Places: Skating

Rotary Rink

Rotary Rink at Fountain Plaza is celebrating its 12th Anniversary season as Downtown Buffalo’s only free-to-the-public outdoor skating rink. Rotary Rink was completed in 1991 after more than a decade of planning and design and is named after the Rotary Club of Buffalo, who generously made a $500,000 commitment to the project. In 1998, Buffalo Place Inc. partnered with the City of Buffalo to manage the outdoor skating Rink in Downtown Buffalo, offering free ice-skating and the unique opportunity to skate outdoors in an urban setting.  Located in close proximity to the Theatre and Entertainment Districts of Downtown and surrounded by many of Buffalo’s award winning eateries, Rotary Rink is an important initiative to the continued success of Downtown Buffalo.  The free, above-ground Light Rail Rapid Transit systems offers skaters easy transport to and from Buffalo’s exciting destinations.

Holiday Twin Rinks

Built during the Buffalo hockey fever of 1971 when the Sabres came to town, Holiday Twin Rinks has been serving everyone from senior leagues to mini-mite kids leagues to open skates and everything in between. Holiday Twin Rinks on Broadway in Cheektowaga may not be the most luxurious rink in town but it gets the job done when it come to providing a smooth set of ice when you need it. From early mornings to mid-night skates and at all times during the day you can find someone or somebody at Holiday. The rinks also serve as home to multiple championship winning Buffalo Regals youth hockey association.

Time Warner Classic Rink

Shortly after the historic 2008 Winter Classic Game at Ralph Wilson Stadium The Winter Classic portable rink system was purchased and erected as a tribute rink to this historic event in the center of the Village of East Aurora. The Winter Classic rink is now operating under an open-sided pavilion roof in East Aurora. The rink also offers Learn-to-Skate and Beginner Hockey programs including "Mommy, Daddy and Me" program for preschoolers. The rink provides a great opportunity to learn to skate for parents and kids.

Northtown Center

The 1,800-seat multipurpose arena in Amherst located adjacent to UB North features three NHL regulation-sized ice sheets as well as an Olympic-sized ice sheet. The facility also has a roller hockey rink, sports training facility, restaurant, and pro shop.

      The Northtown Center also serves as a practice facility for the Buffalo Sabres and is the home to the University at Buffalo Bulls men's ice hockey team competing at the ACHA Division I level in the Eastern Collegiate Hockey League as well as the home of Buffalo Wings, a professional inline hockey team competing in Major League Roller Hockey. The rink also serves the Buffalo Jr. Sabres of the Ontario Junior A Hockey League. The arena is home to several local high school ice hockey teams, and is used by local figure skating clubs, youth, and adult recreational ice hockey leagues, as well as public skating.!   

Mark Croce

Buffalo Development Corporation

Statler City, LLC

Article and photo by Kyle Patterson

Mark Croce didn't need the Statler Towers. It wasn't that he didn't have enough to do. With numerous restaurants and night clubs in Buffalo, the man doesn't need more business opportunities. His restaurants are some of the most successful in the city--Buffalo Chophouse and Darcy McGee's to name a couple. He is also involved in a separate hotel project on Franklin Street and has a family of his own. Yet after years of watching the Statler change ownership, go through bankruptcy proceeding, defaults and failed attempts to develop one of Buffalo’s landmark buildings Mark Croce stepped in, doing what others said couldn’t be done. Even Andrew Rudnick of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership said the property needed to be torn down. Croce however saw what others didn’t and in doing so has made himself the poster boy amongst historic preservation groups who couldn't be more happy with what he is doing. His secret? Restore the Statlerrs to the original intent of the building—an entertainment and hospitality centerpiece in the middle of the city. Where other developers looked at it from a purely office building perspective and doubted the potential, Croce saw the  opportunity to capitalize on weddings, banquets, restaurants, a night club, office and residential space and a possible hotel, bringing the building back to life again as a multi-use space. "Everyone has a story about the Statler," Croce said in response to the support his work has garnered from the community. While Buffalo is known for supporting good causes, Croce and the Statlers are no exception. With over 12,000 fans on Facebook, weddings and banquets being booked weekly, Croce is already seeing a return on some of the nearly 4 million dollars he invested in it of his own money. Still waiting for grant money to come from the City of Buffalo for some of the exterior renovations, Croce is moving forward at lightning speed including a successful Ice Ball event on New Years where close to 200 workers were hard at work at any given time in the building. For now though Croce is enjoying a bit of the lime light with his step of faith transforming the once dilapidated building into a cultural icon once again. He appears to have once again succeeded where others said it couldn’t be done.!

