Creating A Vibrant DT Street Presence

i really think that if a Wegmans moved into the other half of MPM and the empty AM&A's across the street were converted into lofts, this whole part of the city would be transformed immediately (almost similar to Union Square in NYC). it really could become quite a vibrant area.

The suggestion is reasonable. My guess is the marginal cost to the business would be higher than one would expect. First, liability insurance. If something happens in this public space, where you are serving food, who's responsible? Second, fork over the fee to the city for out door seating. Third, the health inspector is going to have to add his two cents (...after he takes them out of your pocket). Finally, each night the tables need to be brought in, and put back out in the morning. Sure, not a big job, but it will take time.
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It probably adds $100 cost per day. To make this up, you'd probably need to do an extra $500 per day (figuring 33% food cost, 33% payroll, 33% to overhead ... additional customers need to be serviced, adding staff in the store). You mention 20 seats, each one would need to bring in an extra $25 per day that would have not purchased otherwise.

First, I wonder how much of an impediment the stone barrier/benching would be to an outdoor seating enterprise. Second, I'm trying to remember if Jim Kelly's restaurant/bar and the two follow-ups that also crashed ever had any outdoor seating when they were in the MPM. If they had outdoors seating, that might give a clue to its success. I haven't strolled down that part of Main St during the summer in two years but I don't recall much of any outdoor seating on Main St anywhere in Downtown. I recall some outdoor seating in front of the old Flint & Kent Building next to Shea's for one of the restaurants that was in the building but it was almost always empty. I just wonder whether the "Ghost Town" effect of the pedestrian mall is really such a strong detriment for such seating or whether it would take a real game changer as previously suggested in this thread to make such seating consistently popular on Main Street in Downtown.

Believe it or not those parking ramps and underground facilities typically get pretty full during normal office hours, that might cause some issues with Wegmans parking requirements, especially if a convention is in town, good luck getting much car based traffic other than those already parked downtown. Would be a much more efficient use of land for parking if we had more structures and less urban fabric killing surface lots.

A few years ago Buffalo Athletic Club was looking at relocation options and considered using the former restaurant/club space at this end of the mall. Having some treadmills overlooking Church Street would have helped liven up the block a bit too. BAC opted to stay on Niagara Square.

The mall owners, not the most ambitious property owners in Buffalo, should put out the tables to draw folks to this 'patio.' It might encourage a restaurant or cafe to take a second look at this vacant commercial space. Its been dark is Banana Joe's left (ten years?).

The owners of this building do not seem to have any interest in maximizing its potential. How long can it be allowed to be a giant black hole in the center of downtown?

Did you try to discuss this with Coffee Roastery? Weren't they the ones who had tables outside their entrance on Main? They may have insight into the situation. I know the suggestion is not limited to them.

Is that concrete ledge at seating height? Do people use it now? Could they? Cathedral Park gets lots of users. Extending that success would be great.

Does the patio really get away from the prevailing Westerly wind, and the noise & fumes of the many buses that travel Church street? When giving tours in that area, we move off of Church Street to be heard and avoid respiratory failure.

Does Buffalo Place take care of Cathedral Park? There's always trash to remove and order to be maintained when you have human seating, so we should avoid trivializing the work and costs involved.

Thank you queenseye for having a forum for thoughts like yours here.

And I think people might even be able to hear the music from M & T plaza.

Also have wondered why M & T doesn't just move their series in the plaza inside the mall (the food court?) when it rains. Would help revitilize the mall, help lunch-going audiences enjoy the music regardless of the weather, and performers get paid the money they are contracted to earn. All the while still promoting M & T.

That whole area around the former Sheldon Square is ripe for transformation. A grocery store in the mall is a no brainer, Dash's would be a good fit because they don't operate in a big-box format like tops and wegmans. Anything would be better than all those empty storefronts. i always thought the park area between N&S division would make a great beer garden. clean up that fountain, put in a nice sculpture, put in some tables with umbrellas and things could get very european indeed. Not to mention if you force people to buy $5 bottles of Tyskie or Hoegaarden the crackheads will move out and people will call it beerpark instead of bumpark. It doesnt even have to be a fancy market or beergarden. Lets get a Panera Bread or Cheesecake Factory or some other yuppie-ish establishment downtown. Hell lets get on Mighty Taco, Ted's, and Anderson's case and tell them to be real Buffalonians and open up shop DT.

