel that focused on being stylish yet business-oriented while being in a fairly sterile part of a fairly sterile downtown (see: downtown Buffalo).

The hotel embraces the history of the structure, leaving its unique assets in tact, fully emphasizing its history, while conveying a very contemporary image through the designs of the rooms and the graphic presentation of the hotel through room key cards and the website.

It has been discussed many, many times in 2009 about the potential over-saturation of the market for hotel space downtown but there are niche markets yet to be appeased that an Embassy Suites, Hyatt, Doubletree, Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn, or Best Western can not quite fulfill. That is why Mark Croce is moving along with his boutique hotel, and that is why the AM&A’s has a shot at new life with the right hotel chain.

Zooropa

A friend of mine had posted a status on facebook about the greatness of U2’s Zooropa -an album proclaimed by many as their worst-I agreed… when I was 10 (and it creeped me out when I was 7). As time has passed, and as U2 has become more comfortable making the same generic/pseudo-spiritual/commercial music, Zooropa gets better with age.

So while avoiding studying for a bit I took a stroll down memory lane via YouTube and enjoyed not only the music but even the videos. I don’t remember seeing a music video with such artistic integrity. It reminded me of early European modernist views of the human form through photography.

Lemon, Stay (Faraway So Close), Numb, and Zooropa are all catchy classics that cap off the artistic/experimental phase of the band.

I guess if the album had a message, for me it always seemed to be about Europe after the fall of Communism and rise of the commodity-oriented Western World of the 1990’s. It is a message that is no longer of much interest or relevance but its always great to blow the dust of the cassette and give it a spin.

Artistically I’d say they’ve been irrelevant since Pop, maybe even since Zooropa but they still pull out a catchy tune or two every album. I’ve learned to accept the fact that every great band peaks and then spends another 10-20 years milking it.

11.01.09

Perhaps because it is personal, but this weekend’s fatal crash involving four Amherst teenagers has received a heavy amount of attention from the local media, especially the Buffalo News.

The driver, Viktor Shapiro, was my girlfriend’s cousin who I met a couple of times. He was a good kid but there were qualities he had that could only come with being a teenager. He had the kind of obsession with cars many young guys have and the over-confidence that comes with it.

For the record, he purchased his own car, so assuming the parents were naive or lacked authority over him is unfounded. To blame it on America’s “increasing liberalism” at home is also unfounded. He comes from a traditional Russian family-its hard to be more overprotective than that.

The immediate assumption that he was drunk is insulting. People who have that kind of passion for cars and racing don’t do it drunk. They go fast because thats what they get a rush out of.

No one in their right mind would knowingly risk his friends’ lives. No 18 year old who lives for his car has the sense of mortality to be safer because he doesn’t understand how possible it is for it all to come to an end in a second.

Country roads in Clarence are raced on for a reason, and the main one is that there is no traffic, and few cops to ever be found. The fact that there have been five accidents at that intersection in recent years is enough cause for concern for everyone-not just fast drivers.

And lastly, for those of you who sit around, detached, commenting about his death in a poor impression of Ayn Rand or Charles Darwin-I wish you could see his parents shoveling dirt onto his grave in front of over 100 people who loved and cared about him. If your child had a love for speed and it led to his death, you would not be commenting on different news forums saying how “the kid got what was coming to him”. There is blame to go around but there is also reflection and mourning as well for someone whose life was more than just a kid driving too fast for his own good. These things will always happen because there are psychological elements of people that age that no legislation or “scared straight”-esque video can ever deter… sometimes you just have to hope that after all their mistakes, they make it to the next part of their lives okay with lessons learned.

So kudos to all of you who are so much better than him and prove it through your comments and writings. Thank you for the false allegations, and posting less-than-flattering photos of him. Thank you for your sense of relief that such a bad person is no longer around to harm everyone. You stay classy, Buffalo.

Fighting over the shrinking pie

Key Bank has, since the post-savings and loans scandle era (buying Goldome and Empire), had a strong hold of the #3 spot in local bank ranking but recently it has been knocked down to #4 due to the rapid ascent of First Niagara.

Like most big companies who start falling a bit after sitting comfortably for a while, they have began an ambitious plan to solidify themselves as #3 once more.

According to the Buffalo News:

The bank is opening six new branches locally over the next two years in its biggest expansion here in almost two decades. Key has already opened new locations, in the Wegmans Plaza on Orchard Park Road in West Seneca and in the Tops Plaza at North French and Transit roads in East Amherst.

Two more are planned for next year, at Union and Michael roads in Orchard Park and in the Tops Plaza on Grand Island Boulevard in Grand Island. The Orchard Park location is already under construction. Two more sites will be announced later. All six will be newly built and will create 45 new jobs.

This gets topped off with some landmark signage on their Fountain Plaza HQ’s

…it will put up a lighted sign on all four sides of 50 Fountain Plaza, known as KeyCenter, over the next month.

The new sign will be 5 feet high by 42 feet long and 8 inches deep, and will be lighted by long-lasting energy-efficient bulbs, the bank said. It will feature the bank’s red key logo.

This is a very ambitious attempt at company growth and market share but in a market like Buffalo-Niagara, what is the point of pursuing growth in a consistently declining region with already well established institutions?

HSBC has India and Asia. M&T has DC/Baltimore/Eastern Shore. Key has Seattle and New York City. Perhaps their long history in Cleveland makes them experts in rust belt success.

11.10.09 UPDATE: Here is the north tower at Fountain Plaza with its new signage…

Coming soon: Great burritos

This slipped my radar but Chipotle is entering the Buffalo market next month as it opens up in Boulevard Consumer Square. Yogen Fruz, CiCi’s and Qdoba have all announced plans to enter the Buffalo market this year.

I still have hopes for a second location at Canal Side or Genesee Gateway in the future just as much as when I wrote them two summers ago.

And their new logo is fantastic to boot!

Famous visitors

I don’t have a thorough report for you but last night, former Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf quietly stopped in town. Contacts of mine from Kabab and Curry, a restaurant on Transit Road, said that Musharraf spoke at the restaurant to the local Pakistani community in an organized event.

Tony Blair and Pervez Musharraf visit here weeks apart? Impressive.

EDIT: It was not an organized event…Musharraf apparently has family in the area and was visiting but the meal involved a large party and him speaking at length eventually.