Buffalo News | Long discussed, the DL&W is poised to become waterfront ‘anchor’
There has been talk for years of opening the cavernous Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad train shed, with little to date to show for it.
That is expected to change in the coming months.
After more than two years of track work, the Niagara Frontier Transit Authority plans to open the primarily state-funded $57 million, ground-level DL&W Station in January 2025 with two four-car platforms. A stair tower a South Park Avenue and Illinois Streets is expected to be completed in May 2025, with a skybridge connecting to KeyBank Center at South Park Avenue and Main Street coming in 2026.
City passenger rail will share about half of the 100,000-square-foot space with the Yards and Shops complex used to keep Metro Rail cars in service since the 1980s.
On the second floor, construction is expected to begin next year on a planned $52 million multiuse space that envisions a public market, artists, food vendors and a place for gathering for music and special events. The first phase is expected to open in 2026 with 75,000 square fee of space indoors and 55,000 square feet outdoors that will offer some of the best riverfront views in Buffalo.
“The NFTA is excited to soon welcome the public back in the building for the first time since the last train left in the 1960s,” said Darren Kempner, the NFTA’s director of government affairs and development. “The shed will provide an active passenger destination, but also a destination for four-season indoor and outdoor activity adjacent to the Canalside and Cobblestone districts.”
The building’s history, he said, has kept it in the public eye, even when it’s been mostly inactive.
“It’s a great gathering space with a lot of history of Buffalo. The Canadiana used to dock right here,” Kempner said of the SS Canadiana, a passenger excursion steamer that operated between Buffalo and Crystal Beach Park in Ontario from 1910 to 1956. “People have an affinity for being in the building with all the history.”
The NFTA did a study in 2015 that led to the decision to bring Metro Rail service to the station. Developer Samuel Savarino was chosen by the NFTA to develop the second floor, and hired the consultant Projects for Public Spaces in 2021, which created the “cheaper, lighter, quicker” concept used at Canalside.
“The DL&W Terminal is poised to become Buffalo’s next transformative destination,” the placemaking organization said in a report issued that fall after considerable public engagement. “With the right programming, management and design, the Terminal can become an inclusive place where the arts, food and music bring people together in a unique multiuse gathering place for the region.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul helped make the activation of the second floor a reality in 2022, when she provided $30 million for its reuse.
“The old DL&W, let’s get that done once and for all,” Hochul said in making her announcement. “I think that has such potential to be another anchor down on our beautiful waterfront.”
The DL&W Terminal, named for the railroad that connected Buffalo and Hoboken, N.J., and by ferry with New York City, opened in 1917. It closed in 1962 due to declining rail traffic, and was demolished in 1979, leaving the adjacent freight building for use as car barns for the then-new light-rail Metro Rail system. That’s the structure, designed by Abraham Bush, under renovation.
Street entry to and from the station will be on South Park Avenue and along the Empire State Shore Trail to nearby Canalside.
Return of natural light
Track work allowing for passenger rail, at a cost of $27 million, is now completed. The cost to prepare the first floor will be another $30 million.
The DL&W Station is expected to bring back natural light through what are now bricked-in windows and covered skylight systems, to go with other architectural features on display over a century ago.
“The current plan is to open as much as possible and connect with outdoor space,” Kempner said.
Platforms are currently under reconstruction as the space is readied to be able to move 1,200 people at once for arena events, with each of the eight rail cars able to hold up to 150 people, followed by another round of cars 10 to 15 minutes later, Kempner said.
A maximum of 2,000 people now take Metro Rail to arena events, NFTA spokeswoman Helen Tederous said.
Art installations are planned inside, including hand-painted tile and glass mosaic birds by artist Joan Linder. There will be heating elements for the winter and a 6,000-square-foot space for a cafe or other public use. Two stairs and an elevator will lead to the second floor, as well as a stair tower being built at South Park and Illinois Street.
Public destination
The second floor is what is expected to transform the DL&W into a public destination.
“It’s at the confluence of the Buffalo River, Niagara River and Lake Erie, and the end of the Erie Canal,” Savarino said. “It’s a good place to start to visit Buffalo, with a facility and location where there is always something to do.”
There are challenges – notably the raised platforms on the second floor that the State Historical Preservation Office required to remain as a condition of being eligible for historic tax credits. New Market tax credits are also expected to be used.
“They are identified as a historic component of the building so we have to work with them,” Savarino said. “While it isn’t the most efficient use of space, we’ll find a way to make them a unique component.”
A truck lift is being installed at the foot of Mississippi Street for suppliers from food trucks to concert needs.
The biggest challenge in getting open, Savarino said, has to do with access and egress.
“If we don’t have a sufficient amount of fire exits, there are only so many people we can put in there,” he said. “That’s the limiting factor right now with activation.”
Although Savarino Companies went out of business last year, Savarino said he is fully committed to the project through another of his companies, Savarino DL&W Development LLC.
He said there’s a need for a music venue between the 400-person capacity Buffalo Iron Works music club the developer owns in the nearby Cobblestone District and the new 6,000-person capacity music pavilion at the Outer Harbor. He and Josh Holtzman, a part owner of Buffalo Iron Works who will be booking and producing the DL&W concerts, traveled to Cherry Street Pier in Philadelphia to see how an old train station terminal was turned into a mixed-use event space that included a farmers’ market and an outdoor concert venue.
They also traveled to Hong Kong to see another terminal with multiple functions that draws large numbers of people.
Looking east
The opening of DL&W Station also lays the groundwork for expansion into the East Side, Kempner said.
“It’s not something we have funded yet – we are focusing all our capacity on Amherst right now,” Kempner said, referring to plans to bring Metro Rail service between the two University at Buffalo campuses. “But it is something we hope to have the opportunity to do in the future.”
The rail line could include stops in the Larkin District, at the Central Terminal and in surrounding neighborhoods and to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Kempner said.
“Serving the East Side with higher capacity and more frequency would be the key goal,” he said.