As far as street presence goes i just got back from a vacation in Ireland and the street atmosphere in cities like Dublin and Galway left this Buffalonian speechless. Especially Dublin, entire streets are closed to traffic. I've never been to a city in north america that felt so vibrant. i suspected it was due to the mixed use nature of the city center. People from all walks of life sharing the same urban space. Businessmen, shoppers, tourists, students, vagrants, merchants, everyone walking on the same street. Offices on top of apartments on top of shops on top of restaurants. I was dumbfounded. Whereas here we like to identify "districts" by their purpose or clientele. We have the Chippewa "Entertainment District", the "Central Business District", the "Theatre District", the "Cobblestone District", stop me this could go on forever. When we assign places different "roles" for different "demographics" we isolate every other role and demographic from enjoying that same space. The key to a vibrant street presence is diversity. These "districts" become self-serving and competing identities, whereas in a healthy city all of these "disticts" fit seemlessly together. The entire city center becomes a "Entertainment-Business-Theatre-Historic-etc-District"

Sidenote: in Dublin police WALK a beat. They dont hide behind cameras and car doors waiting to react to a crime. They WALK a beat, they PROACTIVELY protect their city. They had a presence. Ive never felt so safe anywhere in urban America.

A great and perceptive idea from Queenseyes (and Sin|ill and Sherpa I think you're right on track).

But in a larger sense, every time livening up a section of Main Street comes up here, what comes to mind is this: Buffalo Place is the organization with overall responsiblity for downtown Main Street vitality, but unfortunately (other than Thursdays at the Square and recently programming events at the Canal Harbor) their report card comes home semester after semester with the box checked, "Is not working up to potential." I recently sat in on a meeting with a developer of a major downtown project, who shook his head in disappointment and dismay about Buffalo Place, saying that they haven't carried out their mission and have largely become a trash pick up organization.

Last year, the esteemed founder of Buffalo Rising and I had the opportunity to meet with folks from Project for Public Spaces when they visited Buffalo. PPS has worked on revitalizing public places for decades, and has an extensive toolkit of what works and what doesn't, tracing its foundations back to the work of William H. Whyte and his groundbreaking work in urban anthropology. They loved their visit to Buffalo, and would love to do a project here.

Putting these two things together, my suggestion would be for the community to get behind an effort to bring in PPS to work with community stakeholders (including Main Street business and property owners) and Buffalo Place to launch an effort to revitalize Main Street that takes into account multi-million dollar projects (like returning cars to Main Street), but doesn't depend on them. While certainly many of the resulting projects, proposals, and suggestions would take real money to make happen, there would also be an overwhelming number of smaller-scale, immediately doable initiatives such as the one suggested here.

These things like outdoor cafes and coffee shops (and other people around) are what people look for and notice when they're deciding where in town they're going to go to spend some time and spend some money -- and I can tell you that NO ONE now says, "gee, let's go to Main Street downtown." People head for Elmwood, Hertel, now Grant (I was talking with some progressive urban friends yesterday at Sweetness who told me they love being on Grant now more than on Elmwood). In fact, I was thinking recently of locations where I could grab a cup of coffee and sit outside to do some work, and I realized I couldn't think of anything on Main Street.

So I think things could be turned around for Main without necessarily breaking the bank, or even canibalizing from other retail districts in the city. But I don't think that it will happen unless the community finds a way to push or drag Buffalo Place out of its current comfort zone.

Sherpa... 100% agree with your last paragraph:

"police [should] WALK a beat. They [need to] dont hide behind cameras and car doors waiting to react to a crime. They WALK a beat, they PROACTIVELY protect their city."

I think a wegman's here might actually do well... it could get all the working people to stop in and hop in their car right after work. Those that work around the downtown and would drive there could then use the parking garage when it is empty in the evenings.

It would also draw people from all around the city, elmwood village and take some of the pressure off of the Amherst Store. Which is bursting at the seams.

But it will never happen because Wegman's, is at its heart a suburban minded business. You would have to really convince them it is important.

Then again if there was a Wegmans, right on the subway life without a car would become 1000x easier and I would actually frequent them (which I don't do now).

Well businesses on main probably haven't done anything in the past because they may have assumed it was BuffaloPlace's job. Now they won't do anything because it is all getting ripped up soon anyhow.

Mellanies sweets has always had seating, so has the Hyatt and City Grill.

Wegmans, Dashes, are you kidding me? Who is going down there for groceries, where will they park or will they just carry their perishables all the way home. This location makes about the least sense for a grocery store. (just not enough density)If you shop on your lunch break, where do you put your groceries; in your office mini-fridge? And remember for every action is there is a reaction, the M&T series while great for hanging out and bringing people to the street actually kills lunchtime restaurant business.
I think that space is leased anyway, they put up walls around the windows and created a super-computer data center or something.

Just plain silly!

