City lawmakers and downtown residents are pushing for a new grocery store to open in the downtown building that once housed Braymiller Market.
Braymiller Market closed last December, three years after opening and just 17 months after the Buffalo Common Council approved a forgivable, six-figure loan to support the struggling supermarket. The closure left downtown without a grocery store.
Tenants at the next-door 201 Ellicott Apartments and other downtown residents held a rally Friday evening to show support for putting an affordable supermarket in the now-vacant building at 225 Ellicott St. Further rallies are planned for Sept. 26 and Oct. 24, according to a release from the Massachusetts Avenue Project, a nonprofit urban farm that’s sending a “mobile market” with local produce to the rallies.
In a statement released hours before the rally, Buffalo Common Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope backed the residents, writing that she “would welcome and strongly support an owner or tenant who steps forward to bring a grocery store to this site.”
“We’ve always had a desire to have a grocery store, but one that’s culturally competent, one that’s affordable, one that has products in it that are going to work for the entire community,” Halton-Pope said in an interview.
The majority leader said she was “hopeful” about the prospects of attracting a new supermarket downtown, but she acknowledged that the Common Council couldn’t do much to directly incentivize a grocer to set up shop at the site.
“I would love it if we could force something to be in that space,” Halton-Pope said. “I wish we owned it, and we could create our own city-owned grocery store of some sort, but we can’t add any more debt. We cannot add any more buildings to our coffers when I’ve got community centers in my district that we’re barely taking care of. I don’t think it’s the wisest thing for us to take on that location.”
Braymiller owner Stuart Green blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and a declining downtown workforce for the closure of his supermarket. Halton-Pope gave credit to Braymiller for offering more affordable grocery items over its lifespan, but she noted that the store had few affordable products when it first opened.
Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon — who previously said that he also supports a new grocery store — released his own statement ahead of the rally bemoaning the Common Council for not supporting his plan for the building.
Scanlon had proposed leasing the building from Braymiller owner Stuart Green for $1 and using it to house the Buffalo Police B District station for 10-12 months while their regular station undergoes renovations. The building also would’ve been home to a fresh food distribution center operated by local non-profits under the acting mayor’s plan.
“I want to remind residents that the Braymiller Market project was proposed and opened under the previous administration,” Scanlon, who voted to approve then-Mayor Byron Brown’s plan to extend a loan to Braymiller in July 2023, said in a statement. “Within a few months, my administration put forward a plan centered on public health and safety—one that unfortunately did not move forward after members of the Buffalo Common Council determined it was preferable to recoup the forgivable loan that was provided through federal grant dollars than support the temporary use of the site for public safety and food access.”
Scanlon said the Common Council effectively vetoed his plan when it voted to try to reclaim the more-than-$560,000 loan it extended to Braymiller with federal funding in July 2023.
Braymiller closed less than two years after receiving the loan, which violated the terms of the agreement between the city and the store. Buffalo is third in line behind two creditors that are seeking to collectively reclaim about $6 million dollars from the sale of the building, so the city will only reclaim its loan if the building sells for more than that. No offer or sale is currently in the works, according to Scanlon.
Halton-Pope said she opposed Scanlon’s plan because her constituents in the neighborhood didn’t want to live near a police station, even temporarily. She doesn’t see how working to reclaim the city’s loan would’ve prevent Scanlon from leasing the grocery store, which she called “two separate issues.”
“I don’t see what recouping [more than] $500,000 has to do with a police station at all. It’s what money that was owed to the city, and I don’t think we’re wrong to ask for it back. They [Braymiller] did not honor their commitment,” Halton-Pope said. “It wasn’t a council decision to not put the station there. It was a community decision. They were vehemently opposed, and I’m going to stand with my community every single day and twice on Sundays.”
Scanlon also said the police station would’ve allowed first responders to more easily get to 911 calls at 201 Ellicott, which, according to Scanlon, has seen more than 1,500 calls since late 2021.
The acting mayor declined a request for further comment through a spokesperson.
