The Chautauqua Institution, an educational community and summer resort located on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in the Southern Tier of Western New York, will be featured in a one-hour documentary entitled Chautauqua: An American Narrative to premiere nationwide on PBS (WNED locally) tonight at 10PM. Often called “the original PBS”, the Chautauqua Institution was established in 1874 by an Ohio inventor and philanthropist Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist Bishop. While it began as summer teaching camp for Sunday school instructors the Institution grew to become a full scale educational community offering programing centered around the “four pillars” of the arts, education, religion…
Author: dylanmarsh
This week, Uniland Development Company announced that a lease has been signed for 23,877 square feet of office space at 300 Airborne Parkway in Cheektowaga. The Class A offices will be occupied by a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “We pride ourselves on offering the type of Class A office space, property management services and amenities that clients like the Department of Homeland Security expect,” said Michael Montante, vice president at Uniland. “Uniland is proud to work with this prestigious arm of the United States Government whose charge is to ensure we can all live and raise our families in a…
Jeanne Gang, founder and president of Studio Gang Architects and the lead designer of downtown Chicago’s recently completed iconic Aqua Tower, will present the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning’s 2010 Bethune Lecture. Jeanne is a friend of mine so I know she will deliver a great lecture which, I am sure will take you through many subjects not normally associated with architecture as she explains her work. She is influenced heavily by the things she finds around her as she conceives a design, whether it be an animal’s fur or the way concrete falls from the chute into a formwork.…
We mostly think of buildings and places in terms of our daytime experiences, Times Square and Las Vegas being the major exceptions to this rule. Those two places and perhaps a few others are anomalies in the way they are defined by their amazing nighttime ‘specialness’. Mostly however, our thoughts, impressions and imaging of buildings and places are formed in daylight. This is due mostly to the simple fact that most of our waking hours are generally spent in daylight and it is much easier to take a daytime photograph. Nighttime is a foreign place to us as humans. We…
Does Buffalo need another downtown hotel? This is the question many asked when Uniland announced their downtown mixed-use conversion project, Avant. And Uniland Development Company answered not with just another “downtown hotel” but with the premier hospitality, residential and office space in Buffalo. The Embassy Suites Buffalo at Avant has quickly become the choice location for business travelers, meetings, weddings, and tourists alike. The project has been such a success that the hotel was recognized by parent company Hilton Worldwide as “best conversion” among its North American hotels. If occupancy is any measure of a hotel’s success then the 153-room Embassy Suites…
On Wednesday, Statler City, LLC and Preservation Buffalo Niagara held an event at the historic building to present their proposal for the future of the property to an estimated 125 civic leaders, developers, and elected officials. Statler City, LLC, headed by developer Mark Croce and businessman James Eagan, has been approved to purchase the building. While the building is steeped in legal issues and many have called for its demolition, the group insists that saving would be the most sensible option. Citing the Memorial Auditorium as an example, the presentation pointed out that the costs for the City to mothball…
The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC), a critical economic engine of WNY and New York State, continues to receive government financial support. Last week, Representative Louise Slaughter announced a $4.6 million federal appropriation to the University of Buffalo for the purchase of a cyclotron to be installed in the university’s new Clinical and Transitional Research Center (CTRC) currently under construction in the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The funds, coming from the US Department of Defense, will help the $118 million facility translate basic medical research into new treatments and technologies for patients. A Biosciences Incubator, being developed alongside the…
He’s not officially governor yet, but it appears Andrew Cuomo is already hard at work for Western New York. On Friday, just three days after his election day victory, Cuomo sent a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking that if proposed high-speed rail projects in Ohio and Wisconsin are ended as promised by their recently elected governors, New York would gladly make use of the $1.26 billion in funding that would be forfeited by their cancellations. Although he won the governorship by the one of the widest margins in history, his opponent Carl Paladino dominated the Western…
Concrete slab foundations are in for a two-building apartment project at 301-311 W. Utica Street. FJF Development, consisting of contractor Paul Johnson, attorney Michael Ferdman and architect Karl Frizlen, is the project developer. The site is just west of Elmwood Avenue. Sixteen, two-bedroom apartments with approximately 1,000 sq.ft. of living space and private garages are being constructed. The development team previously proposed a 14-unit condominium building for the property. Though three of the condos were pre-sold at prices starting at $224,900, it was not enough to secure construction financing. Frizlen and Ferdman are also working with Krog Development to redevelop the northwest corner…
A major addition to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus is beginning to take its final form. Installation of the blue glass on the 10-story Global Vascular Institute and Clinical & Transitional Research Center/Incubator, a joint venture between the University at Buffalo and Kaleida Health is nearing completion. The $291 million facility aims to transform Buffalo into a “world-class health care destination”. The center will form a collaborative effort between Kaleida Health physicians and UB researchers to provide advanced medical care, vascular disease treatment breakthroughs, and development of local biotechnology business opportunities. The two-year construction project, designed by Canon Design, will open…