Buffalorising has been redesigned.

What a crying shame to think that not only will we get a Casino, but we'll lose this great landmark. Is the Department of Interior required to consider the impact on this National Register listed (or eligible) landmark in considering the Seneca's request to make this sovereign land?

Who do we write to? Can the Seneca's be stopped from knocking these buildings down?

They haven't announced their intentions- if they locate at DL&W, the News says they will use the 9 acres they purchased for bus parking and warehousing. If this site is where the casino will be located, who knows! At his point this is just a "heads-up"!

Why can't the Senecas do the right thing with the wrong premis so we can all win...why can't they take the Central Train Terminal and do a fabulous restoration instead of the cheesy stuff they usually do? Why can't they light that wonderful tower that can be seen for miles & miles. Why can't they take advantage of the plenty of free paking that surrounds CT? Why can't they be community minded and use this as an opportunity to develop an entire area for the better. Why does this have to be so horrrible!!

I don't know about the Central Terminal, but Byron Brown could sit down with the Seneca's and tell him what the City expects. I don't think there is anything that he can really impose on a sovreign nation, but it couldn't hurt to put some pressure on them, BEFORE they get the whole thing approved by the feds.

Well, I support the lawsuit against the senecas opening a casino but from a different stance.

They may loose the lawsuit about the senecas ability to operate a casino, though that remains to be seen.

However, I think that the Senecas need to reallize that Buffalo is not Niagara Falls. There was no city in Niagara Falls to resist the Senecas will when it came to using imminent domain, protecting historic buildings, competing with local business or building successful relationships with local communities and local governments.

If the Senecas need transportation or parking, they should outsource it to the NFTA or the Buffalo Parking Consortium.

In short, I think that the Anti-Casino movement stands a better chance of demanding that any lands not used for gambling be prevented from transferrance to a Seneca Reservation. The Senecas can buy land but unless theres gambling....still NYS property subject to taxation and local laws.

Based on the laws from the Supreme Court, this could provide a winnable lawsuit and its a lawsuit I support.
-No Buffalo Hotel, Theater, Restaurant, Gas Station, Apartment Building or Parking Lot should have to compete with Indian Sovereignty.

We're getting a casino! Fine, but your not going to buy up our city take our money and tell us that your not part of our community!

Senecas dont buy more land than you need! Dont open non-casino businesses or compete with them. Dont expect to push us aside as your doing in Niagara Falls. You will find out that Buffalo may not be a big city anymore and it may be dysfunctional but it is still a city and you dont want to be a force for uniting all the waring factions against your bullying!

This is such a fascinating building, having both a rich history and a knack at drawing people's attention. I'm not sure why it's so charismatic...maybe the form, the fused columns, the texture? Regardless, I hope it can be preserved.

Photographer Gerrit Engel captured it in his grain elevator series, as did local photographer Karl Josker in his recent series. Well done, Karl.

Here's my view of it, as photographed in Sep. 2003.

- mike

BR stripped the embedded image, here's the link to the image, thanks.

- mike

guys these buildings have been crumbling for 30 years...tear them down lets be progressive!!!!! we need new things here.

tear em down...

tear 'em down

GREAT LANDMARK? This must be the guy who cried about the Electric tower people planting grass next to the building and said he was very "disturbed" hehehe makes me laugh dude

You guys,

SO OLD BUFFALO!

Well we cant keep all those old grain silos like some sort of multi-story sculpture. Thank god, General Mills still uses their silos so we have a working link to our history.

If you care so much, why not write http://www.naega.org/exporting/index.shtml
and ask for grain shipments to come back to Buffalo?

Why not demand the city market those properties for reuse?

Why not demand the GBNRTC and the NFTA to market the Port of Buffalo (it is their job)!

If you love these silos then you must be greatful that Buffalos waterfront has been so inaccessible or they would have been torn down decades ago for jobs and businesses.

Enough already people tear down every old rotting vacant building in the city and let development happen. Personally I dont care who builds what or where lets get some new development downtown. There is always some group with picket signs in Buffalo that do not want the city to prosper for some reason people do not know how to let go. The city is filled with old vacant rotting buildings and something has got to change in the way people think in order to move forward.

For all those wacked-out preservationists...what the hell can be done with rotting old grain mills?...Oh I know...I can see it now...thousands travel to Buffalo every year to see 'The Grain Mills of Buffalo'...rotting and rat-infested...Ahhh, what a perfest veune to have a family picnic and reflect on yesteryear...not too depressing is it? WAKE UP AND FOCUS ON REAL ARCHITECTURAL LANDMARKS!

Hey finally some fed up people...Preserve stuff that matters...HH Richardson...not the house next to Panos, let him expand and create 40 more jobs and new tax revenue. Those silos on the water have been impediments to the waterfront development as have the preservationists who want to photograph the ugly unhygienic things. Guys, we have to LET GO of some of this SAVE the world motto. We need JOBS MONEY DEVELOPMENT....big business hates preservationists...no offense...they see you as thorns who impede commercial development...

Check your map....this is far from the waterfront. Its still a solid building- there isn't a need to tear it down. The silos may be obsolete, but the warehouse has potential for conversion. What would you propose for this site? A one story warehouse and bus parking? Thats some development- and the potential for two jobs! There needs to be balance between preserving and new development- there's plenty of "shovel-ready" sites available- thats one thing we don't have a shortage of.

