Amherst, N.Y. (WBEN) "I don't know if I want to say that we're ready to race. We still have a lot of infrastructure work to do. But it's exciting for the area to have a couple of these dead sites become something different," said Amherst Town Supervisor Brian Kulpa, on WBEN Thursday.
Costco has been quiet on the Amherst project. A West Seneca store has not been confirmed or denied. West Seneca Supervisor Gary Dickson has only said that plans for a national discount club have been filed by a developer.
Still, speculation is running rampant that it will be a Costco Wholesale store at the former Seneca Mall site.
We asked Kulpa which will be first?
"I don't know. I don't think they have any demolition work to do in West Seneca," he said.
Kulpa considers it a plus for the region that dead shopping centers are being revitalized.
"We haven't had a plan to deal with a lot of these big regional assets. You could take Eastern Hills Mall and say it's prime for change. But it needs sewer investments and other upgrades. Then there's the former Seneca Mall site
and the UB Annex near the 290 in Amherst and Boulevard Mall. We're talking about hundreds of acres of land that are in prime locations in Western New York that have been stuck for years."
Kulpa congratulates West Seneca Supervisor Gary Dickson for getting that project to move along. "We need to do more of that. We need to commit regionally. We cannot tie up valuable real estate with dead malls and dead shopping centers and dead factories. It takes a lot of effort."
Related
The Costco project in the Town of Amherst is one of the most anticipated projects in recent memory. Completion is targeted for spring of 2026. Plans for the store were first announced in March of 2022.