Oct 16
2025
The Central Terminal’s costly redevelopment plan
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The nonprofit charged with redeveloping Buffalo’s landmark New York Central Terminal, situated in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, has proposed converting two buildings on the sprawling campus into apartments that could cost as much as $900,000 per unit to build.
Critics tell Investigative Post the cost is astronomical and a poor use of taxpayer dollars.
In June, the developer and nonprofit announced plans to spend $80 million to develop 90 to 110 affordable apartments, plus potential commercial space, in a former mail sorting and storage facility adjacent to the Central Terminal’s iconic tower and a city-owned structure that housed a post office.
The final price tag could be much higher.
Public records show that the $80 million figure does not include development costs for the post office building or installing the site’s energy grid. The developer confirmed with Investigative Post that $80 million is a rough “conceptual estimate” solely for the former mail sorting building.
Jason Knight, a planning professor at SUNY Buffalo State, said the money could be better spent.
“I just can’t get my head around it, nor would I ever logically say that $900,000 for a unit is good. This is a really troubling expenditure of public dollars,” he said.
“It doesn’t result in the number of units we need. It overspends on a per-unit basis.”
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomData shows the apartments could cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands more per unit than other recent local housing projects.
The Central Terminal Restoration Corp. says that the high estimate is based on factors largely out of its control, including high interest rates, inflation, higher materials and construction costs, as well as environmental remediation and structural stabilization costs.
“We’re a building that’s been vacant for 50 years,” said Monica Pellegrino Faix, the nonprofit’s executive director. “If it was easy, it would’ve been done by now.”
Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, director of the University of Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies, fears the new apartments will be out of reach for current neighborhood residents.
“I know of no place in the United States where you pour that much money into a signature project … for the population that is already there,” Taylor said.
Kevin Asturias, who lives on nearby Playter Street, shares Taylor’s skepticism that the proposed apartments will be affordable for people in the neighborhood.
“They won’t do it,” he said. “We own this block. How come we don’t know nothing about who you’re moving over here?”
The neighborhood’s “severe hardship”
Residents of the Census tract that includes the Central Terminal face “severe hardship,” the second-worst rating on an index Taylor, the UB professor, designed to gauge living conditions in city neighborhoods.
His index scores neighborhood income, education levels, poverty, and housing costs.
According to Census data, the tract around the Central Terminal has a median household income of about $21,000. That’s less than half the city’s median.
Central Terminal mail and baggage building. Photo by Adam Smith-Perez.
Median gross rent for a two-bedroom in the neighborhood was $808, including utilities, according to 2023 Census figures. HUD considers an affordable monthly rent to be 30 percent of household income. For those living around the Central Terminal, that comes to $523 a month.
Nearly 70 percent of renting households in the Census tract are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than that.
Taylor predicts the new apartments won’t be affordable for families around the Census Tract and in adjacent neighborhoods. If some of the new apartments are set aside for those making less than 60 percent of median income for the region — which amounts to roughly $52,000 for a three-person household — that’s still more than double the neighborhood median.
In other words, he said, developers can play by the income restriction rules and still price out larger, poorer neighborhood families. Taylor believes that’s by design.
“Who are you targeting the houses for?” he said. “Let’s not play games. Are you targeting them for singles and upwardly mobile couples? For women with children and elders?”
The developer and Central Terminal Restoration Corp. say it’s too early to say how much the apartments will cost for residents, which will depend on low-income housing tax credits they have yet to apply for.
Affordable and adaptive reuse projects done cheaper locally
The Government Accountability Office defines per-unit cost as the total development cost divided by the number of units. Using the GAO’s method, Investigative Post calculated a possible cost per unit: $727,000 for 110 units, or $888,888 for 90 units.
Recent affordable and market-rate housing projects have been built for far less.
The Wood and Brooks Lofts, in a former piano factory in the Town of Tonawanda, used brownfield and historic tax credits to build 55 market-rate apartments.
Park75, at 1175 Delaware in the Elmwood Village, comprises 84 market-rate apartments.
