PBN: 273 Main Street Demo "Disturbing"

Good for PBN.

I'd like to hear Jim Comerford answer to why/how this emergency demo came about--there is a clear legally-bound process to follow, which it appears he did not chose to do.

Has Preservation Buffalo done a great job of saving historic buildings - Yes
Did they Break the Law - Yes
Is this Building really hoot & holler about - No

-1 story
-creates a better parcel of land for new development
-building was in bad shape
-nothing too fancy-dancy about the building anyways aside from the windows

When will they get around to demolishing the Central Terminal?

I would hope this one wasnt honestly being considered for a local historic landmark. I get the point about following the city ordinance because to not do so does set a bad precedent. At the same time if you start landmarking buildings like this one then you cheapen the power of calling something a landmark because everything gets labelled one.

Loathe or love this building, agreements were broken.

I'm surprised the PBN wasn't "disturbed" when mechanical parking meters were replaced by the fancy electronic ones

then why did the preservation not do anything before it came to this. get over it, whaaaaaaaaaa. lets save every thing !!

There is speculation that this was the 2nd oldest building in the city. At the very least, the manner of demolition could have been adjusted to salvage some of the details or building materials (those 160-year-old bricks and ironwork could have been reused at canalside in some fashion)

I would like to see the Preservation Board do a posthumous review of the demolition request to point out the reasons why this law is in place.

Since the demolition permit was granted 6 weeks before, there obviously needs to be additional safeguards in the granting of such permits. It's not enough to 'require' that the Preservation Board be notified (that requirement was too easily sidestepped in this case). Such permits should be made a matter of public record so that others can step in when the proper procedures are 'accidentally' ignored.

It is an enormous failure on everybody's part if the Preservation Board was not able to discover and investigate the July permit, even if that meant doing so on their own without being officially notified.

How many articles here on BR are needed to serve as a platform for the treehuggers here who seem to proliferate??...with a mouthful of opinions, and not a penny in their pockets. Same subject matter, same whiners, just more print....BR really need to bleed this demo for readership??...get over it..it's a done deal....all the Monday morning architectural, structual,and wannabe preservationists...come up with some dough$...and BUY YOUR next building to save...instead of trying to tell someone else what to do with theirs!!

His last name might not have been Wright but this building was designed by an important and historically significant architect... to Buffalo and America.

Here is the only pic I could find of the original building.

Scroll to the bottom of the pages.

http://buffaloah.com/h/city/city.html#3rd

Imagine putting this building on this site... what does anyone think, is there a market for a building like this in buffalo?

http://vuecharlotte.com

The cat is already out of the bag people, this is the precedent. This is the NORMAL in Buffalo. Embrace it! We are a temporal people, we do not value character defining places, and there isn't a law that cannot be circumvented or bought...THIS IS YOUR BUFFALO, NEW YORK. And who do we have to thank? Our Parents and Granparents who wanted a Chevy and TV dinners more than a quality place to live. Thanks.

The News article gives a bit of history of the place. Apparently it was constructed as a bank headquarters and remained that until M&T purchased the bank in 1962. The top four or five stories were removed then. Those walls sure look stout enough to have once supported a much taller structure.

I liked that facade. All that glass back in the day . . . I could have pictured this as a shell incorporated into a new building . . .

Commerford refused to step inside the building, he tells the News. The floors were that soft.

I'm skeptical. Throw a couple sheets of plywood down for a path and even in the Webb building pre-Rocco, you're not falling through. Few buildings as recently occupied as this (a decade of vacancy, not forty or fifty years) are so structurally unsound that they cannot be entered with some heavy plywood to support you. Just ask David Torke. The floorboards usually rot long before the joists, but even if they're all that bad, it's an easy enough fix to get in the basement and throw up a few supports so you can walk around. This was (currently) a one story building. Even if the roof were entirely collapsed and the floor totally gone, it wouldn't have been a very heavy lift to replace both, so long as the walls were stout . . .

