Buffalo Central Terminal - The Big Discussion

Otto Vondrak wrote:

Railroaded wrote:...it's just that in my mind, it's too far gone by now. Garbage in = garbage out.

Good thing that CTRC is relying on the opinion of professnal structural engineers who disagree with your asessment. If it was indeed "too far gone," I doubt the project would have the amount of support it has now.

Just because it isn't going to fall down any time soon doesn't make it a viable candidate for a taxpayer funded redevelopment. As far as support, it's one thing to generate a presentation, but I don't see where the private money is going to come from.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: The big difference is that very few people would actually want to go to BCT. It's a bad location

How do you account for the thousands of people that go there for the buildings numerous events each year? And the fact that attendants for each event keeps climbing. Take there train show for example, every year more and more people are showing up. Plus more and more vendors are choosing the Central Terminal train show over the one in Hamburg.

Otto Vondrak wrote: Plus, they have real, tangible results to show for their efforts over the last 13 years or so.

Thank you Otto! I imagine that for someone who hasn't been to the building before that it doesn't seem to have changed at all. I've seen numerous improvements over the last 8 years. The grounds have been cleaned up significantly...tires and trash no longer litter the plaza. The parking lot has been re-surfaced. The grass around the building is cut on a regular basis. And nearly all the concourse is clean and used as event space. Along with many new items that change every year. Every few months the building seems to improve. The public may not take note, but the building is on a steady path towards restoration.

terminalfanatic wrote:How do you account for the thousands of people that go there for the buildings numerous events each year? And the fact that attendants for each event keeps climbing. Take there train show for example, every year more and more people are showing up. Plus more and more vendors are choosing the Central Terminal train show over the one in Hamburg.

32 days until Dyngus Day at the BCT!

terminalfanatic wrote:

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: The big difference is that very few people would actually want to go to BCT. It's a bad location

How do you account for the thousands of people that go there for the buildings numerous events each year? And the fact that attendants for each event keeps climbing. Take there train show for example, every year more and more people are showing up. Plus more and more vendors are choosing the Central Terminal train show over the one in Hamburg.

There's a big difference between a model train show, or Polka dancing, and a genuinely useful transportation center. All of BCTs issues were apparent even in the 1930s. It's not an issue of changing needs in an evolving community, but fact that the BCT was tragically oversized and oddly located from day one. Even from the standpoint of residential and business redevelopment, it doesn't work. Throw in the upcoming census figures, which no doubt will show yet another decade of double digit population declines, and it's clear that there's no economic, demographic, commercial or practical justification for the expenditure of public funds on BCT.

The thing that disturbs me the most is that this so-called plan maintains the fiction of BCT as a passenger rail station. It can't, won't and shouldn't happen. Similarly, dual use commercial/residential redevelopment is out as well. It would cost $500k to $1 million per housing unit to rehab the tower for residential use. Who's going to pay those prices in Buffalo, let alone this part of Buffalo?

You would be surprised how much loft-style condos are going for in re-purposed buildings in Buffalo (i.e. former warehouses). That said, the area around BCT would need significant "change" before units in the tower would become attractive to a prospective buyer.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote:There's a big difference between a model train show, or Polka dancing, and a genuinely useful transportation center. All of BCTs issues were apparent even in the 1930s. It's not an issue of changing needs in an evolving community, but fact that the BCT was tragically oversized and oddly located from day one. Even from the standpoint of residential and business redevelopment, it doesn't work. Throw in the upcoming census figures, which no doubt will show yet another decade of double digit population declines, and it's clear that there's no economic, demographic, commercial or practical justification for the expenditure of public funds on BCT.

The thing that disturbs me the most is that this so-called plan maintains the fiction of BCT as a passenger rail station. It can't, won't and shouldn't happen. Similarly, dual use commercial/residential redevelopment is out as well. It would cost $500k to $1 million per housing unit to rehab the tower for residential use. Who's going to pay those prices in Buffalo, let alone this part of Buffalo?

OK, the usefulness of BCT as a railroad station is debatable... but its future potential for mixed commercial/residential use is not. Buffalo residents need only look to nearby Rochester (where I live) to see the loft apartments and mixed use buildings that have been developed from old warehouses and factories. The architecture of BCT surpasses just about any of the redeveloped buildings in Rochester, so it would be worth the tax dollars to redevlop the terminal into loft apartments.. and some commercial space, too.