The former malt factory in Black Rock is a mixed-use development with 86 market-rate apartments. The site received over $8 million in historic tax credits and over $5.5 million in brownfield tax credits.
The long-abandoned Eckhardts department store at Broadway and Fillmore was converted to 28 affordable units, as well as daycare space.
The new affordable infill housing on Playter Street comprises 73 multi-family and single-family units.
The ongoing Adams Street Infill Project, funded largely by the state’s Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Program, will result in 12 affordable single-family homes built on vacant city-owned lots.
On the higher end, the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority’s Commodore Perry apartments will cost about $627,000 per unit to build, and Marine Drive’s apartments will cost $945,000 per unit. Those costs include demolition, parking and commercial space.
Proponents see mixed-income future
Fillmore District Council Member Mitch Nowakowski, who represents the neighborhood, argues that restoring the Central Terminal will provide an economic boost to the neighborhood. He said that mixed-income housing is necessary for the neighborhood’s future viability.
“Affordability, good materials, and bringing back the density is super important,” he said.
“But we also have to talk about how we make neighborhoods socioeconomically diverse, and start opening up homes and housing options to people that might make $60,000 or $70,000 a year.”
Nowakowski pointed to the Playter Gardens infill housing a few blocks from the Central Terminal as an indicator that the city can use its vacant lots to create affordable housing in Broadway-Fillmore. He said that might attract further investment.
“It ultimately signals to people that, ‘Look, they’re building here.’ ”
Research indicates that children exposed to higher-income neighborhoods have better educational and life outcomes. Eight in 10 children in the Census tract live in poverty.
“A good mix is always a good thing, because the more diverse people you have living together, the better outcomes,” Pellegrino-Faix said.
Pellegrino-Faix said she’s worked to understand the community’s needs since she became the nonprofit’s executive director in 2019. She’d previously spent a decade at the Richardson Center Corp., which led the redevelopment of parts of the former state mental hospital at Elmwood and Forest avenues.
“The thing that I heard that was really profound to me is that people said, ‘We are forgotten.’ And the ‘we’ extended to the Central Terminal,” she said. “We are part of the story of economic disinvestment in the neighborhood.”
Project has long way to go
The Central Terminal opened in 1929 and was in operation until 1979. It’s been vacant since, despite a number of attempts to redevelop it. Previous proposals included a hotel, a banquet center, a manufacturing and warehouse facility, and a hub for a high-speed train between Buffalo and Toronto.
The Restoration Corporation has been the building’s custodian since 1998. The nonprofit has focused on restoring the tower and concourses, which have become a popular location for events ranging from weddings to art shows, parties and political rallies.
This past June, the Common Council approved a designated developer agreement that allowed the nonprofit and a development team — CB Emmanuel, Alexander Company, and Rise Community Capital — to obtain four city-owned parcels of land. One of those is 59 Memorial Drive, the former post office facility.
Under the agreement, the nonprofit must file monthly progress reports to the city. Investigative Post obtained progress reports from the last three months, which confirm that the proposed development is early in the planning stages.
So early, in fact, that they’ve yet to choose a contractor to help estimate costs and submit applications for tax credits that would make the proposed apartments affordable by state and federal standards.
Interior rubble at the Central Terminal mail and baggage building. Photo by Watts Architecture & Engineering, 2021.
The September report indicates that the energy infrastructure is “a big unknown,” and post office construction costs are “a complete unknown” and haven’t been calculated into the budget for tax credit applications.
Other records show that a full environmental inspection has yet to be completed for the mail and baggage building. In August 2024, investigators who attempted to collect samples could not access the building because of “degrading asbestos containing materials.”
In addition to environmental remediation, the mail and baggage building requires structural stabilization and masonry work. The developer said the project is further complicated by energy-efficiency and other requirements tied to funding sources.
Several developers who saw these public records told Investigative Post that breaking ground in 2027 will be “very difficult to pull off.”
Adam Smith-Perez is an Investigative Post staff writer via Report For America.
