Interviewing the builders, doers, and creators powering Buffalo's economic revival.
On this episode of The Series B Podcast, we have a familiar face in Buffalo startup circles. Peter Burakowski is now four months into his new gig as Executive Director of Buffalo Place, the nonprofit responsible for a one-mile stretch of downtown from Goodell to the waterfront.
He lays out what he wants downtown to be in ten years, and what has to happen now to get there.We get into the numbers behind the vision. Roughly 2,500 people live in that footprint today, and he wants 10,000. He wants four times more active storefronts. We talk about the three layers of the downtown experience, why the marquee event is the easiest part and the least durable, and what he learned launching 43North about asking a community to be patient with an investment that pays off years later. He also makes the case that downtown's future and the innovation economy's future are the same question, walks through the corner of Main Street he would drop a stranger on, and leaves us with a Buffalo history lesson with parallels to today.
Plus Last Call, where we get his coffee order and a confession about chicken wings.
