Buffalo Rising Online

My thoughts about the Main Place:

Move all of the stores from inside the mall to the exterior or the the 2nd Floor. The interior should have some sort of supermarket - Wegman's, Whole Foods, etc.. etc.. on the 1st floor. If we are going to have this building for a while, why not make the best of it. Plus, if there are services downtown again, more people would be more apt to live there, causing a demand for more downtown living.

Totally agree. It isn't horrible space but it is quite possibly one of the ugliest buildings downtown and no one wants to be in something that feel 30 years ago and run down.

It wouldn't take much to make this at least functional or decent. Doors to Main Street would help a lot. I think the bank is the only store that you can enter from Main. This is your visibility and they should capitalize on that right away.

This entire building needs to be addressed, or should I say redefined.

Dressing it up is not the issue entirely. The organization of the building itself is terrible. Rehabilitation of this entire building is going to make it a key contributor to life on Main Street. It is a 340,00 s.f. space at it's first three stories, which now I think we can all agree is a combobulated mess which needs to be defined into a business tower, a business center and an public "arcade". Each one of these "centers" requires its own identity (i.e. main entrances) and must be architecturally identifyable by the public.

I would think that then this project is going to be in the millions of dollars. Doing something "half-way" may backfire and make things worse.

Good luck getting the owners to invest in this property. They have made no attempt to market the retail space. Call the leasing office and tell them you want to lease 2,000 sq ft of retail....they basically tell you no.

As for the food court....main place mall is asking i believe over $100 per sq ft. thats beyond absurd.

I think Tim Hortons in the Liberty Bldg is paying roughly in the mid $20 range for there space.

This owner is content will collecting his rent from the office users and not reinvesting in the property.

There web site advertises the available office space...nothing about the retail.

I challenge any of you to call main place 855.1900 and get rental details.

Funny to see this here. I happened to walk through there yesterday because even though I work downtown, I have not stepped through the doors of this place probably in over 10 years and I think it was to avoid walking around the block... there were some chain stores in there and I honestly have never shopped at those chain stores before so it was kind of a sad experience for me. I think there were more businesses in the food court than the entire mall actually. There were some kids hanging out in the hallways just talking and plenty people eating. The dollar store had probably 15 people in line at the register so that kind of stood out to me. I think Byron is doing the right thing and starting at the 700 block of Main St. and hopefully he will work his way down. In Toronto, cars drive on the street along w/ their trolly train thing, why can't we? I think it would help out all of Downtown Main St. actually. Next step... Buffalo Bills actually in Buffalo so downtown Buffalo can make some money?

This building needs the same kind of treatment the Dulski recieved. It nees to be skinned, and a new facade put on both sides .It should be made to look like multiple buildings, either modern or historic, instead of the Berlin wall. Stores should have separate entrances to the street, and should be placed on both sides of the building.

Niagara could never be reopened because it would run right under the tower. However, EAGLE Street could be reopened as a pass thru just for cars!

What Main Place Mall needs is to look for ideas from other cities. For instance Main Place Mall reminds me of a very small scale Dallas-Galleria. Which has office towers and hotel towers around its periphery, it had a gym and an outdoor track on the roof of the mall with the mall underneath.

Now, how hard would it be for Main Place Mall to put a gym, track and bar or restaurant on the roof of the mall. It would have wonderful views!

The exterior of the mall could be replaced with glass to open it up

Personally, I think there needs to be a 2nd tower built in between the liberty and the main place tower to balance everything out!

Convert the Liberty to residential and put in a 2nd tower for the Mail with a pass thru at Eagle and the residential tower plus 2 office towers will provide enough people to support retail in the mall.

Main Place Mall doesnt need to whine about parking or battle palladino. Main Place Mall is on the light rail....so utilize a parknride where people leave the liberty or main place mall and get dropped off at a parking garage.....and with free light rail a parking garage for main place mall could be located anywhere.....as far away as M&T...and still be convenient.

As a black man even I understand that outside of the mega-cites urban malls are more or less a thing of the past. Retailers equate cities with minorities and they equate minorities with 1. theft 2. Scaring away whites. Half stereotypes, half truth. The owners would be better off completely rethinking the function of the space.

It's hard to talk about one problem without the depressing big picture rearing. The mall, convention center, the empty storefronts, the barren spectacle that greets any outsiders who visit are all pretty much bound together.

I'd put a Trader Joe's in there and see what happens.

Here is a list of projects that you will be hearing about on and off for the next 10 yrs.

