BUFFALO, N.Y. — Progress is being made inside, and outside, of Buffalo's tallest building after the COVID-19 pandemic shut construction down for nearly three months.
Developer Douglas Jemal provided a tour Wednesday afternoon of the 13th and 22nd floor of the Seneca One Tower. These floors will be part of the M&T Bank Tech Hub that the bank announced in 2019.
Jemal was excited as the media toured his work in progress.
"We're going to create a sense of space, first of community, a sense of being, and this is going to be we're very proud of this. Everybody is this was all done but heart and soul," Jemal said.
And the heart and soul of the Buffalo Skyline, at least from a height standpoint, is swimming with activity with construction crews finishing the 10 floors that M&T Bank will occupy as part of their long awaited tech hub, complete with a coffee bar and soundproof meeting rooms.
On a tour that was attended by Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul, Jamal said he thinks that despite people enjoying the idea of working from home because of the pandemic, they will have no problem with people not wanting to work out of the tower.
"Not when it comes to the views that you have here and what we've done in the Plaza in the courtyards," Jamal said. "To me, you're gonna want to come here. That's why everybody is here, because you want to come here.
"We're all dying to interact again, candidly. We're sick and tired of sitting in the four rooms in a house."
Oh, and regarding that exterior paint job that we've all been seeing the last few weeks?
"Now we have a painting crisis going on," Jamal said. "So drop your cameras, your microphones and get to work on that scaffold slice up there. Nice and cool. So yeah, it'll be about three months."
Jamal says that when they started this building there were no leases signed, and now they are in talks with multiple restaurants and microbreweries, a very public notable tenant in M&T bank, and multiple startups from outside the area opening offices in Buffalo's tallest building.
"So I really believe if you build something, people will come," he said. "So really what I want to see happen in Buffalo, we have to show them that we're building that we're moving, that we're doing things that there's action going on. We're not doormen and it can't just be a conversation. It has to be action."
Constructions and installation of office space on the 22nd floor of the Seneca One Tower is nearly complete, and that has officials with M&T Bank very excited so they can finally open their Innovation hub.
"We we continue to be convicted about the long term plans of this space, certainly in the short term, when we think about density when we think about total capacity," said Mike Wisler, the Chief Information Officer at M&T Bank.
"You know, I'd anticipate that we ramp our capacity over time as we first and foremost want to create a safe space for everybody."
The reality is, a lot of tech work can be done at home, and the pandemic proved that. Part of the plan was for M&T Bank to recruit more than 1,000 tech workers for their new Seneca One Tower space.
Is that going to be a challenge for Wisler to convince young talent who's been working from home during the pandemic to all of a sudden go back to a traditional office space, even if it looks really great.
"So not surprising to me, but maybe surprising to others," Wisler said. "We've actually been able to maintain a lot of our talent attraction, there was a maybe a bit of a pause as everybody was reacting and just supporting the the getting out of offices. I think that we're going to continue to get a lot of looks at fantastic talent that are in much more dense cities than we are."
Wisler says the pandemic is very much top of mind as they plan to move into the tower.
"I think what we need to do is we need to talk about the right kind of pacing the right kind of capacity, and what are the protocols for us to be able to be in the office?" Wisler said.
He says the idea of remote work for some employees isn't off the table, but it's not an either-or decision.
If there are no further delays because of COVID-19, they're expected to finish everything up on the 10 floors at Seneca One Tower in October.
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