The argument against using tax dollars is a nonstarter. It will take an investment (which can and should include tax dollars) to redevelop BCT. In turn, a healthy, privately owned building with tenants will add to the local tax base... thereby repaying the public monies invested into it.

Matt Langworthy wrote:

goodnightjohnwayne wrote:There's a big difference between a model train show, or Polka dancing, and a genuinely useful transportation center. All of BCTs issues were apparent even in the 1930s. It's not an issue of changing needs in an evolving community, but fact that the BCT was tragically oversized and oddly located from day one. Even from the standpoint of residential and business redevelopment, it doesn't work. Throw in the upcoming census figures, which no doubt will show yet another decade of double digit population declines, and it's clear that there's no economic, demographic, commercial or practical justification for the expenditure of public funds on BCT.

The thing that disturbs me the most is that this so-called plan maintains the fiction of BCT as a passenger rail station. It can't, won't and shouldn't happen. Similarly, dual use commercial/residential redevelopment is out as well. It would cost $500k to $1 million per housing unit to rehab the tower for residential use. Who's going to pay those prices in Buffalo, let alone this part of Buffalo?

OK, the usefulness of BCT as a railroad station is debatable... but its future potential for mixed commercial/residential use is not. Buffalo residents need only look to nearby Rochester (where I live) to see the loft apartments and mixed use buildings that have been developed from old warehouses and factories. The architecture of BCT surpasses just about any of the redeveloped buildings in Rochester, so it would be worth the tax dollars to redevlop the terminal into loft apartments.. and some commercial space, too.

The argument against using tax dollars is a nonstarter. It will take an investment (which can and should include tax dollars) to redevelop BCT. In turn, a healthy, privately owned building with tenants will add to the local tax base... thereby repaying the public monies invested into it.

I'm only replying to your last paragraph (Which the forum software doesn't easily allow me to just quote, I'm not going to hit backspace for 5 minutes to get rid of the rest). But anyways, he doesn't understand that concept. He's repeatedly shown that his opinion on investment of public tax money into any sort of project is wrong regardless of the far reaching benefits it may have.

Leo_Ames wrote:I'm only replying to your last paragraph (Which the forum software doesn't easily allow me to just quote, I'm not going to hit backspace for 5 minutes to get rid of the rest). But anyways, he doesn't understand that concept. He's repeatedly shown that his opinion on investment of public tax money into any sort of project is wrong regardless of the far reaching benefits it may have.

I hear ya... but I felt the need to repost so that others, who read this thread and may be "sitting on the fence" regarding the issue, can see a differing opinion.

One more thing- I've read some criticism about NYC's choice of location for BCT. IMO, I actually think it was a smart move. The other RRs in Buffalo (e.g. DL&W, Erie, LV, etc.) had passenger terminals on or near the waterfront when BCT was built. However, the need for the public to travel by water had greatly decreased by 1929, so locating the terminal further inland and away from the congestion of the Buffalo waterfront and related freight traffic was pretty sensible.

P.S. I agree about the forum software being a pain.

The NYC originally looked downtown but the costs of land were way too high and the other problem was the fact that either a back up move, or a trip around the Belt Line would have been required to access a station built there for any East/West trains that didn't go towards the Falls. NYC also did not like the idea of a true"Union Station" and wanted a big one of their own. They chose the East side since it was directly on the main line and the concept at the time was that the station would bring urban renewal with it to that neighborhood. They actually leveled a large section of housing in what was described at the time as a run down part of town in an effort to improve the area with the new building. Obviously that further improvement around the terminal never happened, but back in the 1920's it seemed like a fine place for a train station anyway. Because of that decision, the building now sits in the middle of a stretch of depressed housing stock with rail lines on two sides, a rail yard along one of them, and no direct access to the thruway, and also no nearby shopping districts, clubs, bars, entertainment, malls, the airport, metrorail, a collage campus, industrial districts, the waterfront, or the suburbs. What would any future tenat, either commercial, or residential, find desireable about that location? Nothing. What sane buisness person or company would invest there? No one. There's plenty of other properties that are standing in, or near a desireable place to live & work, yet they sit undeveloped. The Statler building & the Hotel Lafayette downtown are two good examples. If they can't make it work in the Cetral Buisness District and all that that entails, why would something like that happen 3 miles away in the middle of nowhere'sville? The successfull rebuilds of old buildings here happened in the suburbs, or in and around the downtown core. The East Side location worked for a railroad in 1929, but not for much else.

