Work Starting on New Educational Opportunity Center

Not entirely sure I love the design, but we'll see how it ends up.

Someone loves architecture and hates cities. Look at how much of that building is only 1 story tall. Boy I really feel like Im in the city with these 1 story buildings.

Nice! Two nice bright spots for the fall Lafayette and ub. Hopefully Croce can get started on his hotel. I saw that the preliminary fed funding was approved by the cc. Let's get building!

The design might look right on the campus, but more thought should have been put into creating a better urban design.

This design instead of a large parking lot? I like it a lot. Plus, I hope someone has plans for the old EOC down the street which would make for nice housing.

the middle rendering looks like a swinging 70s bachelor pad tv set.

Nice to see a new project moving forward.
The design itself is ok on it's own (without neighbors i suppose), but not sure if the Sarasota School architecture design/style is the right flavor for Buffalo.
Anyway, good to see progress in a down economy.
Best of luck with the project!!

Random somewhat related suggestion for BRO: Maybe you could start a series of "About the Authors" posts. Because I am genuinely curious about some of them. For example, who is wcperspective? How does he know so much breaking news about the city without living here? Why did he leave Buffalo to begin with (I'm going to throw out a guess here that its job related)? And does he want to move back here/look for jobs here that would allow him to move back?

None of this is meant in a snarky way if thats how any of it comes off, just questions about the people that have been writing articles that we've been reading for years now.

Great news. Are they altering the facade of the M. Wile building? I thought you wern't allowd to do that to a building on the National Register of Historic Places. And does UB own the Trico Building down the street too? What are the plans with that? An exciting end to the summer for sure!

It is hard to believe that people would complain about the architecture, the height, etc. This is Buffalo, not Chicago or NYC. So it's a 6 or a 7 instead of a 10.

Be happy that there will be one less parking lot/shovel-ready site downtown (one down, 20 to go).

This is a much better design than the previous submission. Still a little too "University campus" for a downtown core, on the flip side don't see other schools lining up to spend a billion dollars to relocate to downtown Buffalo...Kudos UB!

Glad to see UB expanding their Downtown Campus.

My two cents: less fake stucco, more brick.

You people that keep complaining about the size or height or the way the building looks need to shut up. Buffalo is a small city and people want to build some nice things here to expand a business or school. if you hate the way everything is being proposed to build in the city and you have nothing good to say, then please leave the city. PLEASE...complainers on EVERY project need to shut the #%^&&& up. PS....if you have a better design propose it ( o wait, you never went to school to learn how to design a building or learn architecture.

There are many extremely talented design firms in NYC that need work and opportunities. A $46 million project like this one could be amazing with the right people on the job. Why did SUNY choose HOLT Architects??? This is the type of American architecture firm that is churning out the next generation of mediocre institutional/medical buildings. Look at their portfolio. SUNY should have done better.

This building is better than what's currently on the site, which is nothing.

For all you complaining about the design...

Let's sue 'em.

How can anyone complain about the design of the building? It is going over a parking lot.

It really is a simple formula folks.

Fill in the parking lots with structures that have some mass (over two stories and not set back from the street entirely - like this project)
+
Rehabilitate and reuse the existing structures that have some mass (M. Wile building)
+
Demo the buildings that do not have mass or value (McCarley Gardens)
+
Move the buildings that have value but no mass from the urban core (stand alone semi-historic houses)
=
Moving downtown forward one project at a time

I know people want massive towers and parking ramps but those only come when land is limited. Right now, downtown Buffalo is about 50% surface lot. Fill in those lots until they are on the verge of extinction, then when land is scarce, the buildings go higher and surface lots become parking ramps.

There is about 50 years of FAIL to correct and that does not happen overnight.

This building is going over a parking lot, but they demolished a historic Italianate brick house next to it in order to create the new parking lot for it. So it's kind of one step forward, one step back as far as that goes (though I guess the overall parking area is being reduced so that's a positive).

great another project for Savarino to work on while the Livery remains an eyesore!