Most would drive the ambitious person away from Buffalo:

1.) Casino

2.) Bass Pro - will not be built without casino, I'm taking bets

3.) New Peace Bridge - 15 yrs out

4.) Erie Canal Harbor Phase 2 - 10 yrs off, took 10 years to build phase one

5.) Statler - this building has been abandoned, wake up

6.) Returning traffic to Main - at least 10 yrs off

7) Light Rail Extension - never happen

8.) Tearing down the Skyway - comical, never happen

9.) Outer Harbor development

10.) Lowering your taxes

You will hear the same news, every week about the same projects for years on end. It will make your head spin.

And then theres my take: 1) will be built by 2010 2) will be built by 2010 3) never happening 4)will be worked on and progress over next few years 5)i have no idea whats gonna happen w/ that guys plans 6) already being worked on...so ill say by 2010 or 2011 at the latest 7)yeah prob not gonna happen 8)never happening, and dont really care if it doesnt 9) will come about after bass pro...so ill say itll start around 2011 10) yeah right

FlyGuy - thanks - I will add that to the top 20 list!

Wegmans in the Main Place Mall? ZERO percent chance of that ever happening. If what someone wrote earlier is true about the owners not even wanting to lease available space, this place will only continue to exist as a lunch time food court. How Walden Books stayed open for as long as they did is incredible. If it wasn't for Gino & Joes, I don't think I would have a need to ever set foot in there again. :)

PS Opening up Main St. to traffic is not going to revive the MPM or any other retail businesses on Main. Retail was dying in downtown long before the "subway to nowhere" was built. If only they invested the original funding to build a line from downtown to the airport instead of what we ended up with, they would have had a huge success and possible enough momentum to extend it further.

Part of the space in the mall could be used to expand the Country Market indoors and to keep it open year round. As a fairly new resident to Buffalo, I see the culinary heritage and the small farmers surrounding the city as valuable assets that are entirely under utilized and under appreciated. Farmers markets are in vogue in the suburbs but a true public market can only work in the city. Buffalo has all the ingredients required to be a leader in a much larger movement back to a locally-based agricultural system. There were brilliant public markets downtown that served as a destination for fresh food as well as for social and community events. To make it happen again we could build on the success of the Country Market and events like Thursday on the Square. Main st is the pedestrian center of the city and the Main Place Mall could provide the capacity for the market to grow indoors as well as on the pedestrian mall during the growing season. Even if there are only enough people to support the market one or two days a week it would do more to bring people downtown to shop than any retailer could (beside the fact that retail is entering a significant downturn). Buffalo needs a successful main st and main st needs a catalyst. Local food is the catalyst for main st and for Buffalo.

magnum - I choose not be the cynic again. But, I understand your point. The last time I mentioned that comment it ended up in the Buffalo News.

The original post is trying to find reasonable ways to spruce up the mall, not pie in the sky dreams. A skate park or indoor greenspace? Seriously? Why would any building owner incur all that cost on non-revenue generating projects? These types of things will not substantially increase their rental income.

Reconnect the cross streets underneath the 2nd & 3rd floors? Again, is that even even feasible engineering wise? And who's going to pay for that (not just construction costs, but you'd have to compensate the owner of the property for loss of revenue producing property)?

As has been stated many times before on this site, retail will return downtown when the population/demographics warrant it. You can't force a Wegmans or Whole Foods to move somewhere.

Come on guys, try to be a little realistic.

Retail can work here. The owner needs to re invest in the property. And be reasonable with the rents. This owner has not upgraded anything in decades. Benderson and others update there properties every few years. The interior of the mall is the same as it was in the '70's.

I do not remeber ever seeing an advertisement for the main place mall even as a kid. That place is like a gigantic ghetto but indoors. You get the wonderful feeling of wanting to leave as soon as you walk in, you see a bunch of low class homeless people walking around drunk/high or crazy (which is far from safe).. its dirty.. it smells..spattered tasteless stores/businesses.. you even have a medicaid dentist office (for all the poor worrying about a teeth cleaning). This is not a fixer upper at all. The owners look like they may have given up (maybe!!!..ahaha). I really love the camelot music sign?? then you see like a pile of cardboard boxes with food.. its the story of main st buffalo ny!

Make this place more accessible! When I moved here from the suburbs >10 years ago and was used to the Eastern Hills / Walden Galleria type of places I drove down here to go shopping not knowing exactly what to expect. Um, yeah I know this sounds dumb, but we couldn't tell if the place was open or closed, and couldn't figure out where to park and go in. Seriously kind of funny to laugh at myself now, but this is a real problem...

mj4man> i think they should put an apple superstore wher Jim Kelly's used to be as an anchor. Along with an HM and water else this region lacks....Ikea Maybe?

