Potential Deal for AM&As Warehouses
When ‘potatogoat’ said here that the vacant AM&A’s warehouses were going to be converted to residential, it set off a flurry of emails trying to confirm. And apparently potato is right, several sources say that the warehouses at the corner of Washington and E. Eagle Street are being eyed for downtown’s latest loft conversion project. According to potato-
“A VERY PROMINENT CITY INVESTOR HAS AN ARCHITECT DESIGNING PLANS TO CONVERT THEM INTO MORE DOWNTOWN LOFTS!!!!!!!!!! A VVVVVVERY PROMINENT CITY INVESTOR!!!!!!! THIS WILL TRANSFORM THAT WHOLE BLOCK EXCEPT THE HOTEL. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
A buyer is said to have a ‘preliminary purchase agreement’ with current owner New Horizons Acquisitions to obtain the historic warehouses for conversion to residential. There have also been sightings of a “well-known architect” looking at the property. After a due diligence period, if the numbers work, the rumored purchase price is in the area of $900,000.
It is far from a done deal. At least one other developer has looked at the property but didn’t think a conversion project was feasible at the asking price.
New Horizons Acquisitions purchased the former department store and adjacent warehouses in September 2006 for $2.05 million. The Long-Island based developer promptly announced a $60 million project to convert the properties into a mix of 180 apartments and ground floor retail. Work was never started and the buildings have been on and off the market since.
City officials have been pressing New Horizons in Housing Court to produce redevelopment plans for the imposing downtown complex. New Horizons performed emergency façade work on the properties in early-2007 when masonry began crumbling onto sidewalks. Workers secured the former store and warehouse buildings by chipping away loose terra cotta tile and bricks.
The purchase agreement is only for the warehouse buildings which total 87,000 sq.ft. The three inter-connected buildings fronting Washington Street were built between 1886 and 1911, two by architectal firm Esenwein & Johnson. In 1965, a three-story addition was constructed at 34-42 East Eagle Street.
210 Ellicott Street, a seven-story warehouse building that was originally part of, and connected to, the AM&As warehouses along Washington and East Eagle, is now the Historic Warehouse Lofts.
The fate of the former store is uncertain. There is hope for the warehouses.
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Comment Options
gaustad
Perfect for loft conversion....too bad developers can't develop in one area of the city, instead of scattered throughout.
Critical Mass would be easier to obtain.
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Ike
900k seems pretty reasonable to me. hopefully the numbers work out and they can get crackin'
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mybuffalo
phil mish mish
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sbrof
Maybe one of the reasons that there has been a scatter shot approach for conversions by developers is because there is only a scattered amount of older buildings left in downtown available for such conversions. Except for two almost congruent blocks on Main and Genesee, there are not many buildings left, let alone clustered together.
Try finding one block of downtown with two street walls of older buildings and not disrupted by some huge parking lot of new development. Not very many places. We think of downtown as this dense collection of buildings that people assume are old but in reality most of everything in downtown is parking lot of relatively recent developments.
If we didn't destroy our cluster of buildings, maybe we could have hoped for some clustered redevelopment. But until Buffalo's downtown market is strong enough to warrant serious infill developments, which are more expensive in the end than rehab work because there are fewer grants available, we are going to have to 'live with' the scattering and do our best to make all of downtown feel like a cluster and bound together.
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Joshua
Exciting. Concentrated or not, if this goes through, the population of Downtown will increase. In fact, it is probably one of the only areas of Buffalo/WNY that is increasing; and with people comes services, stores and shopping. I just hope it is not another buy-then-sell deal.
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rubygreta
And for more good news, Buffalo was just ranked 95th out of 100 cities for foreclosures. http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/07/21/daily60.html
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RaChaCha
Great news - especially for Esenwein & Johnson fans! I was just reading the Buffalo News, and nary a word about this - so another BRO/WCP scoop - nice. And like the Warehouse Lofts development, it continues to dispel the notion of "garbage buildings."
I'm curious how all these buildings functioned to support AM&A's - were there interior connections between the buildings, and below-street connections to the department store--? Do any of those connections remain, possibly to be incorporated into this project--?
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WCPerspective
RCC- I wouldn't put this in the 'scoop' category- we couldn't find anyone willing to go on the record. So chalk it up to potato for the heads up that something is cooking.
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chrishawley
The 1965 warehouse is highly underrated. A whimsical makeover of the building (or even a tasteful paintjob on the concrete) could make it a gem, and parking or a storefront is already there in the ground floor.
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Andrew
I hope this happens. the biggest thing downtown needs is people living there
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WholeLottaJibbaJabbah
Andrew, before people live downtown. I think there needs to be jobs to keep them down there.
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RaChaCha
WCP, absolutely - sort of a case of "collaborative scooping" - I love it. No doubt those folks who wouldn't go on the record have been getting phone calls today. Potato indeed has great eyes for news ;-)
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lulu
The warehouse and the old store are connected via tunnel underground. I was down in the basement and in the tunnel a few years back - super creepy down there!
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plenish1
Who is the prominent city investor and who is Potato?
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RaChaCha
Lulu, thank you very much for the information. If you're a fellow Goonie, check out the old subway tunnel in My Fair City - a favorite of local Goonies. Info: www.infiltration.org/transit-roch.html, www.ChillTheFill.org, or Google.
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Downtownjunkie
Awesome news for downtown! I cant wait to see the developers final plans for this building!
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joey
YA OK..HO HUM...another pie in the sky venture...already the fools are biting. Leave this alone til' the contracts are let to begin construction..But no all the empty pocketed Monday morning wanna be architects and planners will be there to tell them how and what to do...so typical..history repeats itself..only more frequently in Buffalo.
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sonyactivision
"Pie in the sky"? When you can score 87,000 sq. ft. for $900,000, that makes any reuse very viable and doable. If that greedy jerk who owned the Livery had gotten off his high horse (pun intended) and sold that building for its true value (around $100k), much grief could have been avoided. This is absolutely teriffic news for Downtown and as pointed above, when the supply of yummy older buildings gets tight, the market will begin to favor those new builds. Its coming and it will transform this city!
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impressingagent
too bad they couldn't have used this section for artspace.
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plenish1
Who is the prominent city investor?
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sayvanderlay
21 Questions (all must be "Yes" or "No" questions:
#1 Is the prominent city investor Buffalo Rising's landlord?
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WCPerspective
No.
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chrishawley
My guess is that it isn't Uniland... haha.
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buffalo339
Although not as pessimistic as Joey, but I'd like to see more before I get all excited. Looks like it can be awesome though.
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pegger
These are a class act.
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