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The Buffalo area economy consists of a mix of industrial, light manufacturing, high technology, and service-oriented private sector companies. Instead of relying on a single industry or sector for its economic future, the region has taken a diversified approach that has the potential to create opportunities for growth and expansion in the 21st century. [1]
Buffalo and the surrounding area were long involved in railroad commerce, steel manufacture, automobile production, aircraft/aerospace design and production, Great Lakes shipping and grain storage. Most of these industries have left the city through the years. Major steel production no longer exists in the area, although several smaller steel mills remains in operation. As of the 1950 United States Census, Buffalo was the 15th largest city in the country, the nation's largest inland port (12th overall), second biggest rail center, sixth largest steel producer, and eighth largest manufacturer. [2]
Overall, employment in Buffalo has shifted as its population has declined and manufacturing has diminished. Buffalo's 2005 unemployment rate was 6.6%, contrasted with New York State's 5.0% rate. [3] And from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2006, Erie County had no net job growth, ranking it 271st among the 326 largest counties in the country. [4] Yet the area has recently seen an upswing in job growth as unemployment has dropped to only 4.9% in July 2007 from 5.2% in 2006 and 6.6% in 2005. [5] The area's manufacturing jobs have continued to show the largest losses in jobs with over 17,000 fewer than at the start of 2006. Yet other sectors of the economy have outdistanced manufacturing and are seeing large increases. Educational and health services added over 30,400 jobs in 2006 and over 20,500 jobs have been added in the professional and business (mostly finance) arena. [6]
Buffalo has increasingly become a center for bioinformatics and human genome research, including work by researchers at the University at Buffalo and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. This consortium is known as the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. It also includes: Buffalo Hearing & Speech Center, Buffalo Medical Group Foundation, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Kaleida Health, Olmsted Center for the Visually Impaired, Cleveland BioLabs and Upstate New York Transplant Services. The DNA samples used in The Human Genome Project were also collected from anonymous donors from Buffalo.
Entrepreneurial resources and life science business consultants accelerate the growth and development of emerging companies found within the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and Upstate New York Region. For example, Buffalo BioSciences is a technology commercialization partner to the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences and contributed to the launch and early success of Empire Genomics –- a firm based on research conducted at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center by Dr. Norma Nowak [7] enabling the delivery of personalized medicine.
Buffalo is the headquarters of M&T Bank, a large regional bank with assets over $79B (as of June 2011). [8] Its rival Marine Midland Bank operated for decades from downtown Buffalo before being acquired by HSBC and being rebranded as HSBC Bank USA. HSBC has reduced its local operations in Buffalo, and Upstate NY as a whole, as it closed its retail banking centers. Many of the shuttered HSBC retail banking centers in upstate were acquired by First Niagara Bank (see below). Other banks, such as Bank of America and KeyBank have corporate operations in Buffalo, the latter expanding its own operations after acquiring First Niagara. Citigroup also has regional offices in Amherst, Buffalo's largest suburb. Buffalo has also become a hub of the debt collection industry. [9]
First Niagara Bank had recently moved its headquarters to downtown Buffalo from nearby Lockport. It had branches from Buffalo to Albany, New York, and since September 2009 has had branches as far south as Pittsburgh. On September 10, 2009, First Niagara announced the relocation of its corporate headquarters from Lockport to downtown Buffalo. [10] First Niagara, which had been considering expanding into Western Pennsylvania for some time, [11] benefited from PNC Financial Services being required by the United States Department of Justice to sell off 50 National City branches in the Pittsburgh area and 11 more branches in and around Erie to competitors, [12] since the two banks had significant overlap in Western Pennsylvania and had potential antitrust issues in that area. First Niagara took advantage by buying 57 of the 61 National City branches from PNC that had to be divested after PNC acquired National City with funds from the $700 billion bailout plan after National City became a victim of the subprime mortgage crisis. The move affected the area by creating 200 more jobs, some in the Buffalo area. [13] On July 31, 2011, it was announced First Niagara had acquired all of HSBC Banks Western New York branches; after closing and selling some branches to its competitors its total number in Upstate New York had almost doubled. [14] In 2015, First Niagara was acquired by KeyBank. [15]
Buffalo is home to Rich Products, one of the world's largest family-owned food manufacturers. [16] Canadian brewer Labatt moved its US headquarters to Buffalo in May 2007. [17] This is in large part due to Buffalo's location directly in the middle of the Northeastern Trade Corridor. The city is the heart of the Canadian-American corridor. Over 80% of all U.S.-Canada trade occurs via border crossings in the eastern United States and with five bridges to Canada, the Buffalo area is one of the key eastern border crossing locations. Cheese company Sorrento Lactalis is also based in Buffalo. General Mills has a cereal mill in the city, and Tops Friendly Markets, a regional supermarket chain, remains headquartered in nearby Williamsville. Delaware North is also headquartered in Buffalo, having built a new building in downtown recently. [18] Del Monte Foods' Milk Bone dog biscuits are still manufactured in a small factory on the city's East Side.
