Law Firm Shopping for Space

What about Palladinos 10 story Court Street Tower?

What really comes to mind when I read this story?

The first is why is UB Law School on the Amherst Campus? Isnt it obvious that government and law are centered downtown and that UB Law students are being deprived of education as well as pre and post graduation opportunities. Its very portable...they dont need access to any of the sciences...and liberal arts are shared by everyone...they could easily be offered at multiple locations.

(In fact...Law/Government and Journalism/Media/History all should have strong components...thinking big picture here...Center for Excellence in Life Sciences in Fruit Belt, Law / Journalism / Media / Social Sciences focussed around the Trico Building would be within walking distance to the Library....big picture...ECC downtown campus is also within walking distance to the Library...BIG PICTURE...IMAGINE A NEW PUBLIC LIBRARY 3X-4X THE SIZE OF THE CURRENT FACILITY SERVING THE PUBLIC, UB MEDICAL, UB LAW / JOURNALISM / MEDIA / SOCIAL SCIENCES AND ECC DOWNTOWN. WE COULD HAVE A DOWNTOWN EDUCATIONAL SPINE FROM MASTEN TO THE BASEBALL STADIUM...A LIBRARY OF THAT SIZE WOULD BE THE BIGGEST REGIONAL RESOURCE OUTSIDE NYC...JUST A THOUGHT...BUT WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION. IMAGINE THE SPIN OFF POTENTIAL WITH BUFFALO FILM COMMISSION FOR MEDIA AND DOCUMENTARIES, ANIMATION, VIDEO GAMES, SPECIAL EFFECT...THE POTENTIAL SPIN OFF...OF SUCH A LIBRARY COULD BE SIGNIFICANT...consider Lockwood Library in UB Amherst is like 5 Floors, the Medical Library on South Campus needs to be replaced downtown...ECC needs a library downtown...imagine the potential of a 6-8 story library resource center with study cubicles and student/public lounges and media rooms and community rooms that could be used by downtown businesses for meetings as well as community groups...it could put Buffalo one step closer to once again being a publishing center for statistics and research and documentaries, etc)

The second is that we need to building more Class A office space downtown a priority...conversely...that means converting more of our Class B and Class C properties like Statler, Liberty, LaFayette, Graystone, Hyatt and AM&As into residential or at the very least mixed use.

(My feelings exactly) Converting more of these buildings to residential/mixed use will create the demand for new large footprint downtown office buildings to be constructed.

I think everyone would love to see another HSBC Tower downtown for M&T or First Niagara. Its just to bad we dont have any major technology based companies that could fill a tower.

They can swing a lot of action. An 85,000-100,000 sq ft. lease agreement could virtually guarantee financing for a new tower, especially if it's a mixed use building with a pre-leased hotel that gets it over the 50-70% hump. With the right developer and the right kind of hotel property, this could mean a 300-400,000 sq ft tower at minimum; 15-25 stories. Anyone out there want to be the guy two deals away from cranes in the air?

My vote is for a developer completing the Issa Statler vision.

It would be awesome to see a new skyscraper under construction downtown but with our continued tepid economy and slow absorption of downtown office space, unfortunately such a long overdue vision is not going to happen in the very near future unless the economic numbers can be worked in its favor. I would love to see a building a little taller than the architecturally plain jane circa 1971 HSBC Tower. But in order to pursue such a proposal we have to do the following things in Erie County:
1. Stop permitting the continued development of low-rise campus style office parks in the suburbs and give tax breaks and incentives for companies to locate in the urban cores of Buffalo, Tonawanda, and Lackawanna which all have existing business areas that need new investment.
2. It is time for our real estate development community to stop building single-use buildings and fully embrace the mixed-use concept that has successfully taken root in cities all over the world. Buffalo is still behind the times on this one.
3. We have to fill up the existing building stock first before starting any new major building project regardless whether it is office, hotel, residential, or retail.
4. Despite New York's high taxes and financially troubled state government, we need to make our region more business friendly and cut the governmental waste at the county and local levels.
5. Our business community needs to learn the valuable art of corporate piracy in attracting corporate headquarters to downtown Buffalo from other bigger more expensive cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston. Second tier cities like Columbus OH, Charlotte NC, Omaha NB, and Austin TX have successfully developed their downtown cores into economic hubs by pulling up all the stops and recruiting corporations from all over to locate in their cities. Look at their downtown skylines, they have new construction and existing buildings are fully occupied. There is no legitimate reason why Buffalo cannot try to do the same things. But our business community keeps doing the same damn thing over and over again expecting different results.
6. The NIMBY problem also has to be dealt with because anytime someone has a new development idea or design, all the narrow-minded, backward opponents are out in full force trying to kill the idea and maintain the unacceptable status quo. That is also a primary reason why Buffalo is a tough sell for business development.
7. The local and state politicians just need to get out of the way by cutting taxes and fees and reducing unnecessary bureaucratic red tape.