It disturbs me that Commerford would seriously assert that he doubts the age of the structure to have been significant, instead referring to the City's records listing 1947 as the date of construction. This assertion of his is notable for a few reasons.

For one thing, it is well known that the city and county's records are notoriously unreliable with regard to age and size of structures. Often the city will date the property by when some big rehab takes place, as that is when permits are pulled and the city reviews it. Certainly a commissioner for the city would be aware of this.

More importantly, it evidences the commissioner's dishonesty (or worse, his utter incompetence). No building professional could mistake an 1850s structure and conclude it was built 100 years later. Mid 20th century construction and design is a world away from mid 19th. Even failing to walk in, the facade structure gives away that this is not close to being a post WWII building. Commerford is asking us to believe that he had (still has?) no idea. If that is truly so, it's scandalous that he is unable to distinguish them. A commissioner of buildings can't tell 1850s from post WWII? But the truth is much more likely that this referencing of the mis-dating is an intentional misdirection on the commissioner's part to hush up any objections. Probably to him, this property represented little of importance and so he was willing to simply comply with the owner's desire to remove it.

There is indeed a stench about how these 'emergency' demos take place.

The building was nothing more than a very faint former shadow of itself. Certainly not worthy of historic preservation. But a law was broken and someone needs to be accountable for that or a standard will be set.

Preservation Buffalo Niagara can be as deeply concerned as they want. As I see it "emergency demolition" was necessary to free-up this parcel for consideration. Who knows, maybe Delaware north is looking for a spot for a new high rise (and no, not the HSBC Tower). Laws may have been broken but the "norm” in Buffalo is that laws sometimes have to be broken due to the unreasonable and tenacious rigidity of the PBN. Seriously people. This structure is an isolated piece of crap (that used to have more storey’s on top of it, really?) and if a company wanted to build a 47 story high rise we would all clamor to have this eye sore removed. It's just really an embarrassment sitting alone in the corner of an asphalt wasteland parking lot (Sounds like the Boulevard Mall in the burbs doesn't it?). It’s another eyesore gone and like it or not I'd do the same rather than spend good time arguing about it. This is not the Lafayette Hotel it’s an old, tired building that is finished. And by the way the city needed nobody’s approval to bring this rotting embarrassment down.

comerford knows full well that the record of permits is hardly representative.

admit it: don't we -love- to evade those burdensome permit fees? don't we like to hire cheap, unlicensed handymen and get the work done on nights & weekends when inspectors aren't around? feels like we scored a victory against city hall, doesn't it?

meanwhile, we've screwed the next owner, who has no way of knowing how old the wiring is or if it was even installed safely. in my house, i found -lamp cord- in the walls. talk about illegal!

plus, how evolved was the permitting system back in 1850? the kinds of work requiring permits was probably defined much more primitively then. seriously; people think that the way we do things now is how they have always been done since the dawn of time.

i think I used to buy my tobacco products there in the '70's I think he sold alot of pipes that kids used for there marijuana.

Kind of a nice building but i dont remeber it being so memorable.

Is ecverything being demolished in Buffalo I see they wan to save the Bethlehem building the peace bridge houses and teh trico building. I gotta ask even if they do save them whats going to in them- Offices, condos are there enough people left in Buffalo ?

Just my two cents.

LISTEN MORONS , ITS THIER PROPERTY AND THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO WHAT THEY WANT WITH IT ! IF THEY CAN MAKE MORE MONEY PARKING CARS THEN SO BE IT. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FREE COUNTRY RIGHT ? THEN IF YOU OWNED A VACANT , USELESS BUILDING COSTING YOU TAXES AND UPKEEP TO SATISFY THE CITY THEN YOUR LOOSING MONEY ! IF YOU CAN PARK 50 MORE CARS AT 8.00 A DAY DUHH !THESE PEOPLE ARE MULTI MILLION AIRES WHO THINK WAY AHEAD OF YOU ! THEY ARE NOT WAITING ON THIER NEXT PAYCHECK TO PAY THE BILLS AND STAY AFLOAT , THEY ARE LOOKING FOR A WAY TO MAKE MILLIONS !! GET OUT OF THE WAY , GET BACK ON YOUR COUCH AND MOAP ABOUT HOW YOU ARE GONNA SURVIVE !LOOOOOSERS !

