The historic Trico Plant No. 1 on the edge of downtown Buffalo won't be designated a local landmark. The Common Council deadlocked in a 4-4 vote Tuesday. The tie kills the recommendation to make the complex a city landmark, as it is already a national landmark. Status as a city landmark would make it hard for the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to demolish the tattered buildings.
Councilmembers David Franczyk, Joseph Golombek, Michael Locurto and and David Rivera voted in favor of landmarking the building. Richard Fontana, Darius Pridgen, Christopher Scanlon, and Demone Smith voted against. Councilwoman Bonnie Russell was not in chambers for the vote.
Council Majority Leader Demone Smith says landmark status can block a good re-use, which is why he voted against landmark status for the former Fairfield Library in North Buffalo, which has been converted into an apartment building with parking.
"I went against what a lot of people said and now you should see the product of not landmarking that. It's a beautiful project," Smith said. "I think that if we landmark it, it limits the ability to produce something else different."
Preservation Board Chairman Paul McDonnell says the buildings meet the criteria, as Councilmember David Rivera pointed out during the debate.
"Rivera did say that they met all the standards and I think that's what the councilpeople should have been voting on, whether it meets the standards. We had determined that it met seven out of the nine standards that are listed in the charter," McDonnell said.
The medical campus says Trico isn't worth saving because there isn't a need for so much space and it would cost well above $100 million to prepare it for re-use and much more to re-open it.
The campus has agreed to give developers six months to come up with a plan for saving and re-using the complex. Parts of the building been saved and re-purposed, but a linked set of buildings totaling around 600,000 square feet of space is falling apart slowly and faces eventual demolition.