Who are "they?"

* Wegmans isn't coming to downtown Buffalo. They closed their store in downtown Rochester years ago. Wegmans is no longer opening stores in Upstate New York; they're concentrating almost all their expansion efforts on the Washington/Baltimore area and other parts of the Northeast Corridor. It's unlikely the Buffalo area will ever see a new Wegmans store again..

* Ikea isn't coming to downtown Buffalo. Ikea stores are now about 400,000 square feet. They want big, blue boxes in suburbann areas. Even in Europe, Ikea is almost exclusively suburban. Besides, Ikea said last year that they would NEVER open a store in the Buffalo area.

* Whole Foods isn't coming to downtown Buffalo. Yes, Whole Foods opens urban stores, but they want their locations to be almost completely surrounded by tens of thousands of high income families. Downtown Buffalo is surrounded by industrial areas, Lake Erie, housing projects, low-income neighborhoods, and a very small slice of medium-income residential to the north. Not even Elmwood Village has the demographics Whole Foods wants. Even Amherst is pushing the low end for Whole Foods. They want miles and miles of upper middle class and high-income households for miles around; east suburban Cleveland; Oakland County, Michigan; north suburban Chicago, and the like.

* The Apple Store isn't coming to Downtown Buffalo. They only open one or two stores in major metropolitan areas, in established retail areas. They're in the Walden Galleria.

* H&M isn't coming to downtown Buffalo. H&M is one of many everywhere-but-Buffalo chains; they've got stores in Utica, for chrissakes, but not Buffalo. If they ever arrive in Buffalo, do you think they're going to open a store downtown out of the goodness of their hearts? Nope ... it;s going to be Boulevard, The Galleria, or the region's first lifestyle center - which will probably be built when construction starts on the new Peace Bridge.

Wegmans wont come to downtown BUT TOPS might! If not tops then doesnt TOPS run a smaller version of a Grocery Store called a BKwik. Ive lived in other cities where the store has no canned goods. Its just fruit/veggies, meat/seafood and prepared foods to go.

Their incredibly successful considering how much space all that other stuff consumes in a grocery store. For major shopping people can head to the nearest Walmart, Tops or Wegmans but for a good segment of the population they would love to pick up fruits, meats and prepared foods during lunch hour or after work rathe than fight the crowds in the sububs on the way home or the weekend.

Anyway back to the whine fest, 1) Casino and Hotel Complex will happen. Bureau of Indian Affairs will side with Senecas.....it will be delayed but not stopped. The bigger problems of Indian Sovereignty, Indian Merchants paying sales tax on non-indian sales, and the future expiration of casino revenue sharing with Bufalo/NYS....will all remain on the table.

The clock will keep ticking on the Buffalo Seneca Casino Revenue sharing but the only thing that will change is that Buffalo and NYS will lose the revenue sharing because of the delay. THAT MY FRIENDS IS THE REAL TACTIC NOT THE CONOMY!

2) Bass Pro will happen and so will the Great Lakes Museum but dont count on the final sqft and the final design until the Canal is fully complete.

3) The Peace Bridge is waiting for that (the religion that controls the world) Chertoff to leave. Once the shared border management is signed so that the plaza is in Canada, then the bridge will get built. The plaza is the only thing holding it up.

4) The Canal will most definitely get done. No doubts about that!

5) The Statler will most definitely get done. Maybe not by Issa but it will get done! The Statler will become prime property after the Federal Courthouse is complete making it a good opportunity for a developer.

After the Federal Courthouse is complete....the Statler will get an entirely new appreciation...and when the Statler is complete...that will put the spotlight on the LaFayette.

6) Returning traffic to main street. Its already happening but Main isnt going to be traffic friendly. Its just going to be traffic compatible. Drivers will prefer Delaware, Frankling, Pearl, Washington, Elm and Oak.

7) Light Rail extension are going to happen. Clinton & Schumer are pressing for Federal Funding for mass transit and High Speed Rail. The NFTA has announced that it is recommission their consultants for two very large reasons. One, UB wants it! Two, the NFTA owns the airport and cant expand it or its parking lots without light rail. Three...they would have to be morons to turn down the nearly $750 million dollars in federal funds coming to Buffalo to built it!

