BUFFALO, N.Y. — The last section of land owned by the state at Canalside is one step closer to being developed.
At Monday's Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation meeting of directors, development plans for the 2-acre North Aud Block were announced.
It includes a major housing component, with a $160 million neighborhood containing five buildings with street-level shops and 367 apartments, half of which will be set aside for lower-income tenants.
"We want to bring as many people down to the waterfront as possible, to be able to not just come down and enjoy the day but to have a chance to live there just like anybody else," said Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation President Steven Ranalli. "So, the better the mix, the stronger the mix, and the better for Western New York.
The housing units will sit atop a two-story underground parking garage.
Ranalli says this will be a transformative deveopment that will complete the Canalside puzzle.
"The developer has been able to incorporate the historic streets, those bridges over the canal today, they sort of lead to nowhere," Ranalli said. "They will lead right up through the Northeast block reconnecting to the street grid in the downtown area."
This project is vastly different than the Bass Pro Shop that was first proposed in 2005. Bass Pro pulled out of their commitment to redevelop the site of the old Memorial Auditorium in 2010, a year after the historic venue was demolished.
"I think what Buffalo has learned to do is stand on its own and do all the due diligence, which was necessary to create the conditions that were attractive for investment," said Congressman Brian Higgins.
ECHDC selected the development company Pennrose to lead the project. Additionally, Pennrose has partnered with MSquared and WEDI on the project in order to meet the state's MWBE requirements.
With the memory of the Bass Pro renderings not completely erased from western New York's memory, the selected developer says they will work closely to live up to the expectation.
"I think, to the large extent that we can from a material availability and pricing perspective, we will look to seethe general datum of the architecture that we're showing here be what we're delivering," said Dylan Salmons, regional vice president at Pennrose.
With no firm timetable in place, the developer estimated ground might not be broken until 2025 with the earliest move-in dates sometime in 2027-- 18 years after the Aud was torn down.
Construction on a smaller piece of the North Aud block, the so-called Gateway Building, is expected to being in May. The four-story structure will contain new offices for the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation, meeting rooms, retail space, and restrooms, and will come with a more than $14 million price tag.
The final phase of the Canalside development comes 14 years after the Memorial Auditorium was torn down. It is the remaining parcel of land owned by the state to be developed along Canalside.