The article says Ellicott Development is facing a mid-August construction start date for 50 Court Street. This project has been delayed over and over again, and has already been scaled back. How firm is this new deadline? Will we finally see some progress on this ugly surface parking lot in about a month from now? It certainly would be another big step forward in a key part of the downtown core.

Yes, we have high taxes that discourage development but that hasnt stopped high tech in rochester and albany....not that rochester and albany are magnets...just that those cities have big companies that are civic minded enough to attract other big companies and use their supplier/customer networks to attract companies or start them locally. Buffalo does neither very well.

The other problem then are local unions...whose union contracts and demands suck up all the taxpayer money so the city has nothing left to invest to attract such companies.

Buffalo needs 3 things:
1) We need Class A urban office parks constructed on empty city blocks preferably on major streets like Main, Genessee, Sycamore, Broadway, Williams, Seneca, Swan, etc.
2) We need Class A warehouse space (Buffalo is a city built on transportation, warehouse, distribution and import/export.
3) We need Class A downtown office space (which isnt going to get constructed unless our existing Class B and C are converted to other uses like residential.

None of these things can happen if every dollar the city brings in goes to unfunded or partially funded albany mandates and union contracts.

Remember the wonderful things happening in Buffalo arent happening because of local tax dollars....our retail and airport are happening because of Canadian patrons supplementing ourwhelmingly poor population, our Erie Canal Harbor...Globle...Yahoo...are all happening because of Niagara Mohawk Power.

Our Sewar and Water departments have the highest rates, even higher than the desert and even higher than desalination plants on the west coast, yet we are located on a lake. Explain that?!!!

Again...they will grant pay increases and benefit increases and increase staff (like NFTA and their security force), but they will not lay new water lines to fix a 50% leak rate, they will not lay new sewars to fix leakage and spillover, they will not repave/rebrick/recobble streets, replace curbs, replace trees, replace sidewalks, replace street light/signs...nor will they inspect, issue citation, enforce or revise property laws except to harass homeowners that are already good citizens nor will they extend light rail to the airport which would be a huge boon for downtown...as much a boon as when transportation was rail (instead of airplanes) and the Central Terminal was connected to downtown by trolly.

City Hall is a unkept sticky garbage strewn pig stye...that is half to 3/4 empty...the city and county could easily inhabit the same building...and save the taxpayer.

Much of downtown doesnt even look presentable...for an outside investor to want to invest millions in new property...and that is something that the city can do something about.

Two suggestions for Phillips Lytle:

Central Terminal

Statler Towers

Hearing this, is anyone else sort-of hoping that more tenants will leave the concrete monolith known as HSBC Center, forcing the owner to do a complete reskin (like the Avant building) or at least sell it to some other developer who would. I know it's just a pipe dream, but I think it's much more realistic these days considering how successful Uniland was in doing that for the god-awful Dulski building.

Sounds fairly obvious to me they are fishing for a better deal where they are at.

don't hold your breath, you will not saee a new skyscraper in Buffalo in our lifetime!

Sounds like more shuffling of the deck. It would be nice to see a new building in the downtown core or vacancies filled in other buildings but not at the price of more "large" vacancy in HSBC. 85k sq ft is quite a bit to fill downtown, although if they can pull in some tenants from the burbs I guess it would be a lesser of two evils.