Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - While it's been known for years about the dilapidated conditions of the historic Broadway Barn along Broadway in Buffalo, conditions at the current Department of Public Works (DPW) storage facility have gotten so bad, city officials feel the building has fallen into complete disrepair.
According to Buffalo Deputy Mayor Ben Swanekamp, the building really took a turn for the worse nearly three weeks ago when a series of cast concrete panels that line the inside of a storage area above the repair bay started getting loose, and soon began to fall down.
"That area is now not safe, it's not safe for anyone to go in there," said Swanekamp during a press briefing on Tuesday. "We have, on an emergency basis, hired a masonry company to get in there and stabilize those panels. That room stores the salt spreaders and plow blades we need to get our fleet ready for winter. Obviously, this is of an imperative nature right now. So once those panels get stabilized, we'll be getting crews in there to pull all the equipment out, to get the rigs out, and then we'll be declaring that room unfit for human occupancy."
No one was injured as a result of the panels falling inside, and only some minor equipment was damaged. However, none of the city's key snow fleet equipment was damaged.
In the meantime, the city is looking all over the city to lease space on an emergency basis to get crews out of the Broadway Barn. Swanekamp believes the city is close on a new property and are in final negotiations with a possible landlord to get crews out of there and close down Broadway.
"I know they're currently looking at inventory of other city municipal buildings and all throughout the City of Buffalo and other districts, and then looking at where they could put fleet salt in equipment, and making sure that service isn't disrupted throughout inclement weather," said Fillmore District Councilman Mitch Nowakowski on Tuesday.
"We cannot have our city workers and DPW in a building that is decrepit, unsafe, and ultimately in despair. Not only does it put our workers in harm's way, it puts the services that residents deserve and are expecting in the City of Buffalo. So right now, we're working on what that would look like in moving to another space."
It was last year when the City of Buffalo reached an agreement with Uniland Development Company, through a public-private partnership, to acquire and redevelop a major site along Bailey Avenue for a new DPW campus and resiliency center. The campus site, located at 250 Baitz Avenue and 1000 Bailey Avenue, totals approximately 59.7 acres, and was purchased for $5 million, mostly funded by a grant provided by Empire State Development.
In partnership with the city, Uniland also submitted an application to New York State's Brownfield Cleanup Program with the intent to remediate the site as part of the redevelopment process.
While that project was set to be a longer-term vision for the city, Nowakowski strongly feels it has to be expedited as soon as possible.
"I do know that an arm of the City of Buffalo is working to consolidate all those parcels, and then go to the state and federal government for continuation of resources to ultimately start building out a long-standing plan of having a DPW campus that can serve the entire City of Buffalo. But that's a large magnitude of a $50-to-$100 million project," Nowakowski acknowledged. "Right now, I know the mayor's administration is handling the current situation at the Broadway Barn, and then ultimately looking at what this looks like in the coming months of maybe reallocating resources to certain places."
Swanekamp says the city has been efforting to advance the process expeditiously all year long.
"It's a very complicated process. It's not a regular standard city-issue construction project. Instead, what happened was a local development corporation was created that would actually own the land, and then lease it back to the city. It's, in some way, similar to the parking ramp deal that we also inherited, but it's very complex," Swanekamp noted.
"Ultimately, the site needs significant remediation. It's a Brownfield site; it's enormous. If you go out there right now, it looks like you're in a forest, basically. So there's a lot of work to do there. We've been plugging away at those steps, and that's why this lease space is so important in the interim."
Swanekamp adds the city does intend to move forward with the new DPW campus, even though it was put in place by the previous administration under Chris Scanlon.
Before the Common Council on Tuesday came a certificate of emergency regarding the condition of the Broadway Barn. Nowakowski says it was correspondence to the Council of the city rendering a decision of how serious a matter is happening.
"The Council has received it, has acted upon it. We know the mayor needs to have the ability to have the authority to protect municipal workers, our equipment, our own municipal building, and the health and safety of everyone in-and-around the structure," he explained.
A few years ago, the city's preservation community was working on trying to get landmark designation for the Broadway Barn to highlight its historic past, but that was if the Department of Public Works was set to move out of the building.
Fast forward to 2026, both Swanekamp and Nowakowski believe that no historical designation or preservation effort can save the building from its eventual demise.
"Historical or not, I don't know what it would take to make that building stabilized and safe," Swanekamp admitted. "It certainly is historical, but there have been, under previous administrations, a number of attempts to look at future uses for the site. But I would imagine the cost to stabilize that will be extraordinary."
He adds once the building it cleared of its contents, a teardown is all but likely for the structure.
Nowakowski knows that the building's exposure to the elements over the years has been a nail in the coffin for the Broadway Barn.
"That's the tall tale sign of the City of Buffalo; either we're going to invest in ourselves and we're going to take care of issues, or we're going to allow them to languish and have everything fall on everyone's head," Nowakowski said. "To me, the Broadway Barn has gone so far in rapid deterioration, I don't think the history of it could hold significance to the point where it is in such disrepair, it jeopardizes the health and safety of our own municipal workers."
Swanekamp awaits more information from the structural engineers brought in to see what the immediate future of the structure holds.
