DL&W is Main Street’s linchpin.

A civic response to calls for downtown energy.

Main Street in Buffalo NY with light rail and Shea's Performing Arts Center (2015); photo by David Wilson.Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic ; source: Wikimedia Commons.

Recently, The Buffalo News reported on M&T Bank’s Mission Main Street initiative, followed by the editorial board calling for more “benign loudness” downtown. Both articles touched a nerve: Buffalo needs more reasons for people to gather outside of office hours, and more places where the city feels alive.

The events supported by M&T’s Mission Main Street — a block party, a relay in Niagara Square, and a pickleball festival — seek to illustrate that there is an appetite for creative programming in a city where 20,000 fewer office workers venture downtown each day. But as the editorial reminded readers, downtown often feels like “a museum of buildings set amid silent streets.” Temporary events help, but Buffalo’s long-term health depends on permanent civic infrastructure that sustains activity every day of the year.

The DL&W project is designed to do exactly that.

A historic terminal, a public future.

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Terminal has stood at the foot of Main Street for more than a century. Once a hub for passenger trains and freight, it is now poised for a transformation that will bring it back into public use. Savarino DL&W Development LLC is advancing plans for the building’s second floor: a public market, small grocery, cultural venue, and indoor and outdoor spaces for public and private events and gatherings.

At full buildout, the DL&W will offer more than 75,000 square feet of indoor public space and 55,000 square feet of outdoor public deck space. This scale matters. The DL&W will not be another one-off destination; it is being built as part of Buffalo’s civic fabric.

The linchpin.

One of the things that sets the DL&W’s second-floor vision apart from a traditional development project is its connection to the city’s transit spine. The terminal’s first floor is being redesigned by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority as a new passenger station, making it the southern anchor of the Metro Rail.

Buffalo’s Metro Rail already links downtown with Main Street’s adjacent neighborhoods and the University at Buffalo South Campus. When DL&W reopens as an active station downstairs, it marks the extension of the system into the heart of the Cobblestone District, and every rider headed to or from DL&W will ride down Main Street.

Transit-oriented development (TOD) refers to efforts like the DL&W’s second-floor project: mixed-use, walkable developments clustered around transit hubs. Federal guidelines describe TOD as the most effective way to connect people to jobs, schools, healthcare, and cultural opportunities, while encouraging equity and reducing reliance on cars. In Buffalo, DL&W is the best current example of TOD. Its combination of food access, cultural programming, and free public space, with its direct connection to the rail, creates daily reasons to ride, and by extension, daily reasons to activate Main Street.

See the latest plans for Savarino DL&W’s second-floor layout here.

Complementary, not competitive.

The DL&W project predates M&T’s Mission Main Street by years, but their goals ultimately overlap. Both seek to bring people downtown outside of weekday work hours. The difference is scale and permanence.

DL&W does not replace temporary events — it emboldens them. A downtown that hosts block parties and festivals also needs a civic anchor that is open daily, accessible in all seasons, and connected to the city’s transit system. By anchoring Metro Rail, DL&W ensures that when Main Street comes alive for an event, the city has the infrastructure to keep some of that energy going after the tents and stages come down.

As The Buffalo News editorial observed, Buffalo once drew thousands to events like Thursday at the Square and the Gus Macker basketball tournament. Those events are long gone, and fresher, new events for a modern age are needed. But events aren’t enough. We must invest in lasting assets and amenities that city dwellers and visitors will rely on for generations.

Buffalo needs places where everyday life and special events complement each other. It needs a downtown where transit, culture, food, and public space combine to create reasons to come and reasons to stay.

The DL&W will not be the city’s only answer to downtown’s post-pandemic challenges, but it can be its linchpin.

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