This is how communities come back. This is how a downtown is revived, how a neighborhood is reborn, how streets are reclaimed.

The future lies partly with him, and a platoon of people like him. They value fine old buildings. They know it makes economic sense to revive them. They believe in the good bones of a battered old city like Buffalo. And, unlike most of us, they have the money to do something about it.

Howard Zemsky started with a single building. OK, it was not just any building. It was a monstrous building. He and his partners eight years ago bought Graphic Controls on Seneca Street, a 10- story eyesore hard by the Niagara Thruway, and returned it to its former glory —then renamed it the Larkin Building, to honor its historic roots.

Some people said he was crazy, he should just build something in the ’burbs like everybody else. But Zemsky is a city guy—raised in Metro New York, lives in Buffalo. He has seen tattered downtown neighborhoods revive in city after city. He knew there was no reason Buffalo should be any different.

The building was masterfully redone and now is filled with tenants, a near-downtown success. When Zemsky wanted to expand into the surrounding streets, this time no one said he was crazy. He has quietly spent several million dollars in recent years buying—at auction or from willing owners—about 25 buildings and lots around the Larkin, including two parcels last month on Seneca Street. It is the seeds of a neighbor-hood revival, a five-minute bike ride from the heart of downtown.

I stood with him on a recent morning outside of the Schaefer Building, a three-story 1900 brick classic. The once-vacant space, which Zemsky bought for $35,000, will soon be filled by an architectural firm and apartments. Other buildings and spaces will become restaurants, offices, apartments and parks— done with the same pedestrian-friendly, character-heavy blueprint upon which the neighborhood was built.

“You look at these buildings, and know you are in a distinctive place, with a distinctive history,” Zemsky said. “They are not homogenous, like so much of the rest of the country. These are places where people increasingly want to be.”

Zemsky is tall and trim and tends to lean back instead of thrust forward. He has a pro-preservation, pro-urban sensibility that is regrettably rare in our corporate board rooms. The developer and investor—his family owned Russer Foods—for years shepherded the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House. Now, ta-da, the Larkin District.

“The idea,” he said, “is to createadynamic, dense, mixed-use neighborhood in an old industrial area, like you see in cities that are reviving.”

He is among a handful of developers who are remaking downtown: Rocco Termini on Ellicott and Washington streets; Ben and the late Bernie Obletz on Main; Carl Paladino, with scattered buildings. We have great old buildings to serve as the cornerstones of revival. Some people understand it. Zemsky and others are doing it.

Reclamations have been done for decades in other cities. As a teenager living in a New York City suburb, I saw Manhattan’s Soho transformed from tattered warehouses into million-dollar lofts. Conservative, insular, shallow-pockets Buffalo is typically late to the party and does not bring dancing shoes. But we are getting there.

Investment inspires investment. Other businesses in the Larkin District are sprucing up or buying in. There now is talk of transforming the mammoth building next to the Larkin.

“We are at a point,” said Zemsky, “where there is no turning back.”

It started with one man, one building. It can end with a neighborhood.