Posted Dec 6, 2007, 4:14 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Buffalo, NY
Posts: 139
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Plans unveiled for Freezer Queen site
Hotel, townhouses and condominiums included in preliminary multiphase plan
By Sharon Linstedt
Preliminary plans for the Freezer Queen site includes a 250- to 400- room, five-star hotel tower. More Photos
When Orchard Park businessman Gerald Buchheit heard the idle Freezer Queen plant on Buffalo’s outer harbor was going on the auction block, he drove to the Fuhrmann Boulevard site last summer out of curiousity.
After a brief walking tour of the long-time industrial property, Buchheit made up his mind to buy it.
“It’s an absolutely spectacular site. I was blown away by the views out over the lake and the Boston Hills to the south. Then you turn around and there’s the Buffalo skyline,” he said. “I just kept thinking ‘people should be living out here and enjoying this.’ ”
Jon Williams, owner of Buffalo’s Ontario Specialty Contracting and a friend of Buchheit, made an independent field trip to the property and drew the same conclusion.
“When you’re out on that peninsula, you get the feeling you’re in world of your own. You have all the charm of the waterfront, but downtown Buffalo is five minutes away,” Williams said.
After comparing notes, Buchheit and Williams teamed up to submit the winning $3 million bid at the Nov. 1 auction. They’ve spent the past month fleshing out concepts for Queen City Landing, a project that will bring a mix of residential and hotel uses to the 20- acre site.
The new owners declined to put a price tag on their dreams for the site, but said preliminary plans for the multiphase project include:
• Conversion of the existing six-story, 272,000-square-foot food production and storage plant to condominiums, possibly adding two more floors to create luxury penthouse suites;
• A 250- to 400-room, fivestar hotel tower, to be built on the tip of the mini-peninsula;
• A residential tower and townhouses on undeveloped areas of the property.
The Queen City team plans to move as “expeditiously” as possible with the hope of beginning the food plant-to-condo conversion by late spring. They are currently interviewing local and national architects for the project.
“Our objective is to move as fast as the process allows. We’d love to have a model condo ready by next summer,” Buchheit said.
Mayor Byron W. Brown called the ambitious makeover proposal “intriguing,” and a “sign of the times,” for the city’s long-under-utilized waterfront.
“It opens the door to what we expect to happen out there,” Brown said. “Other investors and developers are looking at the outer harbor, and they will be watching this closely.”
The Queen City Landing team said its plans are not contingent on other projects, or creation of critical mass.
“We want to be the first kid on the block. This project stands on its own,” Williams said.
The site, which is a finger of land extending out from 975 Fuhrmann Boulevard into the city’s outer harbor, is flanked by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority Boat Harbor to the south, and 120-acres of nearly undeveloped NFTA property on its north side.
Access to the site will get a boost via the state Department of Transportation upcoming upgrade of Fuhrmann Boulevard, a nearly $50 million effort that will create a four-lane parkway with two-way traffic.
The property’s main structure was built in 1927 as a refrigerated warehouse complex. It became Freezer Queen’s frozen food plant in 1955, and was operated as food production and warehousing complex until June 2006, when owner Home Market Foods shut it down.
Buchheit and Williams concede the property’s industrial past, which included extensive use of ammonia to aid refrigeration processes, has likely left the property in need of some environmental clean-up.
“We’ve made initial contact with the [New York State] Department of Environmental Conservation, and we’ll talk with Erie County and the city about brownfields programs, if that becomes necessary,” Buchheit said. “But our initial investigations haven’t found major problems.”
In addition to any remediation, the project will require rezoning from industrial to residential status, and will need city planning board approvals before the overhaul of the food plant can begin.
The housing/hospitality project will be the first of that nature for both Buchheit and Williams. Buchheit, who is the former owner of the Statler Towers in downtown Buffalo, is probably best known for developing the Quaker Crossing retail complex in Orchard Park.
His core business is Accent Stripe, a national highway marking and specialty paving company.
Williams’ contracting firm has a track record in an assortment of private and government projects.
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