Cruise ships through the Great Lakes have long skimmed Lake Erie between Toronto and Cleveland, without stopping in Buffalo. A forthcoming cruise terminal by LiRo-Hill will offer a new link on the network, and plug Buffalo into the Great Lakes region’s cruising industry.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul shared renderings this week of the cruise terminal planned for Buffalo’s Outer Harbor. The Buffalo Outer Harbor Cruise Ship Terminal will be built at the Slip 2 parcel on Fuhrmann Boulevard. The site has been vacant since 2007.
Renderings show a dock large enough to host two vessels. Passengers will offboard at the dock area and proceed to a new welcome center. The dock culminates at a pier with a park. “Buffalo” will be imprinted onto a fence made of patinated steel.
A stepped wooden plinth will anchor the pier, and feature a shading pavilion. A grassy park with tall trees and plantings will be sited behind the docking area.
The project was first announced in 2022 by Governor Hochul and today backed by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation. In 2024, New York State commissioned a market demand study to determine the potential economic impact of building a cruise terminal in Buffalo, conducted by Moffat & Nichol, an infrastructure consultancy.
LiRo-Hill was awarded the contract for architectural and engineering design and construction administration for the cruise terminal in 2025.
By the end of 2026 there are anticipated to be a total of seven cruise lines operating ten ships, generating $300 million in economic impact. The new cruise terminal will tap into the cruising sector by facilitating trips from Buffalo to Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Duluth, Ontario, and remote islands off of Michigan. Earlier this year, Visit Buffalo, the city’s tourism board, announced a multimillion-dollar brand and marketing campaign aimed at drawing more visitors to the city in Upstate New York.
The new cruise terminal stems from this effort. It will hopefully have ancillary benefits for downtown Buffalo, and all the local business there, according to Empire State Development Commissioner Hope Knight.
Passengers will disembark the cruise terminal and go on guided tours of cultural destinations such as Niagara Falls, and the new Buffalo AKG Art Museum by OMA and Cooper Robertson.
Construction on the cruise terminal will begin this July. A grand opening is scheduled for summer 2028.