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"Hope" drives the push to put Buffalo's train station at Central Terminal

Posted at 6:14 PM, Apr 01, 2017
and last updated 2017-04-01 18:14:52-04

The Central Terminal was once a bustling transportation hub.  Now, it sits empty and reminds East Side neighbors of a time when their community was thriving.

"It has been disheartening to say that something that was so vital to this community, this beautiful building, the architecture, the people who worked here has been neglected," Marva Threat, who lives on Detroit Street a few blocks from the Terminal, said Saturday.

Dozens of politicians, community leaders and neighbors from the Broadway-Fillmore community rallied Saturday morning inside the Central Terminal, calling on Mayor Brown's train site selection committee to recommend the historic building as the site of Buffalo's new train station.

Threat sees a growing, thriving neighborhood around her but thinks bringing a train station back to the Central Terminal would help lift the community up even further.

"We already have the people here," she said. "We are a community.  We are a neighborhood.  It's a safe neighborhood.  It's a wonderful neighborhood.  So it would only add to the neighborhood."

Congressman Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, has led the public effort to select the Terminal for the site of the city's new train station. He agrees that it would help spur development on and bring hope back to the city's East Side.

"In our lifetime, we've known this community to be vibrant, to be successful, to be active and to have hope and optimism about the future," Higgins said.

Higgins sits on the train site selection committee which will continue to hold public meetings. The sites have been narrowed down to the Central Terminal and a downtown location near Canalside. A final recommendation is expected from the committee in the third week of April.