Just passed by the Buffalo Zoning Board is the latest venture for Executive Properties, Olmsted Apartments. The 2.5 million dollar privately funded project will be located at 494-502 Seventh Street, between Pennsylvania and Jersey streets and will be composed of two three-story buildings with ten rental units per building. Each walk-up unit is anticipated to be 1,400 square feet with two bedrooms and two baths, as well as an attached garage per unit for one car. Each building will have two handicapped accessible units and between the two buildings will be a common courtyard. The project is scheduled to be completed in September of 2016 and developers are hoping to get an early start to the project this February or March depending on weather conditions.
Executive Properties has partnered with BRD Construction on this project and have hired BHNT Architects P.C. to handle the design elements. Lead architect Bill Hovey says, “The plan is to create something that is sympathetic to the rest of the area.” The buildings will have shingled roofs with brick facades on the ground level and clapboard on the second and third stories. The garages will be designed with a carriage house appearance and each unit will boast French doors leading to a Romeo and Juliet balcony. Hovey says the courtyard between the two buildings will allow for lots of light, and adds that the three-story structures will be a nice transition from the six-story building to the North and the two-story houses to the South.
The adjacent property to the North of the lot was just recently sold and will be home to Community Beer Work’s newest location. The lot directly across the street is vacant and seems prime for development. This neighborhood should be one to watch, rich with potential for inexpensive investment and development. Nick Giambra, son of Joel Giambra, President of Executive Properties, wants to see this neighborhood flourish. Coming from the real estate perspective of development, he believes that residential properties are important in the beginning stages of a resurgence stating, “Residential properties have to come first. Without residences, businesses will not come.”
Joel Giambra knows the West Side well, having grown up in the nearby Lakeview projects. He and his group are committed to the West Side, and Giambra is willing to make both a personal and business investment in the area. He would like to see the neighborhood return to what he remembers it to have been when he was a kid as, “a very healthy and diverse community, primarily owner occupied.” Giambra states, “We are not trying to re-gentrify the neighborhood. We appreciate the diversity (here) and only want to add to it.”
Rents are foreseen to be $1,400 per month. Nick Giambra says that the site’s proximity to D’Youville College will draw faculty, staff and students as potential tenants. The nearby medical corridor should draw tenants as well. Developers also believe that millennials searching to live in a neighborhood as opposed to a downtown loft will find the area attractive, and with the Peace Bridge close by, Canadians should be interested as well.
This project is one to watch, and one that will potentially begin a domino effect of residences and businesses into the neighborhood. Stay tuned for updates forthcoming.
The name of the apartments have been updated in accordance with the proper spelling. The original article went along with a spelling typo that made its way to City Hall email disbursements and architectural drawings, as seen above.