Buffalo Brewing Co. is moving forward with its plans to relocate to 662 Fillmore Avenue. The Preservation Board will be reviewing the project at its meeting tomorrow. Buffalo Brewing is currently located on Myrtle Street on the edge of the Larkin District.
662 Fillmore was originally home to Schreiber Brewery Company. Buffalo Brewing purchased the site last May for $150,000. The project will include a brewery, restaurant, event space, “brew-seum”, and apartments. Carmina Wood Morris is project architect and Preservation Studios is handling the tax credit work.
From the Project Application:
The scope of the project includes a complete exterior and interior restoration of +/- 25,000 sq. ft. former Schreiber Brewery and Bottling Works. This restoration project will be designed in accordance with the Secretary of Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation to make possible the solicitation of state and federal Historic Preservation Tax Credits to offset restoration costs. Historic tax credits will help offset the personal investment of owner John Domres and his investors for the estimated $5,500,000.00 project. The building is already identified as contributing to the Broadway Fillmore Historic District and therefore determined eligible.
The property will be developed as a two-phase project, ultimately restoring the exterior of the building to its appropriate period of significance as established by the locally and nationally certified Broadway Fillmore Historic District. The first phase of the project, anticipated to be completed spring 2022, will entail the installation of a temporary brewery in the non-historic pre-fab addition to the southwest of the historic building, while the second phase will commence in fall 2022 and include the balance of the restoration and fit out. When completed, the building will house a brewery (basement), restaurant/tasting room, event space and Brew-seum (first floor), an owner-occupied residential apartment as well as four additional residential units (second floor), and a related commercial entity (non-historic addition).
In regard to the specific restoration efforts being undertaking in the project, the exterior masonry will be stripped of its unoriginal paint finish and restored to its historic appearance. Damaged and deteriorated brick and decorative masonry elements will be repointed, repaired, and/or replaced in kind utilizing salvaged materials as necessary and available.
Any new materials to match materiality/color/texture/scale/proportion/finish of historic in kind. Existing wood framed double-hung units, primarily along the Fillmore elevation, to be restored, while badly deteriorated industrial steel frame windows will be replaced in kind, matching historic profiles and aesthetic. A new roof will be installed with code required insulation, and crumbling parapets rebuilt. Internally, historic fabric such as concrete floors, steel columns with exposed structural elements, and glazed brick wall surfaces to be restored and highlighted in the design. The former Schreiber Brewery administration offices at the first floor, flanking Fillmore, to be fully restored/returned to their original appearance based upon documentation generously donated by the Buffalo History Museum archives. This space will be programmed as a Brew-seum telling the story of Buffalo’s brewing lineage. The former employee-only loft bar, overlooking the former two-story bottling floor (future event space), to be restored to its original appearance complete with reproductions of the famous brewery murals.