Historic Larkin District Property Sold

I think it would be cool if someone took building like this and cnverted it into an urban mall of sorts. Mix it with chain retail like gap, old navy, urban outfitters etc along with local retail ie elmwood shops and make it a downtown destination for shopping but in a unique Buffalo setting. Bring the suburbanites downtown. Even this location wouldn't be bad considering the 2000 people working next door everyday.

Suburban folks won't be drivin down to the east side to shop at chain stores that they already have at the Galleria, McKinley, Boulevard, Eastern Hills, Malls. I think housing for those working in Larkin might not be a bad idea. No matter how you spin it...it's the east side. People live in the burbs to be as far away from the east side as possible.

I highly recommend reading Chris Hawley's hydraulics blog. He has a lot of neat history about this amazing part of the city! I love the ParFoam building and the old service station. Something similar to the distillery district of Toronto (smaller scale) would be exciting. However we should try to encourage Howard Zemsky to lease space to locals. Forget the above named gap, old navy and such altogether. Why would suburbanites come to "this location" when they already have easy access to that kind of retail? It might be a great location for that old bicycle museum, if some one with some money would buy it and keep it in Buffalo. Hint. Hint.

Gentrifying this area will take some time. You'd need to encourage young creatives looking cheap housing. Similar to the Artspace lofts on main. Plus there needs to be more development that connects this corridor to downtown. Another great option is shared office space for new or small growing companies. This exists in this area already. It would be really great to utilize all the old warehouses to make a Silicon Alley in Buffalo.

Its an incredible building! I cant wait for them to do something with it...and with the other buildings that they are proposing to build.

Also, the Seneca Industrial Center was also a Larkin Factory building and it looks terrible. It has a great exterior! Why they wont do something to make that building more inviting?

As far as the Larkin District being better connected, I would like to remind everyone that the Larkin District is on the Light Rail Corridor to the Airport and Central Terminal.

The Larkin District is also only a few blocks away from ECC Downtown Campus (assuming its 9-12 block campus ends at Michigan Street)....so there is the perfect bridge to downtown.

The Larkin District is almost perfectly situation in the middle:
along the beltway (light rail extension route)
between downtown/ECC and the Central Terminal
between the Campus for Life Sciences and the First Ward/Inner/Outer Harbor.

I applaud the foresight and energy these guys have put into this neighborhood. They have brought the kind of leadership to Buffalo that has been lacking for too long....But.....I am sad that they did not plan that parking deck with a better street frontage. It would have been so easy to slip in some townhouses and or retail along that short strip. They need to rethink that as they plan forward!

Just to clarify Spilled Milk, I wasn't neccessarly suggesting this particular property for a mall, just the idea of a warehouse converted to one. It would also keep those of us living downtown shopping downtown for things we can't get such as clothes. Just an idea.

These pics are a nice view of roofs that appear to be in good condition (This statement reflects my thoughts and concerns about building ownerships in a different topic).
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Also, here is a different view from one expressed above of where suburbanites AND city people prefer to shop. People want value for the price paid. High overhead means higher price paid, NOT necessarily better value, therefore:
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A building like the one in this topic could be ideal as an "urban mall of sorts" if the overhead were not as seriously bad as the malls--heck, how often does the public know what oversized mall store owners' problems are or how many would like to be able to leave?
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This building could be something chain store owners AND suburban AND city shoppers might be looking for inorder to escape the too high overhead in malls; prices today are way to high in an economy that now requires lower cost leverage in order to continue to function--and I do not mean just shopping in or owning stores either.
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ALSO: Who shops at a mall and goes into every store? No one. Most shoppers head for a preferred store or two. That is why the most shopped-at anchor stores in malls are so far apart--but we all know that!
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Mall owners expect shoppers will be tempted into the ego-crutching stores most shoppers don't even go into except once to check the unusual eye-catching effects for the heck of it--and only once.
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What malls have become are great places to spend a day hiking but not necessarily shopping.
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And in reference to the east side of Buffalo, there's lots of space now...
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Speaking of ego-crutching purchases: See those awfully ugly boxy cars on the road lately? What ever happened to the theory of aerodynamics being easier on the car and cheaper on the fuel costs being more important than showing off being able to pay too much no matter how bad it looks???

Imagine if the current Larkin Building had retail on a couple floors with restaurants? It would be something different than the typical loft/office conversion of warehouses. Which is fine too we just need to diversify and give people more reasons to come downtown other than Hockey and drinking (which is not a bad thing neccesarily). It just needs to appeal more to the masses. I agree too that the expensive overhead of Malls is keeping prices high.

Not to get too off topic, but Queencity mentioned light rail to the airport. Maybe I've been out of it, but when is THIS happening?