McCrea, Bulls Make Presence Felt

Star sophomore forward keying fast start for UB men’s basketball team By Patrick Broadwater Photos by Paul Hokanson/UB

A big offseason for Javon McCrea has translated into a fast start for the University at Buffalo men’s basketball team.

The Bulls have been victorious in sixteen of their first twenty three games this season, and can point to a number of key factors to their success:

• A balanced scoring attack that relies on the outside shooting of senior guard Zach Filzen (averaging 16.0 points and four 3-pointers per game) and the deft touch of UB’s big men, including senior Mitchell Watt (14.0 ppg).


• Strong team defense, which is allowing a tad less than 64 points per game .


• And, buckets of quality minutes from their bench, including big contributions from


• A balanced scoring attack that relies on the outside shooting of senior guard Zach Filzen (averaging 16.0 points and four 3-pointers per game) and the deft touch of UB’s big men, including senior Mitchell Watt (14.0 ppg). Strong team defense, which is allowing a tad less than 64 points per game. And, buckets of quality minutes from their bench, including big contributions from senior Titus Robinson and junior Tony Watson.

And then, there’s the play of McCrea.

The 6-foot-7 sophomore forward has been a dominant figure for the Bulls this season, averaging team highs in points (16.8 ppg) and rebounds (8.6 rpg), while also handing out 2.2 assists per game and shooting nearly 62 percent from the floor. His performance this season builds upon an eventful offseason that included an opportunity to compete for a spot on USA Basketball’s U-19 team. McCrea had an impressive camp and was the last player cut from that squad, a fact not forgotten by those who assemble preseason previews and rankings. McCrea was named one of the top 100 players in the nation (ranking at No. 91) by CBSsports.com and was one of five players poised to have a breakout season in 2011-12, according to Sports Illustrated.

“It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like my hard work has paid off,” said McCrea, 19, who played scholastically for Newark High, a mid-sized school east of Rochester. “I know I still got more to go. I can work harder. So, that’s what pushes me. “

“I think he was always confident, but I’m sure it gave him a little more confidence,” Bulls head coach Reggie Witherspoon said of McCrea’s strong showing at the USA Basketball camp. “More than anything else, I think it validated what he thought, what he believes. You’ve got this ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ is, and you want to take it to another level and see if it works there. You know it works for you where you are, but will it work there? I think in his mind, it validated his belief that it would.”

Not that there were too many questions about McCrea after his stellar freshman season at UB. The Mid-American Conference (MAC) Freshman of the Year, McCrea excelled as the Bulls’ sixth man last year, averaging 11.8 points and 6.5 rebounds per game (eighth in the conference). But, as McCrea continues to mature, so does his game. He’s quickly evolving into an elite player.

“He’s the type of player than can – within the course of a game – do a couple of things that will make you think ‘Did I just see that? Did he really just do that?’ It really is special,” Witherspoon said. “What’s really good about it is that he’s a humble kid and he’s humorous. He’s someone who knows how to make a room laugh. In terms of being a teammate, his teammates appreciate him, and he’s easy to get along with.”

And why not? Like McCrea, the Bulls are looking to make the leap to the next level. After tough non-conference games at BYU and Temple, UB will find out where it stands when it opens MAC play at home against conference powerhouse Kent State on Jan. 7.

“That will be one of a number of tests for us,” Witherspoon said. “After a while you get numb to it. The good thing is you have to take it one game at a time, because they’re all too good to overlook. And once you get in conference play, you have to do that, too.”

“I think we’re doing good, and we’re progressing each game,” McCrea said. “We’re definitely going to win the MAC. It’s a definite.”!

Artspace Buffalo: A Community Revitalization Project

A century after they enjoyed their first wave of popularity, electric vehicles are back. Advances in technology sparked car makers to reintroduce “E-Vs” to the market in 2011, with seven new models to choose from.

     But electric vehicles actually have been around since the 1830s, when Dutch inventor Sibrandus Stratingh created an electromagnetic cart. From Stratingh's invention evolved cars that were manufactured in Buffalo in the early 1900s. President William McKinley was even whisked away in an electric ambulance to the hospital after being shot at the 1901 Pan-Am Exposition.

     David Torke, a local activist and blogger who has led historic tours for Preservation Buffalo Niagara, said the Mid-town section of Main Street was full of automobile production at the time. Electric cars were manufactured by the Buffalo Electric Carriage Company, which struggled through merger and ownership changes to become the Babcock Electric Carriage Company, then the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company. 

     Torke said, although Buffalo was the City of Light, the company suffered from many of the same challenges that still impede the industry today. READ MORE...