A year after buying the deteriorating former King Sewing Machine Co. manufacturing plant in Riverside, developer Douglas Jemal wants to tear down portions of the fire-damaged facility on Crowley Avenue to stabilize what is left for redevelopment.
Citing the poor condition of the facility that has been largely vacant and unoccupied since the 1960s, Jemal’s Douglas Development Corp. wants to selectively demolish portions of the complex in the rear and along the Isabelle Street side, where entire facades of the building had to be removed earlier after a pair of fires in August 2015 and July 2021.
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Those fires “resulted in potential structural damage to the remaining floors, walls and roofs within the building,” Joseph Antunovich, owner and CEO of Antunovich Associates, told the Buffalo Preservation Board. “The overall condition of the property is in major disrepair.”
The proposal calls for demolishing about 40,000 square feet of the 249,163-square-foot complex, including a 9,000-square-foot rear bay, an 8,000-square-foot section of building, and two concrete pads of 8,000 and 16,000 square feet that used to contain parts of the structure.
The goal, Antunovich added, is to “address the damage left behind by the fires and previous demolitions, as well as to stabilize the site and make it usable for new development.”
Jemal wants to redevelop the site as an incubator for start-up companies, such as those…
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