If he secures the lease, developer Douglas Jemal has ambitious plans for the Richardson Olmsted Campus, including a new name for its hotel: The Richardson.
Jemal envisions residences, restaurants and more in the five brick buildings and one Medina sandstone building west of the hotel, and a craft brewery and restaurant in the historic barn on the campus.
Above all, he said, he wants to bring vibrancy to the buildings and grounds of the 463,000-square-foot, 100-acre complex.
The #BNDrone takes you on an aerial tour of the Richardson-Olmsted Campus and its iconic towers. Hotel Henry recently announced it is closing, a victim of the pandemic economy. But a plan to develop still-vacant portions of the campus into apartments and commercial space continues, and there is already a flurry of talk about what comes next for the hotel.
"The architecture is magnificent, the adaptive reuse is magnificent," Jemal said. "But it looks like a cold ghost land. You want a 24 hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week community."
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The Washington, D.C.-based developer hopes the Richardson Center Corp., the property's nonprofit owner, will approve a long-term lease when its board convenes on March 30. It would be for the seven western buildings and the three buildings that housed Hotel Henry – 10 of the Richardson Olmsted Campus' 13 buildings in all.
With developer Sam Savarino creating residential and artist lofts in two buildings east of the hotel, it would leave only an 8,000-square-foot building undeveloped immediately east of the hotel.
The hotel, which opened in April 2017, needs some upgrades, Jemal said.
"The entrance is not very inviting," he said. "Candidly, if you don't create a bigger sense of place it might as well be in the Tunnel of Love."
But Jemal said he would immediately put the hotel back in service.
"I would reopen it right away," Jemal said. "Needless to say, it gives you a good chance with the pandemic to start going slowly until you ratchet your way up. It's a service business, and you want to get the kinks out of it and get the management in place."
Jemal said he doesn't think it would be difficult to find a restaurant operator.
"You have plenty of them in Buffalo, many great ones," he said.
Jemal said he would go through his usual process in arriving at what he thinks needs to be done with the rest of the complex.
"I basically live a project when I do it, but this one has exactly the type of challenges that I love to do," Jemal said. "Really, I have no plan other than to walk it, look it, feel it, touch it, again and again and again, and if it doesn't look right I'm going to do it again until I get it right.
"You're looking for a vibe, you're looking for a creation rather than just a building," he said.
"That includes making things fun – playground for the kids, concert venues, programs," Jemal said.
Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, the waterfront, culture and more. He's also a former arts editor at The News.
