Owner Proposes Pilgrim Village Redevelopment

Pilgrim Village owner Mark Trammel is teaming with McGuire Development on a multi-phased effort to redevelop the circa-1980 townhouse community north of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Ninety affordable townhome units on a nine-acre portion of the site would be replaced with 380 new apartments in four new buildings.  The new buildings are proposed to be be inter-generational, mixed-income, and mixed use.  The remaining three-acre portion with 25 affordable apartments would be rehabilitated and continued as family residences in the project’s last phase. The first phase, located on the southwest corner of the site and across the street from Gates Vascular Institute, would demolish three buildings containing fifteen units and replace them with an four-story, 300,000 sq.ft. building with 154 residences. Though most of the project will be residential, there will be some commercial and nonprofit space available. Commercial space in phase one will include a small grocery, a coffee house, medical offices, and cultural space for the Muhammad School of Music & Miss Barbara’s School of Dance.  130 spaces of underground parking will be provided.  Rochester-based Smith+Associates is designing the project. The second phase would follow a similar plan with a set of buildings demolished and a new building constructed to contain approximately two hundred units for students, seniors, and medical staff.   Because completion of the first and second phase will take approximately three years, the remaining fifty-eight townhome units would receive an approximate $2 million rehab during construction of the initial building. Pilgrim Village will be redeveloped west to east.  Current tenants would be relocated to new or rehabbed units as the project develops in an attempt to maintain a diversified residential community.  New buildings will contain at least 20 percent affordable residences.  With an average of cost of $45 million per building, the developers anticipate a total build out of approximately $200 million.  The Cornerstone Manor at the corner of E. North and Michigan Avenue is not a part of the project site. Trammel is expecting to submit project plans to the City soon and will be seeking Erie County Industrial Development Agency incentives as well.  A fall groundbreaking for the project’s first phase is expected and total development is expected to take six years.