Couldn't be happier to see the back-to-downtown retail trend get underway. When I got my first job out of college, I received a gift certificate in the mail from Kleinhans (then in the Brisbane Building). So I paid them a visit, got a good start on a professional wardrobe plus my first exposure to Buffalo. Jumping ahead to a few years ago, when doing some work for Buffalo clients, I was disappointed to find that downtown retail on Buffalo's Main Street hadn't fared any better in the last decade than in My Own Fair City. When I asked someone about Kleinhans, he laughed and said "where have you been?"
Here we've realized that the only way we're likely to get downtown retail back is to get more folks living downtown, so we've focused on that. Your Fair City is ahead of us in that area - likely helping spark this renewed downtown retail presence. May it grow and spread - who knows: perhaps sometime soon folks will once again be shopping at Kleinhans in downtown Buffalo.
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