Newell Nussbaumer says Buffalo is becoming a place “where people come to live their dreams.”
He calls himself a “grassroots activist” and is the editor of buffalorising.com, a website that has chronicled developments he and other enthusiasts are calling the “Buffalo renaissance.”
Restaurants are opening. Hotels are going up or are being rebuilt. The city’s harborfront has a new industry: entertainment and recreation.
Nussbaumer likens it to Pittsburgh’s growth: A city that has found new muscle to replace the industrial sinew that departed.
Development of Buffalo’s Canalside gets a great deal of credit for the excitement sparking the city.
Robert Gioia, chairman of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation, says it was New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo‘s initiatives that turned over then-useless industrial land led to $200 million in private development projects.