To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. I I I DEMOLITION “You remember and dream in ‘living color.’ The place was a dump on the best of days,” Michael Powers says frankly. “The long, darkened ramps introduced you to your neighbor rather closely, especially during the intimate exits after events. The steps leading down to the seats into the Oranges were vertigo-inducing, and the hand rails were a metal fabricator’s practical joke. Aud Club food was sort of on the vile side but you liked it anyway because of the private clubhouse feel.” SUZANNE K. TAYLOR “Everybody is being nostalgic, but it was a miserable building,” states Jack Karet f latly. Several reuses were proposed for The Aud. The list included a children’s museum, transportation hub, sports museum, aquarium, weather or snow museum, casino, police headquarters, war memorial or military museum, opera house, UB law school, and–ironically–a convention center. In the meantime Studio Arena used the space to paint scenery, and police used it for training the K9 corps. By 2004 it had become obvious that it would not be used again as an arena, and talk of auctioning its contents began. The City received an estimate in 2006 indicating that the seats would bring in approximately $35 apiece and decided then that it would not be cost-effective to salvage them. Unfortunately, The Aud had all the security of a doggy door, and many things were pillaged before the City finally got around to auctioning the contents in 2008. To the City’s surprise, the Blues that were auctioned in sets of twos and threes fetched several hundred dollars apiece, proving that whoever gave the City the initial estimate was never a Sabres fan. Everyone wants to know why The Aud wasn’t brought down on a single painful day with dynamite but was instead demolished slowly over a period of months. The answer is that The Aud was built over Continued on page 56 The last turnstile left standing Left: During the demolition the front rows of the balcony filled with water. When the Oranges were salvaged, the front row remained intact because seats were frozen solid in ice and couldn’t be removed. 5 2