If everything lines up, construction on the $400 million-plus makeover of the Marine Drive Apartments that tower over a portion of downtown Buffalo, Canalside, and Lake Erie could begin this summer.
The project is one of the most visible - and from a dollars and cents perspective - one of the largest undertaken by the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority. It has been in BMHA’s planning docket for more than three years and has the potential to give the Marine Drive neighborhood, just west of Shark Girl and Canalside a bold new look.
In a pre-construction milestone, the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority has agreed to lease up to 375 parking spaces from the Waterfront Village office complex to accommodate the Marine Drive residents’ needs while the construction is underway.
Gillian Brown, BMHA executive director, explains why the parking arrangement is critical to the overall project.
“We have a lot of cars in that lot, and we needed to make sure that the residents had somewhere to park during the roughly one year of construction,” Brown said.
Plans call for a phased development where all seven Marine Drive Apartment towers will be demolished and replaced by newer, more sleek-looking residential towers and townhomes.
The first phase, a $240 million investment, will see 254 apartment units - all geared towards the “affordable” income demographic - developed in a 12-story and 7-story set of towers and a three-story townhome.
Once the new units are built, tenants will shift from the older, 75-year-old Marine Drive towers into the newer buildings.
The process will follow in later phases.
“To build the 254 first units of phase one on the footprint of the parking lot enables us to not have any disruptive relocation for the residents, and have it be such that those 254 units will be all complete, and then we will move people into them from Marine Drive, the old Marine Drive buildings, directly into their new homes,” Brown said.
When completed, Marine Drive will have 686 apartments and townhomes up from the 616 units and parking for 855 vehicles.
BMHA is working with its own Bridges Development along with the Habitat Company and Duverney & Brooks on the project.
