Buffalo Spree Magazine

Last days of the Park Lane

By Elizabeth Licata
photos by www.demmephoto.com

The Park Lane en féte.
The event was designed by Martin Kemp

So it isn’t authentic Tudor or authentic anything. So this isn’t even the building that housed the original restaurant, destroyed by fire in 1971. So it was always difficult to make this oversized restaurant/banquet facility economically viable.

We’ll still miss it. At the end of 2006, Western New Yorkers said goodbye to the Park Lane restaurant, a local Gates Circle favorite that will eventually be replaced by a Uniland residential project. At presstime, the timetable for this project, as well as the form it will take, was still being determined, but one thing’s for sure. The restaurant is a goner.

Its interior fittings—including imported wrought iron chandeliers and torches and ancient timber beams that actually do date back to the Tudor period and before—have already been auctioned off. But for those who’d rather remember the restaurant in all of its intact glory, there were several opportunities in the last days of 2006.

Lisa Marie Kuczmarski, a Buffalo expat who now lives and works in Atlanta, had the foresight to choose the Park Lane as the locale of her wedding reception. Held on December 29, the reception was the last private function in the facility.

“After looking at other historic buildings in the City of Buffalo, it became obvious that the Park Lane was the perfect backdrop for our wedding reception,” Kucmarski (now Shekell) says. “The Park Lane represented what Ryan and I knew to be the remarkable heritage of the city itself. It embodied a bygone era—we were able take a step back in time and celebrate a special occasion with our closest family and friends.”

Newlyweds Lisa Marie Kuczmarski and Ryan Shekell.

Despite the restaurant’s lack of true historic credibility, many Buffalo residents considered the Park Lane as a special occasion venue in the same way they might the Butler Mansion or the Historical Society. Much like the former Cloisters (another non-historic building endowed with history), the Park Lane was the quintessential Buffalo high-class hang, a place where you felt both privileged and comfortable.

It is no wonder that this was the first choice for Kuczmarski, a graduate of Nardin whose husband, Ryan Shekell was a classmate at St. John Fisher. Kuczmarski is correct in using the word represent; a building or a business need not be hundreds of years old to become a beloved institution.

Another Park Lane fan, Scott Propeack, registrar and occasional curator at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, made it a point to stop by during the restaurant’s New Year’s Eve farewell. He uses the same word as Kuczmarski.

Newlyweds Lisa Marie Kuczmarski
and Ryan Shekell.

“The Park Lane represents a lineage of fine dining in Buffalo,” Propeack remarks. “When I moved to the Elmwood area, it was my neighborhood bar. The feel was just like the Cloister or maybe the Rue.”

Propeack reports that the New Year’s Eve event was “packed,” but doesn’t remember any particular bon mot that best sums up the restaurant’s place in Buffalo posterity.

“There were no gems, but lots of generalities,” he says. “For many of the other people there, this was where the major events of their lives had been held.”

Farewell, Park Lane!

Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree.

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