Larkin Square was built and opened to the public in 2012.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
Howard Zemsky waited five years to have a pancake at the Swan Street Diner.
To be clear, it’s not the pancake that’s just been placed in front of him on this sweltering day in June, 2024, but rather the one he ate in October, 2017, when the 1937 diner finally reopened in Buffalo’s Larkinville neighbourhood.
Then again, when you’re building a neighbourhood practically from scratch – partly by repurposing heritage buildings, partly by building new ones, and even by relocating vintage diner cars from 160 kilometres away – you learn to have patience.
And a diner, no matter how beautiful, does not make practical sense until there are enough people living or working in a neighbourhood to support it. So, when Mr. Zemsky began his development journey almost a quarter century ago, the thought of opening such a business never entered his mind. But when he saw the old 50-seater in Newark, N.Y. (east of Rochester) a dozen years ago and was told by its long-in-the-tooth owner that it might be for sale, a light bulb switched on. It took five more years to complete the purchase, fully restore the porcelain enamel-clad diner car to original specifications (the Sterling Co. made diners in Marrimac, Mass. from 1936 to 1942), transport it, and then find the right operator.
“We’ve probably developed 900,000 square feet or more down here in Larkinville [but] this 1,000 or 2,000-sq.-ft. diner has a tremendously disproportionate positive impact on the neighbourhood,” he says while digging into his 2024 pancake while his wife, Leslie, sips from a thick-walled, Swan-branded mug. “It’s just a gathering place. … It draws people from everywhere – the size and scale of it, which was so appealing from the get-go, it’s very warm and welcoming.”
Leslie and Howard Zemsky at the Swan Street Diner.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
The entire neighbourhood, southeast of downtown and hemmed in by both railroad tracks and Interstate 190, is very warm and welcoming, but it wasn’t that way when Mr. Zemsky purchased his first building in 2001: the abandoned, 600,000 sq. ft., 1912 Larkin Co. Terminal Warehouse. In its heyday of the 1920s and 30s, the Larkin Company, which had grown from manufacturing soap to all manner of household goods, employed more than 2,000 people here. And to service their massive mail order business, the Terminal building was designed to allow two locomotives to pull rows of empty boxcars inside (in order to leave laden with goods).
Walking with Mr. Zemsky today, it’s a treat to hear his recollections of what the area looked like when the Brooklyn-born, 65-year-old first moved to Buffalo in 1981 along with his family’s business, delicatessen meat manufacturer Russer Foods. When the business was sold, he began his career as a real estate developer.
Pointing across to Seneca Street at the now-thriving Bratts Hill restaurant housed in a low-rise, art deco garage, he describes the condition when the Larkin Development Group purchased it – ”abandoned, rusted metal panels from the former Gulf station.” And, right beside us, the gorgeous 1890s former tavern and rooming house at 716 Swan St., with metal columns embossed with “Washington Iron Works, Buffalo, N.Y.” framing graceful arched windows, had seen better days before it became home to Hydraulic Hearth Restaurant and Brewery. The beautiful polychromatic Schaefer Building at 740 Seneca St., he says, had been boarded up and left to rot. And Larkin Square, that big, beautiful public space filled with restaurant patios, pickleball courts, deck chairs and food trucks (on Tuesdays), wasn’t here until it was built and opened to the public in 2012.
Then again, says Mr. Zemsky, this is a part of the city that “wasn’t well understood.
“It was a very rich, active area for many decades, but when Buffalo went into decline, it also went into decline. Every inch of property was occupied by buildings; there were over 20 bars and taverns from Van Rensselaer Street to Smith Street – every time we dig to do something we find old foundations.”
Larkinville, Buffalo, N.Y. Larkin at Exchange wall graphics.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
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The Larkin Development Group has been digging. Along Seneca near Hydraulic Street, where a combination of squat two-storey buildings and vacant land once stood, there is the trompe-l’oeil of Millrace Commons, an 85,000-sq.-ft. mixed-use complex of apartment units and retail shops that looks like four, dentil-moulding-encrusted heritage buildings (and a bit of glassy infill) that have been there for more than a hundred years.
And about those retail shops: the Zemskys say their role as developers goes beyond the build-out. It’s about creating an interesting neighbourhood, one without tacky vaping supply stores or businesses that generate too much noise for residents. “We’re looking for people that have strong entrepreneurial spirit and a variety, we wouldn’t have two coffee shops in here,” says Ms. Zemsky as we pop into Toasted Buffalo, which began selling toasted treats, smoothies and coffee in Millrace Commons two years ago. “Some of these retailers, [it’s] their first time having brick-and-mortar.”
New history to go along with the old, then. In the 10-storey Terminal Warehouse – now branded “Larkin at Exchange” – the Zemskys have pasted the walls with enormous historic photographs of the neighbourhood, plus a cartoon map of Larkinville (the name comes from a colleague playfully calling Mr. Zemsky “the mayor of Larkinville” during a gathering and it stuck), parked a 1910 Larkin delivery truck, and on display is a newly-acquired diorama of the Larkin buildings (made of yarn) by artist Kurt Treeby.
And, with the restoration of the old Larkin employee clubhouse under way (it will contain nine apartment units) and talk of a school that may be built on a big parcel of land near Smith Street, even more history is in the works. Add it all up, and it’s an incredible legacy done with taste, skill, respect and incredible patience.
“I’d be lying if I said we knew what this would all turn into, but we did decide to take a shot on that building,” says Mr. Zemsky of the Terminal Warehouse as he relaxes at Toasted Buffalo. “If we had followed the traditional model at the time, which was you prelease half of it, then you do it, we’d still be trying to lease half of it 23 years later.”
And he might never have had that pancake.