It's hard to tell exactly when the bottoming-out point of Buffalo happened, or precisely when the region's newfound resurgence began. But first, some larger context...
The decline almost certainly was underway by the early 1960s, when seismic shifts in the international steel market meant that steel towns like this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Western New York lost their largest source of employment. The Rust Belt era had begun, not just in Buffalo, but in places like Allentown, Youngstown and Flint, as well as larger industrial cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit.
The plummeting role of the U.S. steel industry brought on a manufacturing and industrial meltdown that claimed the nation's largest railroads, began the downward spiral of the domestic automobile manufacturing market and coincided with a vanishing coal supply.
Like most of its Rust Belt counterparts, Buffalo was built for an industrial era that began in the late 1800s and peaked in the early 20th century. The sudden shock to the fundamental pillars of industrialism was nothing short of a massive cardiac arrest to the vitality of local economies. Yet Buffalo still had the bones of a large, prosperous industrial center: more miles of rail lines of any urban area aside from Chicago; schools, services and infrastructure designed to support a dense population of over a million; housing stock ranging from lavish mansions to neighborhoods jammed with dual-unit homes; and cultural institutions positioned to communicate that this city – while industrial at its core – had a strong and active appreciation for the arts and expression, in all its forms.
Despite all evidence that Buffalo was in the midst of a catastrophic economic free-fall, local elected officials and business leaders were convinced the shift was just a downturn and that industry and manufacturing would return. That optimism fueled the establishment of major league sports franchises: the NFL's Bills in 1960 and the NHL's Sabres in 1970. Despite some competitive success for both teams, the economic stagnation continued to worsen.
Throughout the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, one maga-project after another was intended as the silver bullet that would stop the bleeding and restore the region to prosperity: the 6.4-mile Metro Rail light-rail system in 1985; a new ballbark for the Bisons in 1988 and arena for the Sabres in 1996; a replacement for the Peace Bridge and a signature outlet of Bass Pro Shops, neither of which has ever come to fruition. While each of these facilities proved to have individual merit, they never combined to fuel an overall economic revitalization as intended.
In this environment, there were few reasons to hope things would ever change. The inability of the Bills and Sabres to ever land their ultimate, respective league championships contributed to a hulking inferiority complex that Buffalo would never get the breaks, witnessed as significant area landmarks that represented the zenith of the area's ambition in the early 20th century were either torn down or abandoned: the most massive structure ever constructed by Frank Lloyd Wright – the Larkin Administration Building – was demolished in 1950; the New York Central Railroad's massive Buffalo Central Terminal on the East Side, abandoned in 1980; H.H. Richardson's stunning Buffalo State Psychiatric Hospital, left to rot in the 1970s. Local cultural institutions like the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Buffalo Zoo teetered on the brink of insolvency.
Interestingly, despite the structural largess that represented Buffalo's historic might, one of the earliest flickers of hope for an eventual resurgence was a small arts club in the city's red-light district on Chippewa Street in the early 90s. The Calumet Arts Cafe at Chippewa and Franklin carved out a foothold as a quirky spot for local jazz and art lovers to re-engage with their city. The Calumet's success – however limited – encouraged a handful of other entrepreneurs that there just might be a market for folks willing to enjoy entertainment and socialization in downtown Buffalo, an idea considered laughable by many who operated under the supposition that Buffalo's ultimate and total demise was inevitable. By the mid-to-late 90s, Chippewa Street was a bustling three-or-four block stretch of bars, restaurants and music clubs. The revitalization of Chippewa coincided with renewed activity on Elmwood Avenue, a historic strip of local businesses for more than a century.
If any series of events could be pointed to as the dawn of Buffalo's resurgence, it would be those.
Things remained wobbly in Western New York through the early years of the new millennium. Businesses and factories continued to close, a new Peace Bridge was still elusive, the Sabres went bankrupt and nearly left town and the population continued to decline. The 2000 census reported the city's population was less than half of its height in 1950.
Perhaps the ultimate, symbolic, rock-bottom moment for Buffalo came on October 12, 2006, when a unusual and unexpected lake effect snowstorm in the middle of fall brought down tens of thousands of tress in the region and killed three people in the process. The trees – still laden with changing leaves – found the weight of the heavy, watery snow too much for them to handle. The storm became known locally as the October Surprise. If the trees couldn't even support the weight of Buffalo's reality, what else could?