New Era Cap Company, the largest sports-licensed headwear company in the United States, is based in Buffalo. It opened new headquarters in 2007 in the former Federal Reserve Building in downtown Buffalo. [19]
The windshield wiper maker Trico, founded in Buffalo by John R. Oishei, operated three major manufacturing facilities but has since closed all of them and moved operations to Mexico. In 1998, the company head office moved to Rochester Hills, Michigan. [20] Trico's Plant No. 1 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and in 2014 was being re-developed by the State University of New York at Buffalo. The John R. Oishei Foundation is western New York's largest and the new Women's & Children's Hospital, scheduled to open in 2015, will be named the John R. Oishei Children's Hospital.
For many years, Buffalo was the nation's second largest rail center, after Chicago. Peaked traffic reached during World War II, but declined soon after the war. [21] Through the 1960s and 1970s freight traffic via Buffalo declined, air travel and the New York State Thruway took railway passengers away as well. [21] By 1980, the rail hub in the city was gone. [21]
Regionally based insurance companies also have maintained their headquarters in Buffalo, New York. There's Merchants Insurance Group and Lawley Insurance. Merchants Insurance Group is a property and casualty insurance company that provides commercial, personal property and casualty insurance throughout the Northeast and North Central United States. Lawley Insurance provides commercial insurance, employee benefits, risk management and personal insurance.
Some industry remains in Buffalo and its surrounding area in the 21st Century. Ford maintains a stamping plant in South Buffalo. [22] General Motors also runs the Tonawanda Engine plant by the Niagara River, [23] and there are additional chemical and technology companies that continue to operate factories throughout the city and region. In addition, Tesla has partnered with Panasonic and New York State to operate Gigafactory 2 on the former Republic Steel site. The facility, which opened in 2017, manufactures photovoltaic modules for Tesla's SolarCity subsidiary and will gradually phase into manufacturing individual solar cells. [24] It is the largest facility of its type in the Western Hemisphere. [25] The current incarnation of Republic Steel still maintains a facility in nearby Blasdell. [26]
43 North is a venture capital startup competition funded from the Buffalo Billion program. It awards $5 million to its winners each year, and also offers them mentorship, workspace in the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, and tax incentives from the state of New York, among other benefits. [27] [28]
The loss of traditional jobs in manufacturing, rapid suburbanization and high costs of labor have led to economic decline, making Buffalo one of the poorest among U.S. cities with populations of more than 250,000 people. An estimated 28.7–29.9% of Buffalo residents live below the poverty line, behind either only Detroit, [29] or only Detroit and Cleveland. [30] Buffalo's median household income of $27,850 is third-lowest among large cities, behind only Miami and Cleveland; however the median household income for the metropolitan area is $57,000. [31]
This, in part, has led to the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area having the most affordable housing market in the U.S. today. The quarterly NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) noted that nearly 90% of the new and existing homes sold in the metropolitan area during the second quarter were affordable to families making the area's median income of $57,000. The area median price of homes was $75,000.
