Development and construction projects aren't easy, and Eric Ekman knows that firsthand. A look inside a staged one-bedroom apartment at Rails on Main at 2929 Main St. in Buffalo, May 1, 2024.
"Real estate development projects are a lot like puzzles, except the pieces keep moving, the edges are missing, and you don’t have a clear picture of the end result," said Ekman, vice president for development and acquisitions for McGuire Development Co. "You start with a vision, you do a lot of research and analysis, the plan evolves, and you finally generate construction documents to work from, and even renderings," he added. "These plans, however, don’t guarantee it all comes together successfully.
There’s inevitably surprises and challenges along the way." That's what happened with the $44 million Rails on Main project, which McGuire and its partner, David Freeman's Blackfish Investments of Utah, just completed. The ribbon-cutting at the Rails on Main apartment complex on Oct.
24, 2024. "We had to remove a lot more bedrock than expected. Luck was not on our side, and this created additional costs and delays," Ekman said last week, as the partners marked the project opening, two years and one month after they broke ground.
"We found some surprises from the past industrial uses, which added costs and impacted schedules. It’s always a nail-biter getting out of the ground on these projects." Then there were delays in obtaining "critical electrical equipment," which meant "we narr.
