Masiello sees sports store for Aud as tourist magnet

By BRIAN MEYER News Staff Reporter 7/27/01

If the nation's largest outdoor and sporting goods store becomes an anchor tenant of a renovated Memorial Auditorium, it would be a magnet for tourists from across the Northeast, Mayor Anthony M. Masiello predicted Thursday.

Masiello met with reporters to discuss the city's effort to convince Bass Pro Shop to open a megastore on the downtown waterfront. The store would be at least 125,000 square feet, twice the size of the Galyan's sporting goods store at Walden Galleria.

The store's trademark "interactive" ambience would draw as many tourists as it would shoppers, Masiello said. He noted that Bass Pro Shops in other regions have huge fishing tanks that let anglers try out equipment, shooting ranges for gun enthusiasts and in-store golf ranges.

"They only open one store in a given region, and if they select Buffalo, we would have the only Bass Pro Shop in the Northeast," he said.

But the mayor stressed that talks are still preliminary, cautioning that "it isn't a done deal by any means." Officials have been told that the company is considering a number of cities in the Northeast for the project.

One key factor is parking. The city is seeking federal aid to build a 1,200- to 1,500-vehicle parking ramp at a site west of the Aud. Masiello said addressing long-term parking needs is a critical ingredient to waterfront revitalization efforts.

Masiello declined to elaborate on what incentives might be offered to lure the retailer to Buffalo, except to say that the state and the county have been "partners" in the city's waterfront efforts.

For the last two years, city planners have been working with Cordish Co. of Baltimore and Benderson Development Corp. of Buffalo to redevelop properties near where Adelphia Communications is planning to build a $125 million waterfront operations center. Officials want to transform the long-vacant Aud into an entertainment and intermodal transportation center.

An anchor tenant that offers a one-of-a-kind interactive shopping adventure would bode well for downtown tourism and retailing, Masiello said.

"Retail is a niche we need to cultivate downtown, but it has to be the right retail," he said. "It can't be the same kind of things that we see in the Boulevard Mall."