BUFFALO, N.Y. — There are emerging concerns about office vacancies in downtown Buffalo Buildings. And as it turns out housing shortages are also now prompting a City Council member to reach out to building owners through a letter sent to the Buffalo Place Board of Directors.
Councilman Mitch Nowakowski says "We need those residential residents to really fill in what the office worker once was."
That is his observation on changing trends for downtown Buffalo office buildings as companies are reducing or shifting office workspace needs as more employees want to work from home now beyond the pandemic. Nowakowski's letter states about 20,000 fewer people are commuting to downtown Buffalo for their jobs as compared to five years ago. And it notes that as of 2022 over one-sixth of Buffalo office space was unoccupied.
As we've reported previously, that trend is indeed a worrisome situation for some local business leaders. For example, Buffalo Niagara Partnership President and CEO Dottie Gallagher told us in April 2023 "I think we're going to see a lot of shifting and a lot of shrinking of employers sort of footprints in office environment." She said that applied to Buffalo and cities across the country.
And perhaps a a bigger concern communicated from the Rath building as Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told us back then "If they're not getting as much rent because they're not renting as much space they could theoretically go into default and then you've got some very valuable properties that could theoretically be foreclosed."
Or he added there could be a request to lower assessments meaning perhaps less city and county tax revenues.
So now back to Nowakowski who has reached out to those building owners and developers to ask them if they would consider converting unused office space to residential housing space. He says "The last thing I want is developers and landlords to not have a functional use for their structures and leaving them vacant and abandoned or just taking a loss on their taxes. I think we really need to get ahead of this and an open mind to what do developers need for conversions.."
The Councilman, who chairs the Finance Committee, added "My preliminary conversations stated 'Councilmember - Look - we are for this but the conversion to be able to adaptively re-use these monies will create a large gap where potential projects just can't get off the ground."
Nowakowski also pointed out "I did see this is in the state budget to allow Manhattan to start getting ahead of their office conversions for residential use and as the second largest city that's in the state of New York - Buffalonians - and Buffalo is dealing with this same problems that are downtown and we really need access to those resources."
Governor Hochul has pressed for ways to get more affordable housing units in the state and such conversions may be one way to do so. Nowakowski says of the $600 Million allocated in the recent state budget, some were earmarked for incentives for developers to carry out conversions in those buildings.
New York State Senator Sean Ryan was not available for an interview but also stated "Meaningfully addressing Buffalo's housing shortage is going to require a wide range of creative solutions. As more and more companies shift to a remote work model, converting vacant office buildings downtown into apartment buildings is a smart idea worthy of state funding."