Buffalo faces issues with vacant and abandoned houses, as the city ranks second to St. Louis on the list of American cities with the most vacant properties per capita. Since 2000, the city has torn down 2,000 vacant homes but as many as 10,000 still remain. Mayor Byron W. Brown recently unveiled a $100 million, five-year plan to demolish 5,000 more houses. [32] The city's move away from heavy industry and toward a service and bioinformatics economy [ citation needed ] has brought improved air and water quality, which benefit not only residents and tourists but the bioregion as a whole. In July 2005, Reader's Digest ranked Buffalo as the third cleanest large city in the nation. [33]
Buffalo's economy has begun to see significant improvements since the early 2010s. [34] Money from state governor Andrew Cuomo, plans for different construction programs, and hundreds of new jobs have brought strong economic change to the area. [35]
According to the City's 2019 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, [36] the principal employers in the Buffalo Metropolitan Area are:
# | Employer | # of Employees |
---|---|---|
1 | State of New York | 23,600 |
2 | Federal Executive Board (United States of America) | 15,000 |
3 | Kaleida Health | 8,301 |
4 | M&T Bank | 7,400 |
5 | Catholic Health | 7,184 |
6 | University at Buffalo | 7,076 |
7 | Buffalo City School District | 6,528 |
8 | Tops Markets | 5,374 |
9 | Erie County | 5,010 |
10 | Erie County Medical Center | 3,450 |
This is an incomplete list of notable companies with major operations or headquarters in Buffalo or within the surrounding area.
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York and the seat of Erie County. It lies in Western New York, at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, on the United States border with Canada. With a population of 278,349 according to the 2020 census, Buffalo is the 78th-largest city in the United States. Buffalo and the city of Niagara Falls together make up the two-county Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which had an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2020, making it the 49th largest MSA in the United States.
Niagara Falls is a city in Niagara County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 48,671. It is adjacent to the Niagara River, across from the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and named after the famed Niagara Falls which they share. The city is within the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area and the Western New York region.
HSBC Holdings plc is a British multinational universal bank and financial services holding company. It is the largest bank in Europe by total assets ahead of BNP Paribas, with US$2.953 trillion as of December 2021. In 2021, HSBC had $10.8 trillion in assets under custody (AUC) and $4.9 trillion in assets under administration (AUA). HSBC traces its origin to a hong in British Hong Kong, and its present form was established in London by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to act as a new group holding company in 1991; its name derives from that company's initials. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation opened branches in Shanghai in 1865 and was first formally incorporated in 1866.
Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Island, and most definitions of the region also exclude all or part of Westchester and Rockland counties, which are typically included in Downstate New York. Major cities across Upstate New York from east to west include Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.
KeyBank Center is a multipurpose indoor arena located in Buffalo, New York. Originally known as Marine Midland Arena, the venue has since been named HSBC Arena and First Niagara Center. Home to the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League since 1996, is the largest indoor arena in Western New York, seating 19,070. It replaced the Sabres' former home, Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, where the team played from 1970 to 1996. The venue is also home to the Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League.
Western New York (WNY) is the westernmost region of the U.S. state of New York. The eastern boundary of the region is not consistently defined by state agencies or those who call themselves "Western New Yorkers". Almost all sources agree WNY includes the cities of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Jamestown, and the surrounding suburbs, as well as the outlying rural areas of the Great Lakes lowlands and Niagara Frontier, and Chautauqua-Alleghany. Many would also place Rochester and the Genesee Valley in the region while some would also include the western Finger Lakes within the region. Others would describe the latter three areas as being in a separate Finger Lakes region.
Marine Midland Bank was an American bank formerly headquartered in Buffalo, New York, with several hundred branches throughout the state of New York. In 1998, branches extended to Pennsylvania. It was acquired by HSBC in 1980, and changed its name to HSBC Bank USA in 1999. As a result of several transactions since the turn of the millennium, much of what was once Marine Midland is now part of KeyBank with the exception of Downstate New York and Pennsylvania. that is now part of Citizens Bank. Branches in Seattle are part of Cathay Bank.
The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC) is a medical center of health care, life sciences research and medical education institutions, co-located on 120 acres (49 ha) in Buffalo, New York. The BNMC was founded in 2001 by a consortium. This project comprises one of the five "Strategic Investment Areas" that make up Buffalo, NY's Queen City Hub Plan, the city's strategic plan for urban redevelopment.
KeyBank, the primary subsidiary of KeyCorp, is an American regional bank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the only major bank based in Cleveland. KeyBank is one of the largest banks in the United States.