Gotta love how the tear down crowd just makes up a possible new developlment for this site as an excuse for decades of negelct and demolition without following the law. Good thing Paladino was too stupid to do this - otherwise we would no longer have the Web Building.

Lets tear down some more buildings and maby 50 story buildings will just pop up like in SIm City.

Gotta love how the preserve everything at any and all costs crowd continues to repeat the line that laws were broken even though the chairman of the Preservation Board is on record as saying no laws were broken.

Preservation is very important. Especially in Buffalo, which has so many structures worth preserving. This was not one of them. The proper process was followed and no laws were broken. You need to concentrate on the battles worth fighting, especially when there was no malfeasance. And if neglect was the issue, why did the city not inspect or cite the structure for violations in 12 years? That blame game works both ways.

Comerford was quoted as saying that the building was never cited for code violations because the outside appeared to be up to standard, and only on further inspection it was found to essentially falling apart. A lot of commentators on here who argue that the building was not emergency demolition material seem to confirm that at least superficially the building seems sound.
Now I admit that I don't know about the staffing levels of the city inspection division, but I can't imagine that they have the manpower or resources to go poking around every building to look to see if it structurally is up to code. They seem to take a more pragmatic approach and largely concern themselves with complaint - driven inspections and when buildings undergo major renovations.
So if the inspections people are unable to look out for these buildings, who should do it? Why doesn't the preservation board take a more proactive approach? They may not have the power to inspect things themselves, but they are certainly free to make complaints and raise awareness of endangered structures before they get to this stage to get the city to act on this, are they not? If the inspections people drag their feet, they could raise hell with the media. Tielman certainly seems to have knack for that. But they seem content to just sit back and only make a fuss only when these buildings are already threatened with demolition? They certainly could be doing more on their end too, could they not?

Not to state the obvious, which I plead guilty too, but the whole point of this issue is circumventing established rules and regulations to what appears (allegedly) to be appeasing personal interests and not the public interest.

You certainly do not need to be a professional engineer to evaluate a building but you do need to have some basic engineering-construction-building maintenance knowledge to make a rational determination whether or not a structure is within eminent collapse.

I suspect no one from City Hall even conducted an on-site inspection and driving past the location does not count.

I would like to see posted, by the City of Buffalo, a written report outlining their findings broken down in the following categories: architectural; structural, electrical and plumbing and, based on these four categories, a recommendation citing why the building needs to be either demolished or a candidate for adaptive reuse.

There are at least a half dozen people, from AIA to Maintenance Director, on this blog who can do this so there has to be at least one person in the inspections department who can write such a document and perhaps implement this procedure for all future building inspections.

Good riddence, this boarded up, vacant building at 273 Main Street was a decrepit, one story eyesore that should have been demolished a long time ago. Regardless whether it was a public danger or not, this building's demolition is long overdue. The Preservationists are being ridiculous on this one but what else is new? If there was a violation of law, than it is time for the common council to review and make needed adjustments to this preservation ordinance which would permit the demolition and clearence of non descript, junk buildings like 273 Main Street. Now that prime site is now fully marketable for future redevelopment which would greatly benefit downtown and the local economy. A mixed use skyscraper would be the best and most sensible redevelopment of this prime downtown site. However our economy and real estate market have to strengthen up significantly creating more demand for new real estate.

The Preservation Board should be demolished and rebuilt with new effective leadership.

I see absolutely nothing disturbing about the demolition of this abandoned, one story building at 273 Main Street. It is rundown and non descript so what is all the fuss about? This building's demolition is really a non issue.