Delprince's marketing message apparently rubbed off on Barclay, who until recently was crammed behind the counter of an 1,800-square-foot store across the street from Lifestyle's East Side outlet. The sign outside says "America's Big & Tall," but that's just a remnant of the store Barclay owned until 1998, when Delprince bought the building. "He bailed me out," says Barclay, whose own business at the time was teetering toward foreclosure. Since then he's been working for Delprince, selling winter outerwear that doesn't fit in the Lifestyle store. "The price is so cheap, you'll save money even if you just keep it in the trunk and use it when you need it," Barclay roars at one customer. "It's 50% off," he booms in a Barry White baritone, "but I'll give you 25% more." Delprince walks in, and Barclay waves a receipt documenting the sale of three coats to one customer. Barclay immediately urges me to make a similar purchase, and I admit I'm tempted. There's just something about the man that makes him persuasive. Maybe it's the loud laugh. Or the disarming glare. Or maybe it's the fact that he's six feet five and weighs 420 pounds. He uses it, too.
In April, Barclay moved to a 1,500-square-foot addition to the main outlet that Delprince built to house outerwear. (The former Big & Tall space has been given over to a Lifestyle store for young kids.) Carl Paladino, a Buffalo native who heads the real-estate-development company that oversaw the construction of the addition, complains about the "very thin" margins of such a job. "We had to build this efficiently," says the CEO of Ellicott Development Co. "It's tough to build new for an enterprise like this."
Those thin margins, Paladino believes, apply to most inner-city companies. "It's a huge risk working in the city," he laments. "People will steal your eyeballs out."
But Paladino, who ranks himself the "largest landlord of city property," says that some parts of the city show more signs of life than others. He claims the southern part of Buffalo -- specifically a neighborhood called the Old First Ward -- is "one of the only viable spots in the area." Although it is only two miles from city hall, the Old First Ward may as well be 100 miles -- and 100 years -- away. Sky-high grain elevators line the banks of the Buffalo River, guarding its southern flank. Many of the Irish Americans who settled here originally labored as grain scoopers, unloading the grain from boats from the lake and shoveling it into bins or oceangoing boats. It's an industry that's almost gone now. "The St. Lawrence Seaway doomed Buffalo," declares 60-year-old Danny Sansone, who grew up here. "That was the beginning of the end. That was the end, in fact."
True, the St. Lawrence did open up a direct route from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, performing a bypass on Buffalo's docks. But the way Sansone talks about it -- rattling his head as if he's still trying to absorb the shock -- it would seem heartless to mention how long ago it transpired: 1959.
The natural tendency among these inner-city businesspeople to shore one another up makes the city of 300,000 feel like a giant entrepreneurial support group.
Yet it's no wonder that Sansone can't forget. The office of the Grain Miller's Union, Local 36, is one of 17 tenants in a 250,000-square-foot warehouse building he owns. And the voices of nostalgia are everywhere. Walk into Leahy's, a neighborhood bar across the street from the warehouse, and Mike, one of half a dozen patrons, reminisces about the area as it once was. "You couldn't walk a block without a gin mill," he recalls, nursing a Budweiser while the unfolding drama of Wheel of Fortune blares from above the bar. "Most of the parents and the kids worked in the grain elevators." Now 57, Mike, who declines to give his last name, spent his career scooping grain. So did his dad and his brother. "There were a million places to do that around here," he muses. "And then they just began closing up."
Fortunately, some new businesses have replaced them, including Integrity Distribution, which leases 2,500 square feet of office space (soon to be 3,500) in the block-long building Sansone owns. Houses surround the company on three sides, which means the warehouse workers know their residential neighbors. How well they know them depends on how disciplined those homeowners are about closing their drapes. The turning radius outside Integrity's loading dock is so tight that a driver could almost reach through a window and flip on a coffeemaker.
Nobody's suggested that, but a couple of years ago Sansone accommodated the neighbors by spending $80,000 to move the building's receiving dock. Truck noise hadn't been a major problem back when Integrity was a $90,000 company selling cups, napkins, and other paper goods. Then in 1993 Raccuia approached Integrity owner Peter Hammerl about becoming partners and distributing office supplies. Hammerl, who had worked as a bartender with Tom Naples, a friend of Raccuia's from the Butler, agreed, beginning an upward trajectory that is projected to produce sales of $6.6 million this year. But with more and more goods to deliver nightly, wholesalers started arriving earlier and earlier, waking neighbors with their rumblings at 4 a.m. The neighbors complained, and Sansone says he gave in as a matter of "damage control" after a local politician "made it her cause to come to the aid of these beleaguered homeowners."
Having good relations with the community pays off for Raccuia daily. The neighbors park in Integrity's lot, and he credits their presence with the fact that "our trucks don't get broken into." Then there's the arrangement with three local gas stations/convenience stores operated by BAP Inc., of which Carl Paladino is president. It's at those stations that three of Integrity's drivers routinely fill up. (The fourth drives a diesel-powered rig.) The stations bill Integrity weekly, and the company cuts a check within three days. From Raccuia's point of view, it's much more efficient than having drivers carry credit cards or hang on to receipts. Paladino terms the deal "unusual" but considers it a practical response to what's happening -- or, rather, not happening -- in downtown Buffalo. "It's pretty desolate right now," he says. "This way, we get guaranteed so many gallons that we can pump. And we're going for volume, so we can stay alive." Ray Gonzalez, the 71-year-old owner of the Buffalo Wholesale Flower Market, where Raccuia buys the floral arrangements he often sends customers, says that for him the key to survival has been focusing on wholesaling rather than retailing. "We don't need people around," he explains.
