Walgreens Eyes Gates Circle

In a city chock full of shovel ready sites why do these developers insist on demolishing usable buildings? A Walgreens has no place on Gates Circle, what is next a Walgreens on Niagara Square? Find a more suitable location.

if this happens - I'm leaving Buffalo forever

wonder how much loCurto got paid to keep all of this s&%$ quiet and how much he is getting paid to see the plans thru..m

If you all read the artical, you would be actually happy to hear it's a MIXED USE with parking in the REAR of the planned two story building!!!! It's not planned to be the typical Walgreens we see all over this region. It would be URBAN FRIENDLY!!! ....READ FIRST then comment.

And what would become of the existing Walgreens at Delaware & North?
As well as the Rite Aid @ Delaware & Delevan?
Make no mistake, the idea is to put Rite Aid out of business.

If done well, this could be a real improvement for that corner and that side of Delaware. I am of course skeptical that it would be done well. There is a stretch of retail on Delaware from Delavan to the Circle and why not continue it with quality mixed use development? But then again, how many quality mixed-use neighborhood development projects have happened in Buffalo?

Having a location-appropriate drug store on Gates Circle doesn't bother me so much. But I find it incredibly hard to believe that Walgreens and Benderson would actually come up with a location-appropriate design. But until a rendering is shown there's no way to say one way or another. At least they're including offices on a second floor. Still, we're talking about Benderson and Walgreens...

If this site were unoccupied or already been destroyed, then it wouldn't be an issue. But I agree that with Rite Aid so close... this is just chain war-fare and in the end either this or the Rite Aid will be closed in 3 years, boarded up and vacant... What was the price? Three structures on this site and probably 2 or 3 others that were destroyed for the Rite Aid building. If walgreens wants to build a new building, fine there are plenty of open parcels on Main Street just a couple blocks away for them.

We have a Rite Aid and CVS two doors away from each other Downtown at Lafayette Sqaure. Been that way for YEARS..and both are STILL OPEN!!

Nothing says Olmstead quite like a Walgreens! Further more, if this developer wants to have a pissing match with Rite Aid, then build it on Delavan! or better yet, buy the Rite Aid, Close it, and build a new one there... Don't be ridiculous...

I agree. If this development replaces a parking lot and can be done in an urban design and pay homage to the historic neighborhood, I am not as opposed. But, if this is simply about tearing down homes and plunking down a suburban, cookie-cutter Walgreens, I say take it somewhere else Benderson.

In general, Benderson's work has done nothing for the beautification of Buffalo--stay in strip malls and the 'burbs.

FYI- Mike would never ever do that Slo. It was going to be condominiums but they didnt have the funding for that. The Walgreens pitch was first heard about 2 days ago. 2nd- Mike generally will always side with what residents want, and there is no support at this time. Don't talk about stuff you don't know.

Rite Aid will not close, but they will demolish (and probably a couple houses too) and rebuild with twice as much parking. This is totally unacceptable. Make that 2 story building, 15+ story mixed use and a Walgreens might be acceptable.

Most of these comments absent a few have no idea about real estate development. I am not a fan of Benderson developments by any means, but if you look at the Walgreens on North and the new one that was built in Williamsville, they are accommodating to design standards when demanded. National tenants - drugstores included - always try to build their prototypical store unless there is pressure and authority to be creative and think outside of the box.

Before shooting down a project at least let a schematic plan be developed to show their intent. Look what happened at the opposite end of Gates Circle..now you have a vacant site waiting to be developed, but due to lawsuits the project is basically dead. Typical Buffalo.

great spot...a historic take on it will be nice...

I'll tell ya.

If they play your cards right and Wallgreens really wants to go there you can get them to do something that fits the look and field of the area.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Maybe they can move into the ground floor of the condo tower... Walgreens isn't the enemy. The idea that we should just let them demolish 3 buildings, 2 of which appear original to the circle. In order to build a building that 'might' last 20 or 25 years is stupid. It's a waste of building materials, energy, history and our city.

In New Orleans you can go to a Walgreens in the middle of the French Quarter... It's in a great old building. And when Walgreens leaves, New Orleans still has it's history and architecture intact. For the next business. win - win. Maybe a long term lease with Walgreens will help get the condo tower off the ground.

