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Work to Start this Month on Hotel Lafayette Makeover

August 31, 2010
 
 Crews will begin work within 30 days on transforming the vacant Hotel Lafayette into apartments, a "one-stop" wedding destination and a boutique hotel, developer Rocco Termini says.

Tuesday, Termini invited reporters into the seven-story structure near Lafayette Square, where he discussed the $35 million project. The news conference was held one day after Gov. David A. Paterson approved changes in the state's historic preservation tax credit program. The revisions will allow developers to finance projects by selling tax credits to banks and insurance companies, expanding their ability to raise capital.

"This is a very momentous occasion for Buffalo," Termini said.

He credited Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, for shepherding the bill through the State Legislature in a year when "nothing got done" in Albany.

Located at Washington and Clinton streets near the Central Library, the Hotel Lafayette has been closed since April. Termini's redevelopment plan had been in limbo because of uncertainties over whether the state would approve the changes. Hoyt said Paterson signed the legislation late Monday.

"This is an example of where persistence and perseverance really made a difference," Hoyt said.

Dozens of projects across the state should benefit from the revised tax credit program, officials said.

Termini said he expects the project to be completed by October 2011, just as an estimated 2,000 preservationists are converging on Buffalo for a National Preservation Conference.

Termini took visitors on tours of the large banquet rooms in this once-opulent hotel, designed by Louise Bethune, the first woman in the nation to become an architect.

The Hotel Lafayette originally was planned to provide classy lodging for visitors to the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. But financing snags prevented it from opening until a couple of years after the event ended.

Once viewed as one of the top hotels in the nation, the facility in more recent decades has served as a single-room occupancy building, mostly for residential short-term emergency housing for clients of social services agencies.

The "one-stop" wedding venue will include banquet facilities, a flower shop, a tuxedo store and a Butterwood Desserts outlet. The Lafayette Tap Room will reopen under the watchful eyes of the owners of the Pearl Street Brewery.

The hotel will include 34 rooms, and Termini predicts a strong demand for lodging.

"There's great history here," Termini said of the turn-of-the-20th-century hotel. "People are going to want to stay here just because of that -- because they want to see this great building, this great lobby and all the great features in this building."

The building also will include 115 market-rate apartments -- 67 one-bedroom units and 48 two-bedroom dwellings.

Joining Termini and Hoyt at Tuesday's news conference was developer Paul F. Ciminelli, who recently was appointed to the board of directors of Empire State Development Corp., the state's chief economic development agency. Ciminelli said the tax credit program helps Western