The Erie County Industrial Development Agency (ECIDA) today approved $255,000 in sales and mortgage tax abatements to aid the adaptive reuse of 916-18 Main Street. Twenty-three market-rate apartments and 2,000 sq.ft. of retail space are planned. The properties are located in the Allentown Historic Preservation District at the edge of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
BOSCHE LLC, an entity tied to Greenleaf & Company, plans a $5.8 million overhaul of the Bosche Building at 918 Main Street and an adjacent building it owns at 916 Main Street. Carmina Wood Morris is designing the project.
The circa-1891, City-owned Bosche Building has been vacant for two decades and was recently stabilized using State funding. It was designed by Cyrus K. Porter & Son and originally served as a showroom and offices for carriage maker Robert C. & Charles C. Bosche.
The ECIDA board also approved a request from HealthNow to sublease 28,000 sq.ft. of space at its 257 W. Genesee St. headquarters to URS Corporation.
The engineering company will move its 110 employees from the former M. Wile Building at 77 Goodell Street early next year. URS’s lease with the University of Buffalo for the Goodell Street space runs through September 2014, but UB has requested the firm move as soon as possible to make room for university-related tenants.
After months of discussion and evaluation, HealthNow decided to consolidae its technical staff from throughout the building onto a single floor. The net effect was to move 165 people into the same space through innovative work-configuration structures and state-of-the-art furniture design.
Since that time, a number of other departments successfully consolidated into contiguous space within the building. This reduced HealthNow’s use of space from 95 percent to approximately 75 percent of the building, with no layoffs.
The health care plan provider previously sublet 3,200 sq.ft. of space to CBRE|Buffalo, the firm which manages the complex.