Sign of the Times

WOW - more stupidity. That is a big loss.

A crappy 2-storey building to be replaced by an urgent care facility is somehow a "big loss".

JFC.

an urgent care facility..yuck?

Frank's Sunny Italy....extra large portions of below average Italian fare...no wonder this place is so popular in Buffalo

Why yuck? The old building was pretty beat up and wasn't going to be reused any time soon, particularly with all the empty parcels on Delaware. As much as some people on BRising may not like it, an urgent care facility is needed in the city. The closest ones are either at the Dent Tower on Sheridan or the MAC Center on Southwestern in Hamburg. Urgent care facilities keep patients from needlessly going to the ER for non-emergency ailments and are a cheaper means of treatment.

Hopefully it won't look too bad.

Ya, LI2Northpark, I came into this post looking for pictures of the future building. It could look pretty nice. I hope it'll at least be on the road with parking in the back.

I believe the urgent care center will be built to the north of where the Gallagher's building was, on the site of the existing parking lot. The old building site will become the new parking lot. (Maybe they didn't want to build over the old foundation.)

WCP, do you have a rendering or site plan for the urgent care center that includes the recently-approved modifications to put the entrance facing Delaware? (Originally, the entrance faced south into the parking lot and Delaware got a blank wall of reflective windows.)

This is what the urgent care center will look like (this is the one they recently built in a suburb of Rochester):
http://www.rochesterimmediatecare.com/page/locations/

Do we even know what the planned urgent care facility will look like, or its siting on the lot? Should we be shouting "AMHERST AMHERST AMHERST!" before we see the plans?

That being said, the Gallagher Printing building was a fairly urban two-story mercantile structure which complemented the structure Frank's is in. It's the kind of structure that, unfortunately, is not as common in Buffalo as you might think; the less substantial and solid house-like frame structures with commercial storefronts and houses with projecting storefront additions are far more common. If the new structure is a one-story purpose-built building that will be nearly impossible to adapt for any other kind of use, or worse, something with parking in the front, then let's rampage with some pitchforks and torches.

It's kind of hard to retrofit an immediate care center into an old building. Will it be a beautiful piece of architecture? Probably not. Will it be a benefit to the community? Most likely yes. Unless you like spending 6+ hours in the ER for a broken finger or a few stitches and then being charged a $100 copay.

In my neighborhood even.. double yuk.

God I hate infill!

The Preservation Board voted to deny the demolition of Gallagher Printing. Unfortunately since the building is not landmarked, the Board can only make a recommendation.
The shame is that the building individually is not particularly distinguished, but one by one they are disappearing. Soon Delaware between Amherst Street and Kenmore Ave will look no different than Sheridan Dr.
The other diappointment is the design of the new building.
It is a typical developer 20 year dry-vit POS.Although the parking is not in front of the building it is to the side creating a huge gap in Delaware ave.
A semi creative architect could have come up with a creative reuse of the printing building and incorporated it into the new facility....such a shame.

Where you see loss, I see opportunity. Years ago, I used to cut right next to this building to get to the ball diamond at School 81. The building was a ugly piece of sh*t then, and remained an ugly piece of sh*t until the very end. Good riddance.

Where you see loss, I see opportunity. Years ago, I used to cut right next to this building to get to the ball diamond at School 81. The building was a ugly piece of sh*t then, and remained an ugly piece of sh*t until the very end. Good riddance.

About the food at Frank's Sunny Italy (while never having actually eaten food in the actual Italy): We go to that restaurant once in a while. My husband always raves about the Fetticini(sp) Alfredo and shimp when we tell anyone about any restaurant anywhere! (And the rest of us enjoyed our large-portion meals also.)

Frank's has a small lot to the left side of their building and additional parking across the street.

Here's an idea that won't come about: Put the urgent care facility across the street and increase Frank's parking on the same side of the street as the restaurant. LOL

Somewhat on topic: I'm not commenting at this topic about urgent care facilities because although we have never yet used one or know where the closest one would be if we needed it, we do know people who worked at Gallagher Press, and, the food at that restaurant is not what someone else commented about.

r-k-tekt: Delaware Avenue north of Hertel was always pretty bad. My Dad lived in this area (Tacoma west of Delaware) in the 1950s, and remembers it as a collection of assorted uses without the synergy of Hertel Avenue. Taverns, industrial/electrical supply stores, LOTS of tacky used car dealers like what's seen on Bailey Avenue north of Delavan, and a few apartment buildings and stray two-flats.

The problem: the stretch of Delaware between the Belt Line and Kenmore Avenue only started to develop in the mid-1920s, and was only half built out when the Depression hit. 20-plus years later, after development resumed, it took on the suburban form that was then popular.

I never noticed that weird "hat" addition on FS Italy until the printing blg went down.

I wonder what the heck thats for?

Gallagher Printing: another "traction pad for the demolition vehicles"

It's unfortunate to lose these types of structures. However, you can't expect this urgent care facility to put architectural significance as a top priority. In this economy, with more scarce development and resources, companies and business are going to focus on their main goals. In this case, it is how to best provide efficient urgent care to an area that needs it while limiting the bottom line. This building unfortunately does not fit their needs, you can't blame them for that and they are not evil for demolishing it. If you fought to have every new business set up shop in a rehabbed structure, you would very quickly end up with a city semi-full of old, possibly historic structures with character... that are completely abandoned and have no interested developers that the city would be forced to "manage" and eventually demolish themselves. Oh, wait... There is a vast difference between preserving Buffalo's history and failing to allow future development to reshape neighborhoods. Buffalo will never again look like it did at the turn of the century, ever. The question is, what will it's neighborhoods and communities look like two, three or four decades from now. The services provided by this urgent care center will help keep people in this neighborhood far more than an empty building that some people think would make this block look nicer on a postcard.

