Buffalo in the 90s: Downtown’s future in question as Bon-Ton closes

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Only months after AM&A’s sold its operations to Bon-Ton,  Bon-Ton announced the closure of the Main Street downtown location which had been hemorrhaging money for quite some time.

More than 300 jobs were lost with the closure of the store as well as the warehouse behind the store across Washington Street.

The loss of the downtown anchor and landmark 20 ago this month served as a wakeup call to many, that downtown was still far from a full, healthy recovery.

City must keep encouraging a downtown neighborhood

Housing will not appear downtown just because experts say it should. The old chicken-and-egg issue is part of the picture. Downtown would be more attractive if there were more people on the street to create a feeling of security. Downtown would be more attractive if there were more service outlets such as good convenience food stores, convenient dry cleaners and other small service shops. But those things aren’t likely to appear until more people live downtown.

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.