8) Tearing down the skyway wont happen until the skyway can be bypassed. Translation: 8a) The Tifft Street Connector has to be completed detouring Route5 to I-190. 8b) The Lift Bridges connecting downtown to Furhmann Boulevard bypassing the skyway. The skyway isnt even remotely going anyway until these bypasses are in place.

9) Outer Harbor development is waiting for the lift bridges. Its as simple as that! Buffalo Rising already ran an article on NYSDOT funding for them.

10) Lowering Taxes....well fahgeddaboudid. Teachers unions wont let it happen and Albany wont let their unfunded mandates and burocratic control result in it. Very little of your taxes have to do with your local elected county or municipal representatives.

11) Everyone forgets about the possibility for a new convention center and this may be the suprise piggy in the blanket once the Federal Courthouse and the Casino are completed.

crisa...Albany is doing very well. Check their property values and jobs creation.

Why? There is something called the NYS High Speed Rail Task Force and Senator Bruno made sure that 99% of those funds upgraded the rail lines between Albany and NYC. The result has been to make Albany a similar commute time to Long Island commutes attracting downstates upstate.

Until the Empire Corridor gets its funding for High Speed Rail to connect to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Toronto and Albany...Buffalo is again the bastard in the budget!

What do you mean by gentry? Do you seriously think there's going to be some sort of reverse migration back into the city? There's been a small minority of punks in their 20's moving back into the city and after living with mom & dad through college have decent jobs allowing them to buy/rent lofts then there's an even smaller number of uber-rich who'll buy those million dollar penthouses. It's not like we're all going to forced out on some trail of tears. You've got some damn strange views.

Dan,

Your description of the residential area north of downtown as only "medium income" is a bit off don't you think? And you're exaggerating the Whole Foods formula. There's a Whole Foods in my old neighborhood in Toronto, which is decidedly not miles and miles and "tens of thousands of upper income" families. Most of the people who shop at Whole Foods are middle to upper middle class, at least at the ones I went to. The same people who will spend a littel extra for Starbucks will go to a Whole Foods--C'mon, it's just a decorative grocery store, not Dean & De Luca. And there is plenty of money in WNY to support at least one Whole Foods--whether we really need or want it is the issue.

People tend to underestimate how much money is still in Buffalo--a great deal. But much of it is tied to a society culture that doesn't really give a hoot about Whole Foods or whatever the latest shopping mood is.

As I understand it, a good amount of the space in the mall is leased, and housing server equipment. Obviously not the best use of a SHOPPING MALL, but that's what he's been leasing it out to. And he uses it as a tax write off. Scum.

Eric - Business First reported here yesterday the federal govt has released 2007 poverty and income estimates. Among all U.S. cities over 250,000 population, Buffalo has the 7th lowest median household income: $29,706. The U.S. national average median household income was $50,233 which is way higher than Buffalo's. They also ranked Buffalo as having the 3rd highest percent of residents below poverty, 28.7% (behind only Detroit's 33.8% and Cleveland's 29.5%).

Does any of that make you reconsider your statement that 'People tend to underestimate how much money is still in Buffalo--a great deal.'. What's your basis of comparison for 'a great deal'? Buffalo is a nice place to live in ways you discuss here often, but for economics are you overly optimistic?

From the Census Bureau web site, their estimated 2007 count of Buffalo city households within each range of annual income is:

Total households: 113,225

Less than $10,000; 21,074

$10,000 to $14,999: 11,321

$15,000 to $24,999: 17,170

$25,000 to $34,999: 15,375

$35,000 to $49,999: 16,076

$50,000 to $74,999: 15,778

$75,000 to $99,999: 8,222

$100,000 to $149,999: 5,054

$150,000 to $199,999: 1,282

$200,000 or more: 1,873

Ref. for above, with margins of error - http://tinyurl.com/5e5nr4

Buffweiner - what are you smoking? and give me some of it!

Heathersmiles,another good point. I should add the high speed train to NYC or Toronto to my Top 20 list of things that will never happen in Buffalo in our lifetime.

Thank you for the new article! This is a great topic and there are some really good comments on the subject. It is refreshing to discuss a different albatross (meaning a patient who never gets better) and to hear some fresh perspectives. Carry on.

heather and gaustad, a high speed rail is not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets for Buffalo.

However, a little history lession. Do you know what business paid the majority of taxes in Buffalo? No not steel, oil, airplanes, chemicals, engines, auto parts, etc. It was the railroads. Railroads paid the majority of the taxes and allowed all those other businesses to thrive because the city could keep taxes lower.

Do you know why there were so many millionaires in Buffalo? Railroads.

