Buffalo Central Terminal

OWNER AGREES TO MEETING ON FATE OF CENTRAL TERMINAL
August 1, 1992
By MIKE VOGEL - News Staff Reporter

City officials and preservationists confronted the owner of the decaying Central Terminal on Friday, in an argument that ended with the promise of a meeting to discuss the fate of the aging landmark.

Chief City Judge Frank A. Sedita Jr., called to the former train terminal on Paderewski Drive by city inspectors and Fillmore Council Member David A. Franczyk, engineered the meeting during a short tour of the structure’s gutted “by neglect” Grand Concourse.

The discussion, which Sedita said also should include other claimants to the building, could take place early this month.

“There’s no case before me on this, but I will act as mediator if they want me,” the Housing Court justice said.

A handshake agreement to the meeting followed a noon-hour confrontation at the terminal, as Franczyk and Telesco exchanged heated words in front of about 20 preservationists, railroad history enthusiasts, neighborhood activists and reporters. Sedita and Joseph V. Schollard, city commissioner of inspections and revitalization, later joined the group.

“Look at these grounds,” Franczyk told Telesco. “It’s a disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself. This is a national landmark, and if you destroy it, you’ll pay for it.”

“Stop showboating, David,” Telesco countered, in one of the milder exchanges. “Let’s discuss it with the inspectors.”

Telesco also disputed Franczyk’s claim that he was responsible for debris in the structure and on the grounds. But he admitted to the judge that he had sold art deco lighting fixtures from the concourse — a sore point with preservationists, who have complained that the building is being gutted and its fixtures sold to antique dealers in New York.

The once-grand terminal, which opened just a few months before the stock market crash ushered in the Great Depression in 1929, has had a series of owners since it was sold by New York Central Railroad in 1959. Several plans for conversion to office, retail or exhibition space have fallen through.

Telesco, the current owner, said $12,000 to $15,000 in taxes on the structure remain unpaid. A sale price is being negotiated with partners Sam and Bernie Tuchman of Central Terminal Ltd., which has a purchase option on the building, and the Tuchmans’ firm earlier this week filed federal court action protesting an Internal Revenue Service decision to lease new offices in Cheektowaga’s AppleTree Mall instead of the terminal’s 15-story tower.

Telesco said the negotiations have been unproductive so far and the Tuchman company may be waiting instead for a tax auction of the terminal “probably in October or November.”

“This is heartbreaking,” said Franczyk, adding that he had worked with Telesco in the past but his patience “has reached the breaking point.”

“He bit off more than he could chew, and he should have sold it,” Franczyk said. “He’s destroying Buffalo’s heritage. We want this turned around.”

Telesco refused to allow the group to enter the building. But after some discussion, he agreed to allow Sedita, Schollard and three other city inspection officials inside. At Sedita’s insistence, a Buffalo News reporter also was included in the tour.

The group toured a concourse stripped of the ornate clock and large bison statue familiar to thousands who used the terminal during the war years. Water, leaking from large damaged downspouts on the concourse roof, streamed into the echoing hall during Friday’s rains. Marble and brass were stripped from the concourse; satanic symbols were spray-painted on counters; and broken glass littered the floors.

Telesco blamed the damage on vandals and thieves who invade the sprawling structure “on a daily basis.”

“We caught four people in here yesterday, stealing copper,” he said. “The police are aware of this.”

The light fixtures, he told the judge, were removed and sold — his right, as a property owner .

“We did that because the building was beyond my means to keep up, without having done that,” he said.

The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but that has not helped the terminal.

“Protection doesn’t extend to the interior; it mostly protects the exterior,” Tim Tielman of the Erie County Preservation Coalition confirmed.

Telesco, who earlier had told Franczyk that “the neighborhood freely dumps here,” told Sedita that his crews Thursday removed about 2,000 old automobile tires from the level under the concourse and piles of construction and demolition debris from the entrance plaza.

“We know that’s not the neighbors,” he added. “Yesterday, we spent $3,000 (on cleanup work) — 12 men, 12 hours. We pulled 20 dump-truck loads of garbage out of here.”

The confrontation drew a range of preservation leaders, including John Conlin, director of the Niagara Frontier Landmark Society, and Austin Fox, architectural historian, as well as neighborhood groups intent on saving or revitalizing the structure.

Schollard said he and his inspectors will check the terminal and plan to keep an eye on other landmarks as well.

“We’re going to try to preserve these buildings, before there’s a problem,” he said.

Sedita said he will use his office, and not his courtroom, to try to get discussion going without charges or lawsuits.

“We’ll use my office as a kind of sounding board,” he said before the confrontation ended in a handshake.

Franczyk, who described Telesco as a formerly well-meaning developer who turned villain by stripping the terminal, last week sponsored a Common Council resolution forming a Buffalo Central Terminal study group to discuss the structure’s fate.

Archivist Michael Fornasiero, working on a multiyear film project on the structure and its history, also blamed Telesco for the rapid decay of the structure in recent years and said fixtures have been forcibly ripped from the walls instead of carefully removed.

Copyright (C) 1992, The Buffalo News Record Number: BFNW22140360