Work to stabilize the historic Bosche Building located at 918 Main Street near Allen has finally begun. A hole in the City-owned building's roof had steadily grown in recent years and many feared the building would collapse due to neglect or fall under an emergency demolition. The City received grant funding through the Restore New York program to stabilize and restore the building's façade.
Greenleaf & Co. is seeking to redevelop the City-owned building into a mix of residential and commercial space. The four-story building would be combined with Greenleaf's three story building at 916 Main Street to create apartments and first floor commercial space. The developer is working with Carmina Wood Morris on a reuse plan.
Stabilization work is anticipated to take three to four months to complete. It will involve securing the building's superstructure and bracing the outside walls.
The Richardsonian Romanesque masonry building is located in the Allentown Historic Preservation District at the edge of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. It is a former carriage factory constructed in 1891 and designed by Cyrus K. Porter, a well-known Buffalo architect. 
Saw this yesterday evening -- fascinating! It's a great object lesson that even a building with a collapsing -- or collapsed -- roof can be reused. Too often people who want to see a building demolished point to any deteriorating feature and label it a deteriorating or derelict building. I'm tired of hearing people say a building is in "deplorable condition" (a label I've heard used a couple of times in the last year -- does that mean it's trending?) when it's actually reusable. The fact that, like the Webb building, the Bosche/Summit building can be adaptively reused in its condition goes a long way to refuting a lot of that.
Looking ahead a bit, given the building's original use I wonder if any carriage museum might have a carriage manufactured there, that they might loan to Greenleaf to display in the lobby (if there will be a lobby) or perhaps just to have on hand at the ribbon cutting.
yeah, picture a day when preservation is the default position and those who want to see a building come down have to organize and incorporate an advocacy group, recruit a board of directors, fundraise, lobby, and respond to demands that they tear it down themselves if they think it is so far gone.