BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Central Terminal Restoration Corporation says it's ready begin the next phase of work to save and redevelop one of Buffalo's most beloved buildings.
After spending $5 million on studies and structural work over the past three years, the agency will spend three times that amount over the next three years for additional improvements.
This will include capital projects on both the outside and inside of the terminal, built in 1929, where there are broken windows that need replacing and roofing that needs to be sealed in order to keep the elements out of the structure.
Inside, work will be done to address structural concerns and masonry conditions in the Main Terminal Building, Tower, and parking garage, according to Monica Pellegrino Faix, executive director of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp.
The work will begin now with a conditions assessment of the Main Terminal building and garage, followed by a design phase with construction documents to be issued in late 2023 and early 2024; bidding and construction will take place starting in 2024 and will continue through 2025.
The repairs to the parking garage that exists below the terminal plaza are seen as important toward efforts to reopening the concourse for public events on a limited basis.
The Quinn Evans architectural firm out of Detroit has been contracted to oversee the work, and Pellegrino Faix noted the firm has been engaged in similar efforts to restore the Central Michigan Terminal, and the Penn station in Baltimore.
By September, it hoped that a private partner will be selected to develop the 30-acre site, which includes the Central Terminal, the attached former baggage and postal building, and two other abandoned structures owned by the City of Buffalo.
The Master Plan adopted by the Central Terminal Restoration Corp. puts the price of developing the entire site at between $200 and $300 million.
"This could be housing, this could be building on Buffalo's innovation sector, it could be offices, light manufacturing, community space for other not for profits... there's a lot of room here for a lot of different uses," Pellegrino Faix said. "Sometimes things happened incrementally and once you get a great start the ball is rolling on other opportunities that come along with it."
