KFC site may become retail, apartments
Project aims to renew ‘a blighted corner’
The former site of a troubled Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on Buffalo’s Elmwood Strip could soon get an extreme makeover.
FJF Development LLC wants to tear down the decaying KFC at 448 Elmwood Ave., which was closed in March for health code violations. In its place, the group is planning a chic $3.4 million mixed-use retail and apartment complex that will wrap around the northwest corner of Elmwood and Bryant Street.
“It is a blighted corner,” said Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group architects, which is undertaking the project with two others. “I live on Ashland [Avenue] and I’m sick and tired of walking past it all the time.”
The new build’s first floor will host two retail spaces. The first would be 2,183 square feet; the second, 1,788 square feet.
On the second and third floors will be 12 open flats ranging in size from 942 to 1,281 square feet. Each will have high ceilings, a living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and rent for between $1,000 and $1,100 a month.
Nine private, covered tenant parking spots — a hot commodity in the city — will be tucked into the rear of the first floor and shielded from neighbors by a landscaped wall. The entire structure will cover about 17,500 square feet including apartment balconies.
Frizlen and his partners, contractor Paul Johnson and attorney Michael Ferdman, hope to begin demolition by late autumn or early winter, pending the city’s approval.
A private financing agreement is “far along in the process,” Frizlen said.
The group successfully pulled off a similar project at 504 Elmwood. The sleek, peaked-roof structure holds nine apartments and the fashion retailer Lu Modern Classics. It opened in September 2006 and has been fully leased since January 2007.
The group is currently developing a dozen condos on West Utica Street and is hoping to convert what was Lafayette Avenue’s School of Annunciation into office and residential space.
Frizlen believes the latest project is exactly what is needed to revitalize the Elmwood and Bryant area.
Although the corner is in a prime location, visible parking lots on three corners have attracted loiterers and given the intersection a dubious vibe, which Frizlen and his associates hope to dispel.
“This is the appropriate building to rejuvenate this block,” Frizlen said. “It will be occupied 24/7, so there will be eyes on the street all the time watching out for this neighborhood.”