Just say no to Walgreens, Rite Aid and any other corporate franchise which wants to steal from our city. They take the profits back to corporate headquarters where they are sliced and diced for over paid executives and corporate hacks, expensive nationwide advertising, nationwide construction,
tax shelters, loopholes, perks and other black holes of corporate theft. And what does Buffalo get in return ???
Another ugly eyesore, part-time minimum wage jobs with no benefits and the under-cutting of whatever independent pharmacies are left. It's time to lock the door on these corporate raiders and open it up to local pharmacists who live in the community and will reinvest the profits in Buffalo. If we don't patronize these raptors, they will pull up stakes and tell Benderson and Carl Paladino to find other tenants.

Not the best comparison, but there is a CVS on DuPont Circle in DC.

I would like to point out that Benderson (and other local developers) has gutted Delaware in North Buffalo from Great Arrow to the city line. Not one new commercial building actually fits in with the neighborhood, few accommodate local foot traffic, all are suburban in style, and there is no history of a mixed use building in the area that I am aware of that they have done before.

Even without the demolition of existing historic structures (which is an erosion that the neighborhood shouldn't stand for), I don't have any reason to believe that Benderson is capable of doing something classy and "urban" to fit into the neighborhood context.

yo bobarrel i agree with everything u just said and im gonna let u finish but i just have to say making this an office building that just happens to have a drugstore in it instead of the other way around would be one of the best ideas of all time. of all time!

There is a Walgreens at 650 Delaware (and North) 1.4 miles from this spot. A spot riddled with traffic idiots because no one knows how to navigate a traffic circle. Add the hospital and Hutch's traffic and you've gone and gotten yourself a class A Cluster F'.

This idea is redonkulous!!! How do you people sleep at night?

Personally, i would rather see a CVS locate there seeing how there is already a Walgreens couple blocks away at North St. There are not any CVS in that area from what I can think of there is one on Main right by Lafayette Square that is tiny and one on Elmwood/Amherst St.

OK so now that we know who has ruined our great city, it is time to let our representatives know that we don't want them doing business with the BORG anymore. And every time a contract comes up before the City Council or the Erie County legislature or zoning permits or building permits we yell and scream enough so that it becomes politically untenable to
give these creeps any more land to drench with concrete and asphalt. And every time you buy something, think about where your money is going and what will be done with it. The people of Western New York have the power to change the shape of things around them and if they choose to they will put the BORG out of business and allow their friends and neighbors to do things in an independent way, one that we can all be proud of and our children will want to stay and prosper with.

this represents a potentially long-term degradation of gates circle. as blackrocklifer said, why do we have to keep giving up existing buildings in a city with more vacant land that any place except detroit?

if they're bound and determined to build there, buffalo has to show some self-respect and backbone and demand a building that is better than what we're giving up. it should be two full stories, built to the sidewalk, with a front center entrance. in other words, a sturdy brick storefront building like the ones that line our most successful business districts. and has high reuse potential once walgreens moves on.

Perhaps I'm in the minority view here, but Gates Circle isn't much to write home about. The intersection of Delaware and Delevan, mere steps north of Gates Circle, is already one of the most "degraded" in the city (gas station, gas station, Rite Aid/liquor store, cemetary). Urbanism!

Having said that, is it just me or does "2 story mixed-use Walgreens/office space" = fake 2nd story strip mall with parking in front and a Walgreens "drive-thru"? If I believed a word of this article, I might be in interested in learning more about the way the proposed concept would fit into the space. But, since I think Benderson's "proposal" is nothing more than a bullshit appeasal before they fulfill their weird demolition fetish and shoehorn a strip mall into a location where it doesn't belong, I'm against it.

How's that hopey, changey Gates Circle Tower workin' out fer ya?

Just as much "progress" as the Richardson complex re-use. Nice Halloween lighting though. Draws attention to the significance of that architectural masterwork.

And so it goes.

Unrelated: Take the "Arc de Triomphe" entrance to Forest Lawn, put it in the middle of Gates Circle (with the fountain below) and have the top be an observation deck looking down Delaware, Lafayette & Chapin Pkwy.

