Former Site of Republic Steel (Buffalo, New York)

 place with historical importance, brownfield land, historical layer / disappeared object

Built along the Buffalo River the Republic Steel Mill was one of several mills operated by Republic Steel along the Great Lakes, making the company the third largest steel producer in the United States for a time.

Employing several thousand workers and functioning in direct competition with the massive Bethlehem Lackawanna Mill to the Southwest, Republic's mill remained in operation into the 1970's producing steel bars, beams and shapes with 2 blast furnaces. Restricted by it's location more and more as time passed, the mill made the best of it's geographic shortcomings by utilizing a unique articulated mill line to manufacture its product. Nonetheless, economic depression and more modernized competition conspired against the facility in the late 1960's, and despite a last-ditch multi-million dollar attempt at modernization of the plant, it was gradually shut down over the 1970's before finally shutting down in 1984.

With the majority of the mill apparatus either being reutilized elsewhere or scrapped, Republic abandoned the site and it was eventually taken over by the City of Buffalo in 2007 after an extensive remediation project under US Government 'Brownfield' program. Today, the city is seeking either commercial investment to the waterfront property.

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