I am not sure this area is the East Side as well. I would consider it more of a "First Ward" location. Although I do not consider the location to be a part of either.

The reality is the "East Side" for most people in Buffalo is East of Main or any place with lots of poor people.

I would hope the Larkin District takes root and not the Hydraulics District. Just has a better ring to it IMO.

Well this IS the East Side... just like the Elmwood Village IS the west side...

the difference is that the Larkin district is a neighborhood name while 'side' is more of a generalization.

There are good and bad parts to each side. The new for 30 years has scared everyone of anything with East in it by using this term to blanket everything.

See my rant about it here http://www.buffalorising.com/2009/05/our-world-boutique---a-20-year-comeback.html

There is no end to the amazing fear struck and idiotic misperceptions that exist out in Buffalo's suburbs about the city. One of the suburbanite’s favorite topics is the Buffalo schools. Certainly, the city school system is fair game for plenty of criticism. However, when you bring up City Honors, many suburbanites seem to believe that the accolades and awards that City Honors has accumulated can't be true. "How can it be better than Williamsville North?" I dunno, maybe Newsweek's rating of City Honors as the 6th best high school in the country a few years ago was all a myth.

Great looking structure, nice to see the area coming back to life. Would be nice to one day see downtown completely connect via vibrant and growing employment center district to the central terminal through developments in the corridor such as this.

jstaubinger... I don't think that they don't think it is good but I have run into people that feel it is unfair that their children from the suburbs can't go to it. That its unfair the best school is mainly for city residents.

of course you turn the question around and you ask them to open up their schools to our kids... and they completely flip flop on the issue.

Wow, looks like Buffalo doesn't miss a beat! This will be an exciting project, for sure. Stay tuned for more info from Larkin Development in the near future.

In reference to the geography of the neighborhood: the Hydraulics was founded in 1827, long before the terms "South Buffalo" and the "East Side" came into a the local lexicon. It was simply "the Hydraulics." But the argument about whether it is South Buffalo or East Buffalo goes back to time immemorial, and largely depended on whether you were one of the Polish or Irish residents of the district. The term does not conflict with the Larkin District, which was used to describe the more specific area in the Hydraulics where the Larkin warehouse and factory buildings were located, dating back to the 1920s. But in respect to historical fact, it isn't a matter of whether one name will catch and another not. Both names have been around for quite some time!

Neighborhoods like the Hydraulics and Black Rock are pretty much unknown to most residents of WNY. The perception of these places as "bad neighborhoods" is not at all accurate. Buffalo is made up of many small pocket neighborhoods that are relatively stable and safe. These pockets can be as small as a few blocks where the neighbors stick together and watch out for each other. Most crime in the city is between fellow criminals and it is necessary to read between the lines to understand what really is going on. Our neighborhood paper prints the police blotter each week with details of each arrest. Most "victims" are connected to the perpetrator and few crimes are random. Every week a couple of suburbanites are arrested for seeking drugs, prostitutes, or fighting. My favorite is when young suburban boys are "robbed" at 2am or 4am while frequenting areas known for drug sales. I have lived here in Black Rock for over 50 years and have yet to be the victim of any serious crime. I am sure there are many residents of the Hydraulics that can say the same.

Even the larkin district has three smaller communities little hollywood, roseville and the area around the church on the north side. The names are new \ old \ useless but certainly each of these areas are interesting and unique and from my experience walking through them a couple times, quite stable.

Just out of curiosity, where does the Valley begin in relation to the Larkin/Hydraulics are and is the Valley considered Eastside or Southside?

The Valley begins south of the historical location of the Lehigh Valley RR corridor, roughly where the I-190 segments the Hydraulics from the Valley.

The interesting thing about the Larkin District is that it fits perfectly with the urban growth developing in other cities.

In other cities there is the core downtown and then there are mini-cities and town centers surrounding downtown in a kind of hub and spoke system.

If you look at Elmwood, Hertel, UB South Campus, Broadway/Fillmore and Larkin District you have a sort of urban hub and spoke system. However, what is missing? Niagara Street, Black Rock, Riverside, Masten, Humboldt Park, Genessee, Broadway, South Park, Abbott, Seneca, Route5...but these other areas will not come back unless jobs come back to their communities...and that means an urban office park or another center for excellence or a small business incubator for a local college....or a college like Medaille relocating their campus (is there anywhere on the eastside or southside where we can give Medaille a good deal on 6-12 city blocks.)

At some stage, the employees within those larkin District behemoths will want nice places nearby to eat and do a little light shopping. It's not so farfetched that this smaller structure could house some nice ground floor cafes and the like. Above them, there would be ample space for studios. As Buffalo plants its cultural flag on the american landscape, there will be a demand for studio space.