I agree with every part of sevenonesix's post

Isn't there an urgent care facilty where McDonalds used to be around the corner on Hertel? Run by Kalieda? Also what about the corner of Hertel and Elmwood? I pass by there almost every day and wonder why the most recognizable intersection in the city continues to go undeveloped? And don't say that the Porn store, Kinko's an empty Dickies Donuts and Value City is cutting it... I dunno... lots of empty and underutilized vacant property in North Buffalo.

What the heck is going on, I leave for a week and the city is getting demolished!

Weren't there about 100 empty lots that this building could have been built on? What about at the corner of Hertel and Elmwood on the two empty corners??? I don't understand this.

Arch and Joshua I'll do you one better... how about just down the street past the corner of Hertel and Delaware!? If they were so fired up to tear something down how about that I-Hop that was open for about two years (maybe). If they had a prototype that couldn't be adjusted there are plenty of places within a 1/2 mile range they could have built. Did the owner of this building sell to them cheap or something?

The old Copper Kettle building on Main (right next to Burgio's TV and Tony's Ranch House) was torn down within the last two weeks too. So much for the argument that this is only happening in the poor neighborhoods.

Hmmph. This stretch of Delaware always felt car oriented to me anyway. How many more years until Buffalo greencode is done so it can tell me if I should be made about this or not.

Copper Kettle gone? What a shame. I used to eat lunch there frequently. Took a while before I had the nerve to try the Copper Kettle Club Special. Peanut butter, bacon, mayonnaise, swiss cheese, and onion. I know - sounds awful. It was really good!

I'm just going to throw this out there...

The Gallagher Printing Building is gone, and is to be replaced by a new building. It is what it is.

But the demolition uncovered a treasure on the adjacent building... one that we should be proud of. "Ghost Signs" as old advertisements painted on the exterior of buildings are sometimes referred to, are often sought out by photographers living in, and visiting "old" cities like Buffalo. This group on flickr has some nice examples:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1118494@N20/

Is there any way to preserve/save this particular sign? If the new building is going to butt up against Frank's, does the sign have to be hidden again, or can it somehow be visible from inside the new building?

I'm just curious, because while some will roll their eyes at what I'm saying, it really is a beautifully preserved example of this type of advertising.

Okay... You can start flaming me... now.

It would be preferable from the standpoint of community integrity, imo, to gut rehab existing buildings when possible as opposed to demo and replacement with single story generic boxes. Not every time. Some infill works very well (Empire Grill jumps to mind). But generally I think Steel and others have a point here worth noting.

Couldn't the city develop some incentives to help persuade developers to completely redevelop existing structures? I'm thinking high fees for new construction, minimal fees for gut rehab, for instance. Big red tape for tear downs, fast track approvals for reuse of existing structures. That kind of thing.

It would be nearly impossible to retrofit a medical facility of any kind. Plus, now all the fattys eating Chef Boyardee next door can just walk their gut-rot to the doctor.

p.s. Is anyone really excited about finding an old bank ad?

move on,
xoxo

dang. I always liked the look of that building in that place. I didn't even know Gallagher had closed. Does anyone know what the building sold for. Couldn't have been too much if they demo'd it. like I said, dang.

Typical BR commenter foolishness. A fairly generic and unremarkable old building is taken out and replaced with a structure they haven't seen yet, and complaints abound about how ugly it's going to look at where the parking will be. Not noticing that the North Buffalo area is lacking such a facility - the nearest is Kenmore Mercy, two and a half miles away - or that it's actually something that will provide additional employment to the area, OR that it's preventing there from being yet another empty storefront along one of our major throughfares. No, no. It's more important to complain about the parking location for a building you haven't even seen a concept drawing of yet.

quesaisje2: My guess is that they wanted a Delaware Avenue location for its traffic level and visibility. They could have carved an outparcel out of the nearly empty Kmart parking lot, but that would have put them on Hertel, which doesn't see the commuter traffic of Delaware.

acetylenetorch: Finding ghost signs in as good of a condition of what was revealed by the demo is uncommon. Ghost signs were [i]everywhere[/i] in the city in the 1970s, revealed through demolitions or just hanging on through neglect, but most have faded away, been built over, or removed through other means (building restoration, painting, etc). I'm excited about them because they reflect the zeitgeist of a long-lost culture. Think of the other iconic ghost signs around the city: See MGM Pictures, IRC Continues Transit Progress New Buses Postwar Models, FM Sound, Holiday Showcase Theaters, Cambria's Old Spain, the "RESTAURANT" sign from the 1800s on the Washington Square Lounge, and the like. I'm surprised there's not a zillion orange Saperston signs still up; they were everywhere in the 1970s.

Those who think that demolition and a complete new-build are cheaper than a retrofit/reuse haven't been paying attention. It's done all the time, in this country and all over the world.

In most cases, there is no excuse not to do a rehab, especially when the old building is as beautiful as this one was.

However, times are changing (slowly), and it can't automatically be assumed that any new building will be hideous and civically dysfunctional. But based on the earlier comments here, it sounds like a knockoff of a faceless, antisocial, typologically bankrupt suburban design they built outside of Rochester.

Here's the link to Silvestri's project page for the Rochester building: http://www.silvestriarchitects.com/projects-immediategreece.html

I sure hope this ain't the template. There's a small chance that Silvestri has a decent design in the works, but I'm still not betting on it. What a loss.