VISIONARIES: Rocco Termini
Posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010
by block club
Downtown Buffalo, no matter how much you dress up the reality, is a shell of its former self. Nightlife has its corner carved out, as do a few restaurants and entertainment venues. But block after block of neglected, even bulldozed, buildings has given the city a ghostly quality. Add the huge number of daytime employees who file out at 5 p.m. and head to their homes outside the city limits, and you have a problem.
But Rocco Termini, a developer who recently announced plans for the renovation and re-development of the famed AM&A’s department store, sees downtown as a playground for urban renewal. His real estate company, Signature Development, has repurposed a number of buildings, adding modern loft-style apartments to an otherwise quiet residential market. At the end of the day, it’s going home that Termini sees as downtown’s selling point for the future. -BS
What is your mission in developing downtown real estate?
We want downtown to be the Disneyland of Buffalo. We want it to be a place where people want to come, not have to come. We want to have everything here. We want to have entertainment here. We want to have retail here. We want to have restaurants here.
How does a city like ours go about establishing that?
If you look at other cities, (in) their downtown, first came housing, then came restaurants, and then came retail. So we’re in the second phase, really, of what’s been happening in other cities. We need to create a lot of little restaurants. That’s the secret to downtown: You can’t have big spaces. Buffalo’s not big enough for big spaces, so you need small, inexpensive spaces to create little restaurants and have them succeed.
Who’s moving downtown?
Well you know, in the [expected renovation of the] AM&A’s department store, our push is independent living for seniors. We’re going to have 28 apartments. I spoke before the Garrett Club about two years ago, and the ladies there told me they didn’t want to go to the suburbs. They wanted a place that they could stay in the city where they’re close to the theater, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. We will be providing all the services for those people: Food, cleaning, living, everything you can imagine we will provide for them. So that’s something new for downtown. Are you trying to attract certain groups here? You want to have everybody downtown; you just don’t want to have one group downtown. You want to have elderly people, you want to have young people, you want to have middle-aged people. You want to create a community. You can’t create a community with just one type of individual.
Many of your lofts have a high-end aesthetic to them. Is a contemporary look an important factor in your planning? Our whole thing is that you have to have a “wow” factor. You know, people have a choice of going to the city or going to the suburbs. So we want to give people something that they can’t get in the suburbs. Therefore, they have to be high-end. Because we use a lot of tax credits, we’re able to give people a little more value.
How important are tax credits to the preservation of existing buildings?
You know, I’ve been pragmatic. I’m not just a preservationist; I’m a businessman also. But people want to live in historic buildings. So we don’t want to tear them down. We want to preserve them. If we use those credits wisely and we use those as economic development tools, we should have no problem in this city restoring every historic building that we have and not
tearing down any. There should be a prohibition against tearing down any historic building in this city, because it’s not necessary.
What else do you have your sights set on?
The Lafayette Hotel is one of the most beautiful buildings downtown. And it’s one of the most historically significant buildings downtown. It was designed by one of the first female architects in the United States. So these buildings all have great significance and tell the story of Buffalo’s history. Why tear them down?
I’d love to see the 500 block of Main get done, and I’d love to see the Statler get done. I think they both can be accomplished with a little work. Those should be the main focal points of the city. Because the 500 block, if you look out from the Hyatt [hotel, on Pearl and West Huron], it looks like Beirut. Those are important pieces to economic development in downtown.
They are immense, but they’re both historic and that 500 block can look unbelievable if we paid a little attention to it. There are going to be cars on Main Street, and that’s going to help the 500 block. Cars on Main Street are coming in the next five years, so it’s time to start looking at those things.