I dont think you understand what property development is all about. It's not what you perceive to be there now, it is the potential of what a property can become. That is really what the "development" part means.

If everyone thought like you, there would be no rebuilding, no renewal, no gentrification, no progress.

Perception of what can be developed tomorrow is precisely what a lot of this about. God bless the folks making efforts with BCT, it is a tremendous old historic building....but it is a lost cause. It isn't in a position that will change for the better, probably won't stay status quo, it is in a worsening position. BCT was too far out of the central city when it was built but the hopes were the city would expand to it, which the depression and other factors stopped. Now in a city of about 40% of peak population, a declining population, a near dead economic base and high poverty rates, what tomorrow is there for the East side area around BCT ? The Broadway market, Kmart others can't make a go of it in that area. If a building that size was a white elephant in Buffalo's boom years, it is more so today. When Buffalo was booming it was socially normal to shop in the city, today, folks live in the burbs and go to the big box centers or get on the thruway for a mall with a conveneient exit. Gnash your teeth all you want but it is the way people live today and we aren't going to change it. The last thing people are going to do is to go out of their way to a place that is not readily conveneint to access, call them lazy but the end result is the same. Add to that that the facility is in a not safe neighborhood, spin it or BS it all you want but the facts are the neighborhood is NOT good, and even worse, the perception by most people is that it is a very bad neighborhood. Beyond that it is a terribly run down and depressing neighborhood, almost no one is or would want to go there, the area is a dump and a big downer against trying to get people there on any regular basis. The Broadway market died as the result, about the only business they had was the local polish old folks who refused to leave the old homestead. Very few ventured into that garbage dump of a neighborhood to visit the market from the burbs....

BCT is a large building that despite efforts at stabalization still would take a large investment just to stave off further, rapid deterioration. When you get to the rehab and adaptive reuse part you start getting into massive capital investment. Once it is done, you have a very large annual cost to keep the place heated and maintained. In a feces hole neighborhood the only way you can get business tenants (Or Condo tenants) is by price ....cheap. Even cheap it is going to be about impossible to keep enough in the building to just try and heat and maintain the place. The area is made up of poor, the thugs and the few remaining old Polish homesteaders living out their last days, that isn't something you can build any business model on.

People don't want to travel to dangerous, blighted and extremely depressing neighborhoods. To rehab and maintain that place it would have to be a hugely successful commercial venture people wanted to throng to day after day, year after year. About the only way that might even begin to happen is to bulldoze everything for a couple square miles around it and plant greenspace, extend a thruway ramp to it's approximate area and have a sugar daddy with piles of excess cash and no business sense to spend that pile on the rehab of the terminal on a whim, ignoring every reasonable and practical busines principle in the process. To waste more taxpayer money in the hopes some foolhardy busness may be suckered in to the vacume of failure is just blind hoping by the nostolgic for a miracle.

I'm not trying to slam anyone but this is the reality of it, I loved the old place, but as someone else pointed out, even the Hotel Laffayette and the Stattler are becoming lost causes, unless some foll with billions of spare pocket change wants to come in and rebuild not only the terminal but a large portion of the east side up from scratch, ignoring even basic common sense business indicators, the fate of BCT is pretty much inevitable I am afraid.

Clearly there is a lot of misinformation and rhetoric and general strong opinions about Buffalo Central Terminal... But not much fact.

I beg to differ. Pretty much everything Colorado says is fact. The problem is that for most people with pie in the sky dreams of grandure, the truth hurts.

Hey Otto when was the last time you were in Buffalo, you do not live here so what you say is also heresay. Move here or come here for a long visit and really see the reality of what Buffalo is, I agree with Colorado in what he says. I have lived here and worked heat all my life and have seen Buffalo go down hill. Another question I have is when this big developer come in, will it take over and will the CTRC loose control of the building. But good luck to them.

Steve W wrote:Another question I have is when this big developer come in, will it take over and will the CTRC loose control of the building. But good luck to them.

There are lots of options for structuring deals with developers, all of which we will explore when the time comes. We are very conscious of our mission though, and to preserve the historic integrity of the building will likely require us to retain some amount of control over the project.

FYI - I've lived in WNY all my life too. I've seen areas of the city rise and other areas fall. I believe Central Terminal should and will be saved. But, that's why I'm on this side of the line and some of you are on the other. I'm not willing to just sit and watch it crumble without being able to say that I put in a hell of an effort to prevent that.