Cars will be returning to another section of Main Street, under a financial deal between Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and developer Doug Jemal.
That's the section under Jemal's Seneca One tower, improving access to the high-rise lifestyle community the Washington, D.C. developer is building in the former HSBC tower.
He is renovating 12 floors for an M&T Bank computer complex and for 43North. The M&T complex alone will open with 1,000 employees and eventually rise to 1,500. Two large retail buildings, along with clubhouse space and a new entrance, have also been added to the tower.
Lower down in the building, he has 115 apartments ready to go, plus retail and a bar and dining space to supply all of this. He is not opening the apartments until some of the other construction is done.
"Apartments are ready, but the site is still a construction site. So I don't want to open them up under the terms that they are right now. I want to give Seneca One what it deserves," Jamal said. "The first presentation that you see, something should be beautiful and magnificent and I don't want to open it up half."
He also doesn't want to talk about the rents.
"I don't even know what the price is going to be because the market really is going to be the market," Jamal said. "I'm more interested in the big picture of the city rather than, is the price $100 more a month or $100 less a month. I want to make it a sense of community. That's what's important and I want it to be contagious, so it goes all the way down Main Street and we have a living downtown."
Jemal said there is so much interest in the apartments from new tenants that he needs new apartments he is creating in the former Buffalo Police Headquarters on Franklin Street and adding space to construct 130 apartments.
The entire building will benefit from the deal Jemal cut with the mayor to restore cars to the section of Main Street running under the tower, adding to the effort to return cars to all of the surface section of the Metro Rail.
