Tim Hortons Franchise Coming To Liberty Building

(Saturday, October 27, 2007) - Tim Hortons will score a hat trick in downtown Buffalo by the end of the year, with the opening of its third eatery along Main Street.

The popular Canadian coffee and doughnut chain will locate a restaurant on the ground floor of the Liberty Building, at the corner of Main and Court streets. Patrick Hotung, general manager of Main Place Liberty Group, confirmed the Tim Hortons deal Thursday, saying lease negotiations have been going on for several months.

"I guess it shows how long I'll wait for a good cup of coffee," Hotung said.

The 2,000-square-foot space, which is equivalent to size of a newbuild Tim Hortons store, is the former site of the Liberty Coffee Roastery. The Liberty Building restaurant joins a smaller Tim Hortons location in the HSBC Center, at the foot of Main Street, and a cafe inside the Key Center, at Main and Chippewa streets.

Rachel Douglas, corporate spokeswoman for the Ontario-headquartered restaurant company, said there is plenty of appetite in downtown Buffalo to support a third Tim Hortons.

"Based on our reception at the other two sites, which have gone well for us, we expect a site with direct street access to do very well," Douglas said. "Our enclosed urban sites tend to draw most of their business from the buildings they are in; the street exposure will get us a mostly new audience."

Michelle Mazzone, president of American Capital Real Estate, Main Place Liberty Group's marketing and leasing consultant, said the presence of a Tim Hortons will also be a perk for tenants.

"We specifically marketed that space to coffee companies knowing it would be a great amenity for the tenants, as well as bringing more people into the Liberty Building," Mazzone said.

Tim Hortons, which will begin build-out of the new restaurant in the next few weeks, has yet to sign a franchisee to operate the site. Tim Hortons franchisees run 75 eateries bearing the name of the late Buffalo Sabres player in the greater Buffalo area, and a total of 345 in the United States.

The signing of the Tim Hortons is not the only positive leasing news for Main Place Liberty Group, which has struggled to find tenants for its Main Place Tower and Liberty Building. Mazzone, who has been working with the building owner since last December, said progress has been made in the form of new leases for nearly 120,000 square feet of space in the two buildings.

"We've gotten new tenants and signed new leases with some key current tenants," Mazzone said. "In the case of the lease extensions, these were all tenants who were out in the marketplace looking for space, and they decided to stay, which says a lot about the landlord and building management."

Among the new tenants will be the New York State Attorney General's Office, which will move into a 40,000-square-foot space on the third floor of Main Place Tower next April. Another new tenant is Doculegal, which signed for 3,300 square feet in the tower.

Tata Consulting Services, an Indian software company which operates a training center in Main Place Tower, has also extended its lease and expanded.

Mazzone's group has resigned several law firms that were already located in the Liberty Building, including Hurwitz & Fine; Colluci & Gallagher; Roach Brown and Rupp Baase; and Mark Rogers. The lease extensions also include more than 20,000 square feet of expansions for the existing tenants.

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