Buffalo is internationally known for its unique landscape of grain elevators, which symbolize the city's role in the formation of the nation and its status as the largest grain port the world had ever seen. On the City Ship Canal, the Great Northern grain elevator is distinctive in a landscape of distinction. It has been a designated city landmark since 1990, both for its sheer monumental presence and its pioneering architecture and engineering.

It was the first elevator in the world to be powered by electricity, with Buffalo's Electric Elevator, and helped prove that Nikola Tesla's AC power (from Niagara Falls) could be transported long distances, which made the world as we know it. It used enormous, tall cylindrical bins that gave the grain elevator its classic look, and its non-structural brick cladding makes it one of the largest and distinctive brick edifices in the world. It is the last "Brick box" elevator in the world.

It embodies demolition by neglect, abandoned by an owner that has campaigned to demolish it by various methods over its nearly three decades of ownership. That company asked for an emergency demolition from the city in 2020.

A storm in 2021 tore a hole in the neglected brick cladding, and the city issued the order for the entire building, even though the steel-framed structure is in no danger from collapse and needs only to be repaired.

Mayor Byron Brown we urge you, based on the information on the strength of the original design and construction, to REVOKE the emergency order and order REPAIR.