Seneca One Tower is a skyscraper located in downtown Buffalo, New York. The building was formerly known as One HSBC Center (1999–2013) and prior to that, as Marine Midland Center (1972–1999), its name was changed in 1999 shortly after Marine Midland's parent company HSBC re-branded the bank as HSBC Bank USA. The building was constructed at a cost of $50 million between 1969 and 1974, and contains over 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2) of space. Today, the 40 story building still dominates the Buffalo skyline, at 529 feet (161 m) high. It is an example of modern architecture. The building's design is similar to that of the 33 South Sixth building in Minneapolis, which was designed by the same architectural firm.
Adirondack Trust Company is the largest independent community bank in Saratoga County, New York, USA. Adirondack Trust's 167 full-time employees own the company, which offers banking, loans and investment services, along with insurance through its Amsure subsidiary. As of December 2020, the bank reported almost $1.5 billion in assets, and over $1.3 billion in deposits, across 13 branches.
HSBC Bank USA, National Association, an American subsidiary of multinational company HSBC, is a bank with its operational head office in New York City and its nominal head office in McLean, Virginia. HSBC Bank USA, N.A. is a national bank chartered under the National Bank Act, and thus is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The company has 159 branch locations.
HSBC Finance Corporation is a financial services company and a subsidiary of HSBC Holdings. It is the sixth-largest issuer of MasterCard and Visa credit cards in the United States. HSBC Finance Corporation was formed from the legal entity that had been known as Household International—shortly after Household International settled for US$486 million in charges pertaining to predatory lending, after burning through $389 million in legal fees and expenses—and is now expanding its consumer finance model via the HSBC Group to Brazil, India, Argentina and elsewhere.
New York’s 26th congressional district is a congressional district for the United States House of Representatives in Western New York. It includes parts of Erie and Niagara counties. The district includes the cities of Buffalo, Lackawanna, Niagara Falls, Tonawanda, and North Tonawanda.
First Niagara Bank was a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured regional banking corporation headquartered in Buffalo, New York. Its parent company, First Niagara Financial Group, Inc. was the 44th-largest bank in the United States with assets of over $37.1 billion as of June 30, 2013. Their slogan is "Do Great Things"
Trico is an American company that specializes in windshield wipers. Trico, then known as Tri-Continental Corporation, invented the windshield wiper blade in 1917. Its original Trico Plant No. 1 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Trico is today one of the leading manufacturers of windshield wiping systems, windshield wiper blades and refills globally, with wiper plants on five continents.
Trico Plant No. 1 is a historic windshield wiper factory building located in Buffalo, New York. It is an example of a style of architecture sometimes referred to as the daylight factory, a style for which Buffalo is well known. The building was mostly constructed in the 1920s and 1930s of reinforced concrete and features curtain walls of metal sash windows and brick spandrels, although a portion of the plant incorporates an historic brewery building from the 1890s. It was the original home of Trico Products Corporation, the first manufacturer of windshield wipers, and was an important factory during a period when Trico was the largest employer in the city of Buffalo. The building is also known for once being the office of John R. Oishei (1886–1968), the company's founder and an industrialist who went on to become one of the most important philanthropists in the Buffalo Niagara Region.
The Larkin Terminal Warehouse also known as Larkin at Exchange or the Larkin R/S/T Building is located at 726 Exchange Street, Buffalo, New York in a neighborhood known as the "Hydraulics". The neighborhood was one of Buffalo's earliest industrial districts and it derived its name from the construction of a small hydraulic canal. The building, clearly visible from the I-190 interstate, was originally part of the Larkin Company and was one of the last constructed buildings in the complex. The building has a radio tower on the roof erected by WEBR-AM in 1936.
John R. Oishei was a businessman who founded Trico products and became one of Buffalo’s wealthiest citizens and philanthropists.
Larkinville, also known as The Hydraulics, is an area of Buffalo, New York located near downtown, South Buffalo and Canalside. Once an industrial neighborhood, it is now home to offices, shops, and a public gathering space called Larkin Square that regularly features food trucks, events, and concerts. The current form of the neighborhood came as a result of the gentrification of the former headquarters complex of the Larkin Soap Company, which includes the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, and other abandoned warehouses nearby.
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