The Buffalo News | State's $30 million grant could turn DL&W dreams into 2025 reality

Through 30 years of talk about redeveloping the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Terminal at the foot of Main Street, planners have envisioned a bustling public space and transit hub on a resurrected Buffalo waterfront.

They forecast shops, bars, restaurants, meeting spaces and business incubators thriving in a historic trainshed that stands as an attraction in itself.

But nobody ever provided the key ingredient to make it happen: money.

Now the new state budget provides $30 million – sought by State Sen. Timothy M. Kennedy and others – for the project, enough to turn all the talk into the reality of a revived DL&W by 2025. It allows Samuel J. Savarino, CEO of Savarino Cos. and the project developer chosen by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, to pronounce that the recent influx of state and federal funds means the project will happen.

"It really is an investment in the building to get it in shape to accept occupancy," he said, listing a host of restorative projects to ready the structure for the business and programming to come.

"It will be a very hospitable and salubrious public place," he added. "Our intention is to restore that."

The new funds are among a torrent of state money flowing into Western New York announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul last week. She specifically mentioned the DL&W project during a Kleinhans Music Hall event touting the benefits of New York's new $221 billion state budget.

"The old DL&W, let's get that done once and for all, $30 million to get that revitalized," she said at Kleinhans. "I think that has such potential to be another anchor down on our beautiful waterfront."

The new state money accompanies $2 million announced in March by U.S. Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, along with Rep. Brian Higgins, for building a new skywalk from the terminal into KeyBank Center. That money arrived after the NFTA, which owns the DL&W, failed on three previous tries to secure federal funds for the project.

Built in 1917, the building has housed Metro Rail's Yard and Shops complex on the first floor since 1984. This summer, the NFTA will begin construction of a new Metro Rail station on the first floor along the Buffalo River side, which will serve KeyBank Center and generate foot traffic for development planned on the second floor. The authority also is finishing a $46 million state-sponsored project realigning Metro Rail tracks in the yard to accommodate the new station.

Now Savarino (the only developer to submit a proposal) and the NFTA are forging ahead, noting the attraction of the building itself, which once covered the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad's passenger platforms before the last train departed in 1962. Designed by railroad architect Abraham Bush in a style unique to the then-Lackawanna Railroad, it features expansive skylight systems and operable vaulted windows waiting to be reclaimed – still covered in soot from steam locomotives and hidden through the years

Savarino says the prospect of a space filled with natural light during the day and glowing with light from within at night proves compelling.

Utility conduits will also be installed in the track beds beside platforms still on the second floor, and structural re-enforcements are planned. That will include some sort of exterior access system to serve the activities inside.

In 2021, Savarino hired the Project for Public Space consulting firm, which conducted an extensive survey and public meetings to gauge the community's vision for the DL&W. The firm heard from 45 stakeholders and received 900 responses after a cross section of the community participated in interviews and focus groups that expressed a strong preference for preserving and enhancing the terminal.

"The DL&W Terminal is poised to become Buffalo's next transformative destination," it said in a report issued last fall. "With the right programming, management and design, the Terminal can become an inclusive place where the arts, food and music bring people together in a unique multi-use gathering place for the region."

The report also introduced a much heftier price tag. Where Savarino originally estimated $10 million to resurrect its 100,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, the report estimated $20 million or $30 million. Now the money is in hand, allowing Savarino to oversee the necessary preparatory work. 

Significant tweaking in design may lie ahead. Tim Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture and Culture, said his group suggests revising plans to connect the DL&W to KeyBank Arena via a skywalk near the intersection of Main Street and South Park Avenue. Tielman questions the use of public funds to support a private business like the Buffalo Sabres, thinks the enclosed passage is unnecessary, in the wrong place, and architecturally incompatible with the terminal.

"We view the trainshed as a historic structure, and the design the NFTA has developed really does harm to the structure," he said.

Tielman suggests Savarino and the authority locate a skywalk at Illinois Street and South Park Avenue to serve an existing parking ramp, where a stair tower and elevator are already planned. He also discounts the need for an enclosed skywalk, suggesting a more open structure incorporating design of the balustrade bordering the terminal all along South Park.

"This is not a once in a generation project, but a three-generational opportunity to do something right," Tielman said, calling current skywalk proposals unwise from architectural, functional and historic preservation perspectives.

The group also suggests some type of "intuitive" ramp access inviting Canalside visitors to the DL&W, without having to figure out access from the new rail station.