Likewise, take the "Birds In Flight" from Bidwell, and put it in the center of Soldiers Circle. Let ivy over run it.

Wow you locals really amaze me. Even with an urban friendly design, you STILLL protest it. Wow, and you still complain that NOTHING IS EVER DONE, well, wake the F' UP and see YOU protest EVERYTHING and that is why most areas of this city is just rotting away because YOU protest any kind of development from happening.....Maby you should move to the country side if you like things to stay the same. Most cities PROGRESS!!!!!!

Try working 20 hours a week for minimum wage at Walgreens and see how that affects your lifestyle or your views of "PROGRESS." With the enormous loot rolling in from the prescription drug bill and the big mark-up on most drugs plus the usual high price of everything else in Walgreens, they could easily afford to pay their help five or ten times what they do now and for a 40 hour week of work along with benefits. The greedy vampires want to keep the people of Buffalo as serfs in their corporate kingdom. Surely we can do better than that.

I just can't believe that this is the best idea that Benderson can come up with? What's next a Total Tan right next to the Walgreen's? Besides, how many of this guy's properties are vacant around town already? It would take you 3 days to count them. This is the last thing we need on that circle.

Sally, would you work at Walgreen's for minimum wage, no benefits and less than 30 hours a week ? The bottom line is that if a company like Walgreens profits a million dollars a month from the citizens of Buffalo and only 10 percent of that money is going to wages, that leaves 90 percent for the corporation mother ship to do with whatever it wants including
paying its CEO ten million a year plus, its executive officers
super high salaries, perks, national advertising, national building, offshore tax shelters, loopholes, etc none of which finds its way into Buffalo. Such a deal !!! And if you multiply that by all of the other rip off corporate franchises which have covered Buffalo like a swarm of locusts, you can see why our citizens are sliding backward into a downward spiral of decreasing income and standard of living. If on the other hand you had a couple of UB grad
pharmacists who opened an independent drug store which sold drugs and greeting cards, the profits would stay in the community in the form of higher wages and reinvestment. It is much better for the community to have 333 workers make an average of 30 K a year than to have one CEO who lives in Arkansas make 10 million. Those 333 workers will spend and pay taxes on their income in the community while that CEO will buy a condo in Cancun and hide most of the rest from the IRS. Which makes more sense ?

Cardiff I used the hypothetical "if" in reference to the 10 percent. And 10 million is the average which a corporate CEO
makes in the US. If as you say 23% is taken with "selling, general and administrative cost" that leaves 77% or 51.9
billion going for what ??? Buying food, clothing, homes and cars in Buffalo ? Why should the people of WNY subsidize a
corporate dinosaur ? or a whole herd of them ???

Walgreen's is total trash. Hasn't anyone been through Kenmore recently to see the eyesore they left us in the middle of our village? Ugh... Have they ever made a nice looking building? They are the absolute worst. Tell them to take their $hitty ugly buildings out to OP or where ever the hell else...

God I hope this doesn't happen. There is a Walgreens about a mile away on North and there is a disgusting, disgusting Rite Aid at Delavan/Delaware. I'd rather look at what's there.

Thank you JSmith, I speak of the one on Girard and Delaware that will sit vacant eternally until some righteous corporation with big bucks demolishes it for another pre-fab cookie cutter design in the same vein. Awesome, right?

My mantra is "It's about the building, not the business."

When I moved to this neighborhood there were 4 drugstores within six blocks of our house. Delevan and Delaware, Elmwood and Breckenridge, Delevan, and Potomac. No one complained there were too many drugstores. Now there is one. Rite Aid and Wegmans put the 4 locally owned drugstores out of business.

Two of the three buildings on the Gates Circle properties are nice old buildings, the middle building is ugly (but with a facade improvement could look good).

I can imagine a good looking, three story, mixed use building, with discreet signage as an improvement. The front of the building should be divided so that when Walgreen's moves away it can be easily reused by several smaller businesses.