I was living in Charlotte when a grocery store was built in their downtown. They had a little over 5,000 permanent residents in downtown Charlotte and they got a small grocery store (about half the size of a Tops). The paper in Charlotte said that a downtown has to have 7,500 downtown residents before an avg grocery store will have enough regular shoppers to be profitable. A wegmans will come, Buffalo just has to continue to grow its downtown population.

It's a great space for a wegmans once the city is ready for one.

Also as a note Dashes is not the only local supermarket. Tops is locally owned and operated.

Sally is right, Buffalo's population density is really high when compared to other city's. A lot of the difference comes with where the wealth is. It is a very segregated community where more wealth resides outside the city than in other cities as well. This is hopefully a balance we are starting to see stabilize or maybe even reverse slightly.

Yes Sin|ill, there are quite a lot of ghosts in South Buffalo, in the University District, all along Niagara St and Kenmore Ave- man it's spooky

Wegmans? This seems as pie-in-the-sky as the comments a couple of years ago to turn the old AM&As building into an Ikea.

Consider that Wegmans closed their downtown Rochester store a coupe of years ago, and downtown Rochester is more centrally located in respect to that region's population than downtown Buffalo. Wegmans is replacing stores in upstate NY, but they aren't going to open any new ones; all of their expansion efforts are in the DC, Northern Virginia and southern Eastern Corridor areas. Not even Cleveland or Pittsburgh will be seeing Weggies anytime soon, much less downtown Buffalo; instead, they're gunning for Richmond and Baltimore.

That's not to say downtown Buffalo can't support a grocery store, but Wegmans ... nope. If the Bufalo _region_ can't even attract the chains that are located in most other parts of the country like Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and so on, well ...

Are we seriously talking about Wegman's investing in the Main Place Mall? Do you seriously expect people to do their weekly shopping downtown, then take their 10 - 15 reusable shopping bags, their catfood, and their gallon of milk on to the metro with them? Imagine how this will work between 3:00 and 6:00 PM.

Let's get real. We need life downtown before we can expect big business to step in without a significant package from the government to help mitigate risks. The small stores that have opened recently have quickly closed or struggled mightily. What is the status of Everything Buffalo in the Main Place mall, what about Get Dressed? What happened to Cobblestone wine and spirits? Sure there is development and more people are visiting and living downtown, but we lack the critical mass to bring in a grocery store or major department store. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

If I were a grocery store business that wanted to move into downtown Buffalo, I would think the main place mall would be a great location.

I've been there a lot over the past year and I think there is a lot of potential for the unused space there.

Wegmans could easily go there. There is more than adequate transportation there. Parking underneath the mall and elevators are available. I think a business like that though would need to cater to a different group of people. There a lot of people who work in that general area. I think a company like Wegmans would have to have a proxy shopper position for people who are working and don't have the time to do their own shopping.

At 5 o'clock though, the mall is closed so you're losing revenue then.

Wegmans alone won't fix the Main Place and utilize it to its full potential.

I think someone pointed out that they should make lofts nearby and I have to agree that it would be a great idea. I think people would go to Wegmans but it cannot be the only addition to the Main Place Mall area.

The facade needs to get redone in order to match the architecture of our city. The mall and convention center have the 1970s written all over it and they look horrible.

The outdoor area where restaurants have occupied in the past would be a great place for fine dining. I'm sure the lawyers would appreciate fine dining within walking distance from their places of work. The tinted glass does not make the restaurant look inviting though. This goes along with the look of building needing to be redone.

Moral of the story, if you want business at that mall, make it not look like what the HSBC building just crapped out. Cover over the current building and build a new facade. Maybe not for the tower, but at least the stretch of the mall on outside. Of course I'm sure that Liberty group that owns it won't put the money into it.

O'Brien, not everyone shops like a fiend at once.

I stop in the grocery store once or twice every week. I never have more than two bags at a time and I ride my bike home each time I go. So the metro rail would actually be more convenient for me and others too.

I do agree this whole thing is a little ahead of itself, there needs to be more residential downtown before such a store would work.

As much as I like the Bronze glazing of the tower, at the street level, it makes Main Place foreboding and unwelcoming. Reglazing with transparent windows and nicer mullions would give the elevation a pleasing and engaging presence, one that retailers want to draw customers and display their brands. Banners and bistro tables would complete the picture. It doesn't matter who occupies this space when that dark, Darth Vaderish facade conceals whatever lies inside.

Please stop this thread, it is the most ridiculous in some time. If you think a large scale grocery store makes sense for that space then you are a dreamer or have the mind of a child.

