Is 28 years long enough? The AM&As building has been a drag on downtown Buffalo since the short-lived Taylor’s Department Store closed in 1998. The building has symbolized both the promise and the frustration of downtown’s resurgence. The 350,000 sq.ft. behemoth occupies a pivotal position in the heart of downtown, next to M&T Bank’s headquarters, arguably our most important locally-based company. Reuse of the building would play a transformative role in bringing new energy, residents, and activity to a sleepy block of Main Street.
Continued vacancy of the AM&A’s building remains one of the city’s most visible redevelopment challenges — and, potentially, one of its greatest opportunities. It’s on the dwindling list of my “hopefully someday” downtown building reuse projects. Up until recently, that list included rebirth of the Seneca One complex at the southern end of downtown and the Trico Building to the north. Kudos to Douglas Jemal and The Krog Group for taking on those giant undertakings which are both unqualified successes. When there’s a will, a market, and money, big things are possible. Other downtown buildings that remain on my list include the DL&W, Statler and Main Place Mall. And although hard to like, something needs to happen with the Buffalo Grand Hotel.
To the frustration of many, development plans have come and gone for the prime and strategically important AM&A’s complex. Richard Taylor bought the former department store and warehouses behind it in 1996 and operated the Taylor Department Store there until 1999. In 2004, Uniland Development considered constructing a new building on the site to house Blue Shield when the insurer was looking to relocate back to downtown. The firm chose a new build at the Gas Works site at the foot of Church Street.
Roslyn Heights-based New Horizons Acquisitions LLC purchased the properties from Taylor in September 2006 for $2,050,000 and announced a $60 million project to convert it into a mix of 180 apartments and ground floor retail that went nowhere.
Rocco Termini sought to buy the building in 2009 for a $70 million redevelopment that included a 117-room hotel, apartments, office space, a food court, bowling alley and bar. The project (below) died when he couldn’t obtain financing.
Termini did successfully acquire and redevelop the former AM&A’s warehouse buildings at the corner of Washington and Eagle streets. Purchased from New Horizons Acquisitions for $720,000, the four-building complex (below) was transformed into 48 apartments and 15,000 sq.ft. of commercial space.
The store was sold to Queens-based Landco H&L for $2.775 million in November 2014. Landco H&L beat out locally-based Hamister Group. Hamister was planning up to 300 apartments and a ground floor retail marketplace.
Landco proposed a $60 million reuse (above) that included a 300-room Wyndham on the second through eighth floors, six apartments on the top two levels, restaurant and retail space on the first floor and a spa in the basement. Asbestos remedial work was started and to make the large floors conducive to a hotel layout, four light wells were carved into the middle of the building.
After financing issues, Landco sold the property to 377 Main Realty Inc for $2 million in February 2020. 377 Main Realty’s reuse plan (below) called for basement parking spaces accessed from Washington Street and nine first-floor parking spaces accessed from Eagle Street. The first floor would include a 1,346 sq.ft. café fronting Main Street, 11,607 sq.ft. of retail or office space, a 3,533 sq.ft. fitness center, and common areas. 128,000 sq.ft. of office space was planned on floors two through five.
Thirty-three apartments, ranging from 1,000 sq.ft. one-bedroom units to 2,700 sq.ft. three-bedroom plans, would be located on the sixth through tenth floors. The plan was flexible as the fifth floor could be renovated to include 11 additional apartments if an office user wasn’t found.
The City approved plans for the project in 2020 and the General Services Administration, which was looking for new digs for the Social Security Administration and Army Corps of Engineers, was close to signing a lease for space in the project. A lease or two would have provided a crucial anchor for the site. But the ownership dispute stalled everything. After six years of back and forth, the case is finally scheduled for trial next month.
The repeated false starts underscore the challenges of redeveloping large historic buildings, where high renovation costs and complicated financing structures often derail even well-intentioned plans.
The success numerous other conversion projects offers a glimpse of what adaptive reuse can accomplish. Historic buildings that once stood as reminders of downtown decline have become anchors for new housing, hotel rooms, businesses, and street-level activity. Redevelopment of the AM&A’s building would have a similar catalytic effect, helping to bring new life to the former retail heart of downtown and generating the kind of consistent foot traffic needed to support restaurants, retail, and small businesses.
To many preservationists, developers, and downtown advocates, the building represents more than vacant square footage. Its eventual reuse could serve as a defining statement about Buffalo’s commitment to reinvesting in its historic core. It’s past time to get this building back to use.
According to Sam Savarino, the court-appointed building caretaker and potential development partner on the project, the building’s inefficient floor plate design, remaining asbestos, deteriorated mechanical infrastructure, and identified contamination issues, compound the vast amount of renovation work needed on the building. The property requires near complete reconstruction of the interior, roof replacement, structural repairs to the vault systems along Main and Eagle streets, new windows, and wood floor replacement.
Savarino believes there is a path forward if all of the parties are committed to getting something done here. That includes the two parties to the lawsuit, the judge overseeing the case, the title company and the City. With the pending white elephant historic preservation tax credit bill, the existing brownfield tax credit program, private financing and developer equity, building reuse, in as rough a state as it is in currently, is feasible.
Twenty-eight years is embarrassing. It’s time to get this project done and off my wish list. When downtown thrives, the whole region benefits.