Buffalo is, was, will be a transportation city. The Liberty Building as a symbol of the canals and waterways that connected NYC/Boston to Cleveland/Chicago (aka east-west). Buffalo was situated between the nations two biggest engines of growth (the capital of the midwest (chicago) and the capital of the eastcoast (nyc)).

with the advent of the airplane and highways Buffalo lost its greatest source of tax revenue (railroads) as it was replaced by the toll road thruway and the airports.

Today, Buffalo continues to connect NYC/Boston to Chicago (though the nations economy is no longer centered around the eastcoast midwest), but Buffalo is now also connecting the economy of Ontario (Niagara Falls, Hamilton, St Catherines, Toronto) to the US and Buffalo is the entry conduit.

Will High Speed Rail happen? At some point? Rail is the most efficent form of freight and passenger travel. Airplanes are not viable with oil at $150 a barrel and $200 would shut many down. $300 a barrel and your either going to go by rail or teleconference.

I harp on light rail because we need to access federal funds to connect our local engines of economic growth.

I mention light rail because (like the great lakes compact and great lakes cruises) the northeast and the great lakes region are rethinking about how to relink their economies. High speed rail is one method. As an example did you know that the state of new york and the province of ontario signed a transportation compact to join nyc and toronto via a high speed train through buffalo. Yup! You just dont know about it because State Senator Bruno has restricted all state funds to be spent between Albany and NYC (leaving all of upstate out).

Forecasts are already showing that freight on railroads will triple and possibly quadruple while planes and highways will less than double. Already plans are to reopen some of Erie and Niagara Rail Yards.

Cant say when! But one need not be smoking anything to have an undestanding of economics, business, and growth for our locality.

You can say what you want about me....but for all my rants...everything I say has objective analysis based in fact on Buffalos economy!

BuffWeiner, ...little sensitive are we. Thanks for the history lesson, and be rest assured I am well informed of Buffalo's history, economics and the rail industry.

However, all the wishing and lecturing in the world is not going to bring a high speed train to or through Buffalo.

Atwater,

Thanks for the stats, but no it doesn't make me reconsider my statement, because I wasn't talking about Buffalo as a whole; I asked whether Dan's depiction of the vague "residential area north of downtown," as at best "medium income" wasn't a little off. I think it is. That area is large and has a spectrum of incomes, from multi, multi, multi millionaires to people receiving food stamps--as in most urban areas, it is diverse.

My point was that I know that there are tremendous amounts of private money in Buffalo. I guess you'll just have to trust me on that one. That money is not widely dispersed, but boy is it ever there. The city was extremely wealthy at one point, and that money did not totally evaporate when the city started to nosedive. And given a million people in the area, with "tens of thousands" of well off people too (and there are those people in WNY), it's not a fantasy to imagine a Whole Foods in WNY--but who really cares if there is one?

One thing about those stats--as another poster mentioned in another article, many cities have had the good fortune of expanding their boundaries to include first ring suburbs--Buffalo has been strangled in a footprint that hasn't changed in well over a hundred years. If the city could include Snyder/Eggertsville, Kennore, Lackawanna, etc...I believe it's medium income would spurt up. Stats need lots of context and history to mean anything.

Eric - I see what you're saying about old money here. Still, I think retailers look closely at density of middle and upper income households in various radius distances. Probably net worth is a major factor for luxury kinds of retail, but not for most.

If there's around 14,000 total households in the whole city of Buffalo with income over $75,000 as those numbers say, then the count in that 'north of downtown' must be at most, what, half of that? 7,000 might not be impressive from a retailer's perspective. Adding in the $50,000 to $75,000 households doubles the count, that's still not a large sounding number of households.

I don't understand why lack of national retailers downtown is considered such an important issue anyhow. North Buffalo seems to be the center of national retail in the city, such as it is - Target, Kohls (on the way), Kmart (maybe on way out), Office Max, Office Depot, Home Depot, Marshalls, Radio Shack, Feel Rite. Yeah it's no Amherst or Cheektowaga, not even close obviously, but it's as much as the city will attract apparently and a lot more than we'll see downtown except maybe Bass Pro if that happens. Maybe a couple smaller national stores eventually go next to Bass Pro. It's just how things are. Not a big deal compared to other problems.

I agree that this mall needs to be Re-Skinned and Re-Vamp Completely in order to attract retailers back. I do believe this is the ONLY Mall in WNY that never advertises, has any kind of events or extends it's hours for the holidays. It's like "yeah, we're here, so what". No wonder it's a dead mall.