Dreaming is wonderful, but I have to agree with VGS on the idea of grocery store in the mall. Main Place Mall was 98% tenant-occupied in the late 1980s, a rate that rivaled any of western New York's shopping centers at that time. However, the landlord never made the investment to keep up the visual excitement in its interior (as the other successful malls have done). The mall's interior is an embarrassment and it still retains much of its original 1967(?) decor. Successful malls constantly change their environment to keep shoppers attracted.

This isn't all the fault of the landlord, though. They read demographics and they knew that foot traffic and people with money in the immediate area was on a continuing decline. I think the landlord is waiting until it can sell the property (at which point it will no longer be a shopping venue) or attract better tenants if/when downtown sees more investment. Placing any grocery store in a space formerly occupied by a bank would be a marketing disaster for its leasing department in its desire to eventually attract better tenants. This is the one location within the mall that has any real cache because of its stunning views. (The problem is that the rest of the stores in the mall are more suited to a flea market on Walden Avenue.) The idea of buying fruits and vegetables in such a high-end space with three walls of floor-to-ceiling windows doesn't make sense. There are better places downtown for groceries.

Queenseyes' idea of adding tables and chairs is great, but only if they are monitored and controlled by a paying tenant (who pays more for the additional space outside) because the furniture becomes a liability that, I'm sure, the landlord doesn't want to have. Unfortunately, it's easier for them to do nothing for now.

I encourage people to check out the Whole Foods in Union Sq (NYC) or any Trader Joes that is in a pedestrian shopping strip before saying this is unrealistic.

Before we get carried away with ideas of putting a grocery store in this space Id like to point out a few existing shopping options in Downtown. Holley Farms on Pearl near Chippewa has all of the basics and a great bakery and deli. their giant subs for under $5 are one of the best keept secrets for downtown lunch options. If you want a similar store with a lesser deli and no bakery but with exposed brick, high celings and an olive bar there is the Washington Market on Ellicott st. And for those who must shop at a chain there is Tops on Niagara which is a brief, tree lined walk up Prospect from the heart of Downtown. The produce at all three of these places is not the best but in the summer months you have the farmers market on Main st.
I would welcome a new grocery store in the heart of the city but it isnt like there arnt any options on the table now.

Near the Uptown end of the LRRT next to the LaSalle station is a grocery store called Aldi, which also owns Trader Joe's. Many customers use the subway or bus, or walk there.

This German firm is so successful it supposedly forced Walmart out of Germany,

I think it would be more likely for a grocery store like Wegmans to locate at CanalSide. With all of the hundreds of new lofts and housing units that will be going there, numerous unique attractions, and over 1,000 people living a short block away at Marine Drive, and the many thousands of visitors that will be touring and enjoying the downtown waterfront area, there is no question that a Wegmans there would do for one of their best store locations. If Bass Pro comes, places like Wegmans are very likely to pop up at CanalSide as well. A grocery store in the heart of downtown Buffalo will not be supported now, but CanalSide, on part of the southern part of Main Street, absolutely. It would be better for the Main Place Mall to be demo'd, keeping the Tower, but reopening Eagle Street and opening up downtown for new development and easier access.

i think that a grocery store would be perfect for main place mall, wegmans might be a better fit than a dash's given that wegmans is a destination store as well as a grocery store. if you know anyone from outside the area they are usually blown away by wegmans, but never by tops or dash's. even though i honestly prefer tops for being a faster trip, wegmans does carry much more and actually is cheaper on a lot of every day commodities. I do think that for a wegmans store to work in the mall they might need to scale back some departments but the overall idea would be good. A second idea would be a target. Go off the model of minneaplolis which had an almost identical downtown set up with a pedestrian street mall that has since been opened back to traffic. A super target specifically would be the best fit. It would provide a grocery store that is still towards the up scale side and would also provide much needed downtown shopping. With all the additions on the waterfront, it would be a tourist attraction slightly too. Many of our friends from north of the boarder go crazy for target now, just imagine how many would flock to a super target. both of these ideas might be pipe dreams given that neither company is probably in the position to undertake such a large build right now however i think we need to be open to all possibilities and the city should push to get something in there with all the other changes already being made in the city, where all the new residents of these new condo buildings going to shop amherst? north buffalo? no it should be downtown

well I didn't think the first comment posted, sorry for the repost.

O'Brien, I'm not a violinist, so I won't bother to accompany your sorrowful commentary. I appreciate your comments above regarding other aspects of downtown and the waterfront, but Main Place Mall is a difficult physical environment and once malls die they require millions in investment to change public perception and regain real customer interest. I doubt this landlord will make that investment until/unless there is an expected payoff. In the meantime, some spaces there will remain empty and the remaining stores and food court will exist to serve the captive audience in the tower.