And now the preservationists are being blamed for the lack of outer harbor development???

I would say a casino is a much bigger development than an ugly eyesore vacant building sitting empty for 30 yrs next to the projects....but thats how you do it here in buffalo...propose a development...let the preservationists ruin the fun and then tie up in court for years until the developer pulls out. Yeaaa!!! AND YOU WONDER WHY NOONE MOVES HERE??!!

You probably want the Old Great Northern Grain Mills saved too. Save everything then there will be more preserved buildings than there are people...and you can all take pictures and show them at Spot, to all 50 residents of the city. Too bad Kunis closed...all the residents would prob fit in that space.

BRAVO MO!

carl needed to recoup some of money he spent on kevin.

Let me get this straight? If we tear down every vacant building in the Buffalo that is in need of repair, money and jobs will start flowing in and the City will be reborn? I'm not quite sure how those two things go together.

Take two of the recent commercial successes in Buffalo - The Mansion and the Larkin Company building redevelopment. Both involved vacant buildings in need of repair. Both are now very successful developments that have brought jobs and money into the community.

Let's look downtown. There's been a lot of residential development, which most people would think is a good thing, right? But hardly any of it has been new build. It's mostly restoration. Why do you think that is? These developers are in this thing to make money after all, can it be they see a value in the old buildings, both in terms of what it would cost to build new, and in terms of what their target markets want?

There's another thing to consider. A couple of months ago on BRJ, there was a posting about the scooter shop looking for space. Here's a business that doesn't have the wherewithall to build or lease new space, but would do very well in an older, somewhat worn building with reasonable rents. If all these buildings are demoed where are the small local businesses going to find incubator space.

And if you hadn't noticed several recent posts on BRJ, people are moving here, and investing here. They're looking for a unique and authentic place, not a desolate wasteland of vacant lots where interesting iconic building used to stand. If you want to live somewhere where they've demolished everything, why not move to the thriving city of Detroit.

Great - waste time and energy on saving this UGLY MONSTROSITY when a beautiful and new development would be a ASSET and MAGNET!

Wake up people - it's UGLY - damn, cracking, rotting, industrial BUTT UGLY!

It's too close to downtown, there are plenty more across the Buffalo River where they belong!

It's far from the architectural worthiness of the Central Terminal.

This is why there is no progress in Buffalo.

A casino will NOT be a bad thing ARCHITECTURALLY, of that I speak from years of personal experience in the hospality industry in Las Vegas. The casino owners would not build something that is NOT attractive - it would not make business sense!

Now, as for the SOCIAL ills that would accompany a casino, that is a completely different issue.

If all these preservationlists who want to save old rat infested crumbling buildings like the house next door to Panos or the H-O Oats complex then why didn't they buy them and fix them. Why didn't all the members donate money out of their own pockets to purchase the properties and restore them. No, they wait until someone else does this to improve the area and then they cry to get in the news. I'm sure most of these cry babies live out side of the City limits anyway. They should let Buffalo grow.

Disgusted, I think your comments are unfair. Being a local preservationist, I have met and worked with most of these people. Yes, I agree that on a case-by-case basis, historic properties should be evaluated for their adaptive reuse feasability and potential, and that not everything can and SHOULD be saved. I disagree with some of my colleagues in that opinion.

But, to put it into context, the Senecas recently spent $200 million to build a 26 story hotel in Niagara Falls. That's DOUBLE what it would cost to fully restore the Central Terminal, a larger and more historically important landmark. While the buildings are apples and oranges in comparison, the development costs are not.

Progress shouldn't come at the expense of quality and history, as it did in the past in Buffalo. Look at the old boarding house on the corner of Elmwood and Auburn. That was a dump just last year. Now it houses several small retail shops in a very attractive renovation. Why not do the same with the Atwater house next to Pano's? I think the preservationists are only trying to save these structures, not preserve them for their original purposes for the sake of having a living time capsule. Finding adaptive reuses are definitely within their ideas.

Also, please take note that the Central Terminal WAS saved by Scott Field and a few other local preservationists in 1997. They put their money where their mouths were and formed the corporation that runs and funds it now. The hard cold facts are that Buffalo has SO many vacant historic treasures that preservationists have their hands full. I don't think they are trying to impede progress or cry to get in the news. I think they just are afraid that Buffalo will become like Niagara Falls Blvd: a bunch of faceless chains that turn over every couple of years, leaving bland shells of stores that eventually get torn down for another new rebuild.

The building has sat useless abandoned and vacant for decades. Is this worth anything other than a bnch of fuddy duddy obstructionist preservationists being able to look at it and remeber "the good old days " ?
The good old days were good because there were opportunities there, people had decent jobs and the region grew and thrived. What good is this or any other rotten old building going to do anyone if it sits even longer in a deteriorating condition ?
Eventually it is going to reach a point of severe structural comprimise and begin to fall down on it's own, then the preservationist nerds will cry about how no one with money (Obviously not the leftist preservationists) did anything to stop it ! Heck some one needs to maintain this place just so the preservationist twits can look at it for many more decades and reminice about what Buffalo used to be.

Great landmark? It's a freaking grain elevator. The McKinney House and the Rand Building are landmarks of Buffalo not a grain elevator in a dilapidated neighborhood.

I think we have a consensus. The elevator can't be adapted for any other use. Put something there that isn't a safety hazard.