BUFFALO – Buffalo went through a decade-long economic cycle when a racially motivated attack by a gunman that kills 10 people in May, overshadowing progress. While the city grieves, it also has to account for its unflattering portraits of the East Side, the impoverished neighborhood where the massacre took place.
Residents, business owners and city officials say those harsh actions only tell part of the story. Now, they are determined to focus on recovery.
Major efforts to improve the East Side have taken place over the years, such as new job training facilities and the overhaul of an abandoned train station. And citywide initiatives to pour billions of dollars into parks, public art projects and apartment complexes have made Buffalo a more livable place, advocates say.
Those efforts may even have reversed chronic population decline: The latest census figures show Buffalo’s population has grown for the first time in 70 years.
Brandye Merriweather, president of Buffalo Urban Development Corporation, a nonprofit group that works to repurpose vacant lots owned by the city, said: “The other Buffalo story needs to be told, that investments investment is being implemented.
“I’m very sensitive to the issues the shooting raised,” said Merriweather, who grew up across the street from where the shooting took place and still has family in the neighborhood.
The wave of progress began in 2012 when the governor of New York at the time, Andrew M. Cuomo, pledged $1 billion in grants and tax credits as part of the recovery effort, and it has been fueled by a combination of taxpayer funds and private investments in the years since.
Perhaps the most visible sign of Buffalo’s changing fortunes are its new apartments, popping up in empty warehouses, old city buildings and perennial parking lots converted into much-needed housing. set. According to Mayor Byron W. Brown’s office, over the past decade, 224 multifamily projects – including 10,150 apartments, most of which are rentals, or about $3 billion in investment capital – have opened or are in progress. conducted.
And the pace of new housing construction appears to be accelerating: A third of the total, or 78 projects, were announced in 2020 and 2021 alone, the mayor’s office said.
Among them is Seneca One tower, the tallest building in the city and one of Buffalo’s most prominent projects. Completed in 1972 as a home for a bank, it has been vacant in recent years. Now, the 40-story central tower has a variety of uses after a $100 million renovation.
Douglas Development, which purchased the tower six years ago, has added 115 apartments and installed a dining room, large gym and craft brewery. It also raised the walls around a plaza to limit Lake Erie winds.
Barbara Foy, 64, who started renting a two-bedroom apartment at Seneca One this spring with her husband, Jack, 65, says she likes to sleep with cracked curtains to enjoy the glitter of the house. horizon line. For nearly three decades, Ms. Foy worked around as a social worker, although she was never really busy at night, instead driving back to her suburban home.
But the revival helped her see Buffalo in a whole new light. “There seems to be something going on every weekend,” Ms. Foy said, adding that she enjoyed the city’s Pride parade in June. “The buffalo has really come to life, and I’m so proud of it.”
Office leasing is slow. About 70% of the space at Seneca One is leased, mostly to M&T Bank, the Buffalo-based bank, as well as a dozen small tech companies. According to brokerage firm CBRE, the vacancy rate for top office buildings downtown was 13% at the end of last year, down from 14% in 2020.
On the other hand, rental housing is growing strongly. Greg Baker, director of development at Douglas, said it only took nine months to rent all the apartments at Seneca One once they hit the market in the fall of 2020 for up to $3,000/month. Buffalo’s median rent is $800 a month, according to census data.
Since purchasing Seneca One, Douglas has acquired approximately 20 properties in the area, including former hotels and hospitals that will be converted into residential homes.
“People are selling their homes in the suburbs to move into the city, compared to when I was younger, when they lived in the suburbs and came home from work,” said Buffalo native Baker.
In a sprawling city crisscrossed by highways, improving infrastructure is also a priority, though efforts have so far been mostly fruitless on the West Side. For example, a stretch of Niagara Road near a bridge leading to Canada, once home to many auto shops, now sparkles with new sidewalks, street lights and protected bike lanes. Bike shops and restaurants have also revived the dilapidated facades there.
Nearby, workers prepare to begin a $110 million overhaul of LaSalle Park, a 77-acre waterfront green space in the middle of Interstate 190. The plans call for a wide pedestrian bridge. walk across the highway.
Softening the rough edges of Buffalo’s commercial past is also a downtown focus, at Canalside, a neighborhood in development that embraces the short remains of the original Erie Canal. On a recent afternoon, school groups surrounded signs explaining how the wheat and pine of the Midwest once flowed through Buffalo on its way to Europe. Movie nights and yoga classes take place on the nearby lawn.
“Buffalo may have many ways to go, but it still has a long way to go,” said Stephanie Surowiec, 32, as she sat in the sun sipping a glass of apple cider bought from a nearby stall. A nurse who grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, Ms. Surowiec lived within the limits of today’s city.
If there was one model of how Buffalo could take advantage of new uses from its industrial husks, it could be Larkinville, a former soap and box manufacturing district in the city that the developers have built regenerated into a business district about a decade ago. The Blocklong factories now have offices centered around a square dotted with colorful Adirondack chairs. Wednesday night concerts are a staple in the summer.
Makeovers on a similar scale are less common on the East Side, but that could soon change.
This spring, officials announced a $225 million investment in the neighborhood, including $185 million from the state. Among the grants are $30 million for an African-American heritage corridor along Michigan Avenue and $61 million for the redevelopment of Central Station, a 17-story Art Deco train station. had the last passengers in 1979.
In June, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a $50 million investment in the East Side to help homeowners repair and unpaid utility bills.
Some projects have yielded tangible results, such as the redevelopment of a 35-acre portion of Northland Avenue surrounded by factories. Although much of the neighborhood’s properties remain derelict, a metalworking machinery manufacturing site was reborn in 2018 as the 237,000-square-foot Northland Central, an office and educational complex sex. It includes the Northland Workforce Training Center, which teaches job skills to area residents.
“The impact of this place has been phenomenal,” said Derek Frank, 41, who signed up for classes after serving an eight-year prison sentence for drug trafficking. Today, Mr. Frank works as an electrician, as does his son, Derek Jr., 21, taking classes with his father.
“They put that building right in the city center for accessibility and convenience,” he added.
However, the East Side’s redevelopment plans have sometimes run into difficulties. An attempt to create a hospital cluster called the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus caused a stigma. But advocates point out that hospitals, which employ 15,000 people, have tackled some of the economic stagnation after factories closed.
Whether driven by public investment or other reasons, Buffalo has experienced significant growth. The population of 278,000 in the 2020 census has increased by 7% from 261,000 in 2010.
Buffalo enjoys a steady stream of immigrants who, like the family of Muhammad Z. Zaman, immigrated from Bangladesh in 2004 in part because Buffalo is one of the few places in the United States with an Islamic school, Mr. Zaman said. .
Today, Mr. Zaman, 31, a working artist, is among the muralists hired to add bright designs to the walls of demolished buildings. One of his creations, incorporating Arabic calligraphy meaning “our colors make us beautiful,” juts out onto the face of a Broadway structure.
“When we first moved here, I felt like we were the only Bangladeshi family,” said Mr. Zaman. “Now, people are coming here from all over.”
