The New Era baseball hat company's $15 million transformation of the defunct Federal Reserve Bank building into dapper new offices is nearly ready for this weekend's grand opening as downtown Buffalo's newest business headquarters.
The hat company that began in 1920 on Genesee Street has decided to come back to Buffalo with 285 staffers because it got too big for its rural offices, which for decades have been alongside its factory in Derby, 20 miles from downtown.
"This is the dream come true," said Valerie Koch, 70, who owns company with her son Chris, 46, the CEO. As she spoke, she looked out at Delaware Avenue from a conference room seat in the new glass atrium that stretches three stories up the old bank building. "Six girls and a sewing machine to come to this," she said. "I've seen the whole scope. . . . This is like the apex."
The 110,000-square-foot building - more than three times larger that the current offices - has plenty of room for the 60 recently-hired employees.
Within the next four years, Chris Koch wants to hire more people and extend the company's international retail reach from 200 stores to 1,000. Within five years, he'd like international sales to make up half the business instead of its current 20 percent.
"Our goal is to double the size of our company again by 2010," he said.
For now, the current number of staffers, some of whom work in one of the seven design divisions for hats and a new clothing line, will be the kind of boon to the economy that planners have long sought to induce.
In the early part of this decade, when new downtown housing projects were few, a plan urged reviving the city's core by focusing on developing a series of districts with investment in housing and offices that would encourage people to work, live, shop and play downtown.
"You don't bring a city back by investing here, there and willy nilly," said Robert Shibley, director of the urban design project at the University at Buffalo and lead author of the study.
New Era's place near the West Mohawk Street intersection and the bustling Chippewa Street bar and restaurant strip, fits with the core-building strategy outlined in Shibley's report, "The Queen City Hub."
And it has caught on faster than he expected. Some of the new projects near New Era include: the new Blue Cross/Blue Shield headquarters; the 270,000-square-foot office building on South Elmwood built by Acquest Development and Uniland Development; the purchase of the former Statler Hotel by British developer Bashar Issa; Issa's new plan for a nearby $361 million sky scraper; and the proposed new federal court house. Downtown investment in such projects approaches more than $1 billion, a goal originally expected to take until the end of the decade.
"We're doing well against the benchmarks," said Shibley, whose study was incorporated into the city's 2006 comprehensive plan.
Mayor Byron Brown expects that the hat company's world headquarters will make Buffalonians feel better about their city. "It's just going to do wonders for the community psyche," he said of New Era. "They could have made a decision to go elsewhere."
New Era, which also has offices in London, Paris and Tokyo, has the kind of prestige and clout that has made others consider Buffalo's downtown. "There are a lot of other businesses in a lot of other places taking interest," said Brown, speaking Monday, a couple of hours before his own tour of the remodeled building at 160 Delaware.
Inside the building on Monday, some staffers, formerly working in rented downtown space and at the Derby office, worked at desks newly arranged with family photos and golf tchotchkes. Doorways and walls were still wet with paint, and workers were busy with ladders, wires and computer connections.
At the first floor store, rows of head-sized display nobs on the walls were hatless, while boxes were being unpacked in a room behind a bank vault door.
In tribute to their building's past, Koch and his executive team worked to keep some elements intact. A nine-foot eagle that once looked out fiercely from the facade is now standing by the front door. Outside granite walls, now the hallways in the atrium, have been cleaned but not covered. A big room of desks for customer service workers still has a glass window at ceiling height where there was once a catwalk that guards patroled as they watched money counters below.
Two credit analysts who had been at their new desks for only a few hours said they liked the feel of the new place with its old touches.
For Micheal Tuck, of Buffalo, the commute will be easier. He felt energized in his new quarters across from the bank vault that had been turned into a conference room and storage area. "It's like sitting in a new car," he said. "You like the newness of it."
On Saturday, the public is invited to see the store and the beginning's of a museum during the grand opening festivities that will include New York City graffiti artists decorating on caps with permanent marker, and tours of the company's 60-foot promotional bus, with red velvet couches and hats designed by celebrities, such as the son of the late Roberto Clemente.
While the new downtown head office has helped Koch entice new local and out-of-town talent, it has also persuaded him to start planning to move his own household back to the city.
Just as Sibley hoped, he is attracted by the all the activity. So much new housing has been proposed lately that he wants to see what happens next. While he waits to find out what the new housing choices will be, he will stay in the city in a rental on the water waterfront.
"I'll end up getting a place in Buffalo again," Koch said.

e-mail: mkearns@buffnews.com

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