Braymiller Market has closed

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Braymiller Market moments before closing for good Wednesday evening. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.

Braymiller Market, the only grocery store in downtown Buffalo, has officially closed its doors.

On Wednesday evening, a person could be seen loading goods into a delivery van. On Thursday morning, the store was dark. An employee on Wednesday confirmed that was the market’s last day of operation.

The closure means the business is now in default on a $561,000 city loan, a matter that’s sparked a clash in City Hall. At question is whether or not the city will demand its money back from store owner Stuart Green.

Another question: What will become of the now-shuttered storefront, which is part cold-storage facility, part grocery store and part delicatessen?

Acting Mayor Christopher Scanlon has maintained that the city should forgive the outstanding loan. He argued at a Dec. 6 press conference and again on Thursday that Green shouldn’t be punished for attempting to open a needed business downtown. 

“Mr. Green took a chance on downtown Buffalo and met all the requirements up until now,” Scanlon told Investigative Post on Thursday. “As I stated at the press conference last week, no, at this point I don’t think we should” demand repayment.

However, some of his former colleagues on the Common Council aren’t happy with that position. At a Council hearing Tuesday, several members called on Scanlon’s administration and the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency to call in the loan so that the funds could be put to other uses. 

“I’m hoping [BURA] can see the need and come up with a repayment plan so that the City of Buffalo is not, yet again, holding the bag on some level,” Ellicott District Council Member Leah Halton-Pope said.

University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt agreed. He called the granting of the loan to Braymiller Market “unfair” because the store received a much larger sum than other businesses that requested city assistance.

“At the end of the day, I hope we’re getting our money back for those other businesses in need and I hope that we look at our processes to make certain that those other businesses get the same opportunity we gave Braymiller,” he said.

Braymiller Market closed a little more than three years after it opened. Because of its fall 2021 opening date, the business was not eligible for pandemic-era business assistance. That, combined with a loss of foot traffic downtown, resulted in steep losses. Records Investigative Post obtained showed those losses averaged more than $20,000 a month.

Mayor Byron Brown’s administration, using federal funds, extended a $561,000 forgivable loan to the grocery store last summer. The city would forgive the loan if Braymiller employed at least seven people for one year and remained open for two years. Braymiller met the employment condition, but closed just one year into the loan.

Scott Billman, BURA’s lawyer and senior director of administration, explained Tuesday that it’s up to the agency’s loan committee, and possibly its full board, to decide whether to call in the loan. The loan committee is scheduled to meet in early January. While not on that committee, Scanlon chairs the BURA board.

Funds from repayment of the loan could be reallocated to other HUD-approved programs, including grants to small businesses.

Halton-Pope and Wyatt said they favored the city doing just that. 

“That would be a good incentive to request our money back so that smaller businesses that have been impacted can be made whole or can continue to stay afloat for the next year,” Halton-Pope said.

Other Common Council members, however, said they’re skeptical the city will ever see the money.

“It could be beating water out of a rock,” Fillmore District Council Member Mitch Nowakowski said, arguing that if Green didn’t have the funds to stay open, he wouldn’t have the money to pay back the city. “It’s a debacle, to put it best.”

Green did not respond to a request for comment.

Nowakowski also criticized Scanlon’s administration for suggesting that the city could rent the building for a “public safety use.”

Scanlon on Thursday said he would release more details in the near future about his administration’s proposal for the space. A lease would require Council approval.

Nowakowski argued it was financially irresponsible for the city to lease the building. Green owes some $5 million in a loan to Evans Bank, he said. It shouldn’t be up to the city to help Green pay that debt off, he said. 

“A public use for a public safety campus or use is not appealing to me,” Nowakowski said. “There has to be someone that can pay that note on that building and it needs to be revenue generating because there are bills that are owed on that structure.”

Nowakowski, Wyatt and Halton-Pope agreed that they’d like to see another grocery store occupy the building.

J. Dale Shoemaker