That said, I have never seen a new Walgreen's or a building by Benderson that looks like it belongs anywhere except places I don't like - like Niagara Falls Blvd. The discarded concepts for Bass Pro, etc. indicate just how bad Benderson's concepts of urban buildings are.

The problem with the ugly and unusable building Walgreen's vacated in Kenmore was not that it was a Walgreen's but that the aesthetic and functional designs are as bad as it gets.

Is there any public meeting or hearing for this project, anyone knows?
Thanks.

Buffalo people should thank God for Benderson, they have helped create 1000s of jobs in the local economy. Typical Buffalo, lets hate the people who bring us the most prosperity. no wonder there no Fortune 500 co here.

Oh thank you, thank you mighty Benderson, Ciminelli and Paladino !!! You have given our city oh so many minimum wage part time jobs and so many cinder block masterpieces that our new name shall be Buffalo, Lego fiefdom of serfs & slaves. We worship at your altar of big money real estate development
whose head honchos don't give a damn what they tear down or what they build so long as they get mucho dineros and tax breaks. We get goose bumps of pure joy every time we see the
mausoleum grey of another Rite Aid or the Santa Fe desert red of Walgreens because we know that it means a chance to buy overpriced drugs and cheap Chinese apple sauce at the exorbitant prices we love and demand. We praise you for taking our drug dollars and giving us such a warm and imaginative environment within which to raise our young wanna- leave-Buffalo-forever kids because we know that they will be better off working in mainland China than here. Oh, and please let some of your billions of corporate loot trickle down in time for Halloween so that we can buy that Chinese candy corn at the bargain price of 10 dollars a pound.

If you're against great properties left to rot on the east side, and claim 'that wouldn't happen in a wealthier neighborhood', isn't protecting a 'nicer' neighborhood from a drugstore the same thing?

If it's good enough for anywhere else on Delaware, put it up. Any other thought just plays into an old stereotype that some of us are more equal than others. Come on progressives, let's be consistent.

Ben, c'mon, you know it's NOT the SAME thing. Maybe for you
every drugstore is the SAME, but for people who are not deaf, dumb and blind there is a DIFFERENCE. Look at the exterior, look at the interior, look at the size of the parking lot, look who is behind the counter and how much they are making. Did you ever do business with a pharmacist who was not an employee of Walgreens or Rite Aid, or buy from a clerk who was not making minimum wage and had a real stake in whether you were satisfied ? Do you think you are doing your fellow citizens a favor by shoveling dollars into a corporate franchise which rakes in 67.4 billion dollars a year and because of all that loot can ruin every other corner in the city with one of their cinderblock elephant houses and bribe all the politicians to give them tax breaks ??? Buffalo needs independent local businesses run by independent local citizens who will reinvest their profits back into the area.

I'm all in favor of supporting local businesses. An independent pharamacist isn't going to compete with Rite Aid, etc. An independent pharmacist could offer home delivery, consultation, in cooperation with local doctors. Older patients, home bound, how do you get them prescriptions?

These stores are dinosaurs, which are fighting for the 'net-present-value-of-all-the-prescriptions-within-x-square-miles'. When somebody figures out how to use technology to deliver the service in a new and interesting way, they will go away. Remember all the video stores?

Walgreen's best architectural contribution is North/Delaware and that only happened because of the area. Think about the building no one wants to allow to be built at Delaware and Virginia. The Rite Aid at Delavan is disgusting. The parking lot is a mess and there is absolutely no curb appeal or respect to its location across from a Buffalo marvel - Forest Lawn. The North Walgreens is pretty much just as disgusting.

Is there really a market for another drug store within walking distance of so many others? Furthermore, what is the traffic impact? If you live near a circle or travel to work down Delaware, you would know many, many people have serious problems navigating traffic circles. Rush hour sees traffic at Delavan/Delaware backed up into the circle, blocking traffic from Lafayette and causing mayhem. This will only make things worse. Poor decision.

Bendersons headquarters is in Sarasota FL.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100405/ARTICLE/4051009

Tragic example of how far Buffalo has fallen. But cheesy drugstore boxes aren't forever. At some point in time I'd hope that the Walgreens would be demolished for something much more respectful to the site and to the Olmsted Plan.