Things usually go slowly around here. From the now-old idea for a new Peace Bridge to decades of talk about expanding Route 219, big ideas—whether or not they are bright ideas—travel in baby steps.

What is happening in a half-forgotten neighborhood along Seneca Street breaks all the Buffalo rules. Watching this thing morph over the last few months is like witnessing time-lapse photography. Sunrise to sunset in 30 seconds. Faster than a texting teenager.

What started with the reclamation of a single, 10-story structure—the iconic Larkin Building—has evolved into the remaking of the surrounding neighborhood. In what looks like record time.

Buildings that were vacant eyesores in midwinter are now gutted, stripped and within months of being finished. Monday, bulldozers were carrying giant gray slabs of curb that soon will take their rightful place on street edges. The big red-brick, three-story “U”building— in the shadow of the Larkin—is getting its face power-washed. Its insides —soon to be filled with commercial tenants—are gutted and ready for electrical lines and paint.

Howard Zemsky is an investor and preservation-minded developer—no, that is not a contradiction in terms—whose family owned Russer Foods. He and partners Joe Petrella, Bill Jones and Doug Swift started it all eight years ago by buying the vacant Graphic Controls building. Despite “no way” warnings from timid skeptics, they pulled off a$30 million transformation, filled its 10 floors with tenants and—with a nod to history— reclaimed the Larkin Building name. It stands as architectural eye candy for thousands of daily commuters on I-190.

The saga continues. Zemsky and partners over the last two years bought more than 25 buildings or parcels on the surrounding streets.

The idea was not just to find space for Larkin Building overspill—which accelerated last year when First Niagara moved in, with 300 new jobs. The plan is to return a tattered neighborhood to its walkable, livable 19th century roots. (You can see Zemsky’s show-and-tell on the ongoing Larkin District transformation here.)

“A lot of these buildings had ground-floor businesses, with families living above,” said Zemsky, tall, calm and collected. “We can make them beautiful again, rehab them into desirable places to live or work.

“The idea,” he added, “is to re-create this very cool, old, mixed-use urban neighborhood.”

There are different ways to rebuild a neighborhood. This may be the quickest. Zemsky and partners have, he said, spent “several million dollars” buying and rehabbing buildings. Investment attracts investment. First Niagara kicked in $1.5 million for a streetscape face-lift. Architects bought the four-story Kamman Building. Neighborhood homeowners are getting fix-up dollars. There is talk of a new owner—and new life—for the drab, eight-story monolith next to the Larkin.

Zemsky said that new curbs and sidewalks will be in by September, that some midsize buildings will be ready by October and that the heavier-lift “U” building will be ready in November. Start to finish of the first stage: less than a year.

Neighbors have noticed the changes. Antoinette Agee watched the Larkin Building’s rebirth from her home a block away. Now, the neighborhood.

“It’s great for the neighborhood, a really good opportunity,” Agee said. “Hopefully, our property values will go up with this. We’re excited.”

She should be. There has been more progress in the Larkin District in five months than the Peace Bridge has seen in decades. Imagine: Sensible, quick development. If this keeps up, we will have to rewrite the Buffalo rule book.