The Hotel Lafayette will be closed and boarded up on April 1, The Buffalo News has

learned.

And a developer who hopes to renovate the landmark said delays in Albany could derail his

plan to turn the structure into apartments and a hotel.

The manager of the landmark building at Lafayette Square confirmed today that the remaining

40 tenants have been given eviction notices. The Lafayette Tap Room, a popular downtown bar

inside the structure, closed Saturday.

Audio: Rocco Termini discussing the Hotel Lafayette's future this morning

Developer Rocco Termini delivered the jolting announcement today at a special meeting of

the city's Planning Board. He said delays in Albany involving needed reforms of a state

historic tax credit law could doom his $35 million plan to turn the Hotel Lafayette into a

boutique hotel, apartments, small restaurants and banquet facilities.

Termini blamed "bean-counters" in the state's budget and finance offices for delays.

Further stalling will jeopardize the project and threaten the long-term future of the Hotel

Lafayette, Termini warned.

"If that building closes, it will not last a winter," he said, noting that the century-old

structure contains delicate plaster work and other architectural details that would be

compromised by a long-term mothballing.

Timothy Jones, chief building engineer at the Hotel Lafayette, confirmed that the structure

will be closed within four weeks.

"It's costing vast thousands of dollars to keep the building open," he said, adding that

the January gas bill alone approached $39,000.

Jones said he will continue to serve as caretaker of the building when it closes.

The news of Hotel Lafayette's closing comes shortly after the Statler Towers was closed and

boarded up following an investment group's failure to close on a sale. Termini rattled off a

long list of empty downtown structures that have been boarded up, calling it a spreading

"cancer."

"Buffalo is going to start looking like a ghetto, and we have the bean-counters in Albany

deciding the fate of Buffalo," Termini told the Planning Board.

Termini said he had hoped to finalize a purchase of the Hotel Lafayette soon, but with

ongoing delays in Albany, the future is cloudy.

"There's only a glimmer of hope, and the patient is on life-support," he said today.

One of the major problems with the existing law, developers argue, is that it does not

allow them to sell the tax credits to banks and insurers, who are among the biggest potential

buyers.

The Planning Board gave its unanimous endorsement to Termini's project today, and board

member Frank Manuele said he thinks the city should put pressure on Albany to approve changes

in the law.

"I've had a long-running dislike for the state bureaucracy," said Manuele, a former city

planning director. "They're not the bottom of the barrel. They're underneath the barrel, as

far as I'm concerned."