Patrick Kaler, who heads Visit Buffalo Niagara, is enthusiastic about the possibility and hopes to see cruise ships in Buffalo by 2026.

Currently, Savarino is hoping that all concerned entities understand the historic importance of this train shed – a significant (and rare) early example of the use of reinforced concrete thanks to DL&W Railroad’s chief engineer, Lincoln Bush* (hence its name – The Bush Train Shed).

A new downtown music and entertainment venue inside the DL&W Terminal is expected to have a spinoff impact on neighboring bars, restaurants and other Canalside or downtown destinations.

Developer Sam Savarino plans to turn the second floor of the DL&W Terminal into a waterfront music venue a stone’s throw from where Canalside Live ended its annual summer concert series in 2019.

Through 30 years of talk about redeveloping the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Terminal at the foot of Main Street, planners have envisioned a bustling public space and transit hub on a resurrected Buffalo waterfront.

Exactly three years ago, transit planners were forced to scrap grand plans for a skywalk linking the redeveloped Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Terminal to KeyBank Center across South Park Avenue.

Reuse of the DL&W Terminal has been a long time coming. The lower floor serves as Metro Rail's Yard and Shops complex, but the second floor has been vacant since the last Erie-Lackawanna passenger train left the station in 1962.

An Erie Basin Marina that doesn't look like a relic from the 1970s, but one that teems with visitors wandering down an expansive new boardwalk and visiting a new low-rise building with retail shops and maybe even affordable apartments.

The new $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in the House of Representatives Friday night.

Long before the coronavirus pandemic upended much of upstate New York’s economy, the plan to transform the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Terminal into a Metro Rail station and commercial center was slowed by a lack of funding.