With new tenant, Northland powers the East Side – Buffalo News

Amid the somber news revolving around the novel coronavirus, it is encouraging to see development reinvigorating once moribund areas of the City of Buffalo.

Thats whats happening on the East Side as a minority-owned construction management and general contracting company prepares to lease the third-floor space at Northland Central.

Northland Central is the hub in the 35-acre Northland Corridor light manufacturing business zone, an area that was once thriving but over the past several decades sat all but abandoned.

Rodriguez Construction Group is taking up more than 8,500 square feet of space at 683 Northland Ave. for its corporate offices under a five-year lease with a five-year option to renew. That places one of the last pieces of the puzzle on a remarkable and transformative project.

The Buffalo Urban Development Corp., maintaining momentum despite the stressful situation brought on by the pandemic, approved the agreement with Rodriguez Construction during a videoconference meeting. Rodriguez will also spend $400,000 to build out its own space.

The Northland Corridor, powered by $100 million in state and city funding, is evolving. Mayor Byron W. Brown deserves credit for envisioning the renaissance and revitalization in an area that had once been part of Buffalos manufacturing machine.

Inside this corridor is hope. Long mothballed buildings have been gutted down to the steel and remade to serve as a light manufacturing base, as well as a training center. BUDC redeveloped the 235,000-square-foot building, formally Niagara Machine & Tool Works, into the new home of the Northland Workforce Training Center and Buffalo Manufacturing Works, the anchor tenants.

This corridor is evolving into a hub of activity where people can learn a skilled trade, eat at a restaurant and browse some of the regions finest works of art the temporarily closed extension of the Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Gallery is at 612 Northland.

Rodriguez now becomes one of the tenants at Northland, joining Manna restaurant, 43North winner SparkCharge and Retech Systems, a California clean furnace maker. Now there is only one small space vacant at Northland, putting the building at 97% occupancy.

Job well done.

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With new tenant, Northland powers the East Side - Buffalo News