The transition from the flickering patches of reclaimed urban life on Chippewa and Elmwood in the mid-90s to a community that began to believe the worst was over was hardly a identifiable phenomenon. If you were in Buffalo in the early-to-mid 2000s, it was no easier to tell anything was at all different. But in 2005, one unexpected announcement from Congressman Brian Higgins might have been one marker of a coming resurgence. He had negotiated – along with a handful of other local leaders – an agreement with the New York State Power Authority to deliver $279 million for economic development efforts in Buffalo and Western New York as a result of electric power produced via nearby Niagara Falls that had been transmitted out of the area without reimbursement for decades. That infusion of capital supported a number of local projects, ranging from a historically-accurate recreation of the terminus of the Erie Canal in downtown Buffalo to the emerging Buffalo-Niagara Medical campus on the northern periphery of downtown, an effort to centralize many of the region's health care facilities in a centralized location. Around the same time, the city of Buffalo began to implement an initiative to convert abandoned buildings and factories to new apartments and condos, returning significant residential activity to the city's core for the first time in more than a half century. Developers took advantage of a series of historic tax credits to make their proposals a reality. It was truly this combination of events that put some real muscle into a Buffalo resurgence.
Since roughly around 2009, Buffalo is in the midst of a period of activity that has all the markers of a deep and lasting turn-around. Buyers and renters actually emerged to snap-up the converted apartments and condos downtown, justifying the risk taken by both the private and public sectors in residential activity in the city. Efforts to restore many of the city's architectural gems – from Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House in north Buffalo to Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building downtown and Louise Blanchard Bethune's Hotel Lafayette – all have achieved completion. The locally-owned New Era Cap Company – which manufactures official hats for many U.S. major leagues and franchises – opened its headquarters in downtown Buffalo. Labatts Blue – a favorite beverage at Bills and Sabres games – located its U.S. headquarters there as well. The city's former federal office building was converted to a mixed-use complex of hotel, office and condo space in 2009 and is nearly entirely occupied. New craft brewers are establishing production breweries in the city – a nationwide sign of economic vitality. Leaders are discussing expanding the Metro Rail system with credibility for perhaps the first time since it opened almost 30 years ago.
Wait, wasn't this supposed to be about the Bills?
Yep, we're almost there.
So, amidst this nascent renaissance came the 2011 news that the Sabres would be acquired by Terry and Kim Pegula, despite the fact that the team had a relatively stable owner in Tom Golisano. Pegula – who became a billionaire by developing fracking processes and land holdings – was a lifelong Sabres fan and wanted to acquire the franchise solely because he loved the team and wanted to help it improve competitively, a challenge under Golisano, who prioritized the team's bottom line. The Pegulas' purchase of the team was several hundred million dollars greater than most observers valuations of the franchise and signified to many in Western New York that one of its most prized assets had found a sure footing for the foreseeable future. Although the team's success on the ice has been elusive under Pegula, he continued to demonstrate his confidence in the region by not only upgrading the team's budget and improving amenities like the locker rooms, he proposed building a new mixed-use facility – including a hotel, restaurants and two hockey rinks – on a block adjacent to the First Niagara Center that had been under-utilized as a parking lot for as long as anyone could remember. The project – HarborCentre – would leverage the ongoing Canalside historic development district nearby.
When Bills owner Ralph Wilson passed away earlier this year, the greatest fear of many Buffaloanians forged during the city's epic decline drew closer to reality: the Bills could leave Western New York. The prospects of Los Angeles or Toronto would be too great for the NFL to resist, some said. But Pegula's support for a resurgent Buffalo would overcome that dour perception, and this week he was announced as the successor to Wilson's legacy, pending NFL approval.
Over the past half-century, as it seemed like – one-by-one - the lights of Buffalo's glorious past were gradually being tamped out, the Bills were like a flickering bat signal on a cloudy night, a tenuous signal that we were still there. The Pegulas' pending purchase of the Bills is nothing short of a symbolic acknowledgement of Buffalo's ongoing resurgence – whether its a thriving medical campus or a new brewery; a restored warehouse with top-flight condos or a hulking reminder of industrial might, like Central Terminal or the Richardson Complex – the Bills a bright sign to the world at-large that WE'RE STILL HERE!
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