There is a stretch of East Main Street — a single block, really — that has confounded developers and government officials for decades.
Recent years have seen a string of redevelopments begin to chip away at the expanse of blighted, often interconnected buildings. This is something of a dance, with developers needing one project to start or finish, so the next can begin.
Now a series of side-by-side projects that could be the most transformative of all is finally getting queued up.
Work should start Monday converting the all-glass Gateway and Cornwall buildings into 129 affordable apartments. Later this month, the city expects to go out to bid on the demolition of an adjacent, one-story building. After those projects get underway, then renovations can start on the next building over — the former Kresge, which was recently Family Dollar and is currently the temporary home of Greenspark Solar.
“So, there's a few things going on here,” said Erik Frisch, the city’s deputy commissioner of neighborhood and business development.
And there is more to come. Work renovating a third building around the corner on North Clinton Avenue should kickoff in the coming months. Just as tenants start moving into Harper’s Corner on the corner.
"There's a lot that's going to be happening," Frisch said. "If people have seen the disruption that's taken place from Harper's Corner, expect there to be quite a bit of disruption in 2026."
The city also has a project to reconstruct Stone Street, the alley-like roadway directly across East Main Street from the building to be demolished.
“A lot of activity," Frisch said, "in a constrained area, all taking place at the same time.”
'Ready for anything'
The building is being razed to create a pedestrian commons, onto which sidewalk cafes could extend from restaurants or similar shops in the Gateway and Kresge buildings on either side.
But there was a hitch.
“It's turned out to be a bit more of a complicated demolition,” Frisch said.
And more expensive. Officials declined to speculate before bids are received on what it will cost to tear it down, but Frisch said the bill will be “much larger than we had initially anticipated.”
“If you were only talking about taking down the structure you see on the street, that's pretty straightforward,’" Frisch said. “But it's everything that you don't see underneath ... (and) there's quite a bit of excavation work that has to happen.”
The 1970s-era steel-frame structure is anchored into a much older foundation and sub-basement. Once the building is down — the city expects that to happen by late spring or early summer next year — developers of the Kresge want to sink more than two dozen geothermal wells into the space for their building. Then the lot would become a construction staging area for the Gateway and Kresge developments, before being turned into the finished commons.
“We have a contingency plan in place, and a contingency plan for the contingency plan,” said Connor Kenney, who is overseeing the Gateway project as regional director with developer SAA|EVI out of Buffalo. “We're ready for anything.”
A housing gateway
Gateway Apartments will offer a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, ranging in size from 875 square feet to 1,800 square feet, which is equivalent to the size of a modest three-bedroom house.
“So they're pretty big units, which is great,” Kenney said. “And the property itself will be marketed towards a variety of different income levels.”
As low as 30% of median income, with a studio renting for around $600. Amenities will include an indoor playground, podcast and work-from-home spaces, a dog-wash station, a yoga studio, and a theater room.
Initial work will be inside. The visible change should come next year.
“We'll be peeling off that glass facade and putting a new exterior on the building,” Kenney said.
The goal is to preserve as much as possible. Though difficult to know what is under the glass, Kenney said they have used cameras to get a sense of the quality of the existing brick structure underneath.
“From what we can tell, there's portions of the brick ... the original building that we're going to be able to salvage on the facade,” he said, estimating about a quarter of that building face can be preserved. “And it's beautiful brickwork that was done a long time ago. ... So it'll be a cool mix of past and present" with new material added.
'We just need clarity'
These buildings aren’t supposed to be here.
For years this stretch of East Main Street was known as the Renaissance Square block, with $230 million in development envisioned that would have combined a performing arts theater with a public bus terminal. That idea failed. But the plan to demolish the block led to extended disinvestment and decay of the buildings.
Its current revival is being fueled by a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant from New York state.
Down at the Main and North Clinton intersection, a renovated series of buildings called Harper’s Corner is wrapping up construction. It has apartments aimed at middle income renters on the upper floors, and space for office or retail at street level.
Developer Home Leasing expects renters will start moving into the apartments in December, and the first commercial tenants should begin arriving in Spring 2026.
That will allow developer Patrick Dutton and his family development team to get moving, converting the building next door to Harper’s Corner on North Clinton into NOMA Lofts.
The Dutton team also has plans for the Edwards Building over on St. Paul Street, but he said there first needs to be a plan and movement on the blighted Cox Building, and the former Riverside Hotel.
“We’re not going to be first,” he said, adding there is “a lot of uncertainty around us.”
The Duttons were first though in bringing residential units to this block, having previously restored and renovated the Glenny Building next door to Kresge. And Kresge is a Dutton project, too, envisioned to become a boutique hotel. Maybe. That uncertainty extends here, as well.
Because from what Dutton said he's been told, the downtown hotel market “is not thriving," which might mean a pivot to something else for Kresge. But whatever happens, he said, they want to know when the commons will be done before setting a construction schedule.
“We need clarity in the market,” Dutton said. “We don’t need all things finished, we just need clarity.”
