By Kelly Dudzik, WGRZ
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Each Monday, we are highlighting someone who is helping to build Buffalo and Western New York in our City Shapers segment.
This week, we are profiling Matt Enstice. Enstice leads a group that is leading Buffalo’s growth and innovation: The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
“You always know you can come back home to Buffalo. You know, that’s what my wife and I saw, and I think that’s what I see with most of the youth that’s out there. They know that they can come back here. What we’re trying to do is to create more of a special place for them to continuously come back to because at Buffalo’s roots, it has all the great pieces in place,” says Enstice.
Enstice is one of the people making sure all of those pieces work together to generate smart growth and innovative ideas as the President and CEO of the non-profit Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Enstice grew up here, and a career in the entertainment industry took him across the country before he moved back.
“In Los Angeles, I was an intern at Broadway Pictures. And in New York, I worked for Saturday Night Live, and it was really on the production side, so a lot of the production was about, you know, bringing people together and moving a live show forward with a team of people, and that’s what this is here at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus,” says Enstice.
Since 2002, Enstice and his team have led the effort to redevelop the Medical Campus.
“So there are a lot of moving parts,” said 2 On Your Side’s Kelly Dudzik.
“Lots of moving parts here, and that’s a really good thing. Over the years, for a while we weren’t moving, and now what you see here is you look out the windows and look around this campus, there’s a lot of things in motion,” says Enstice.
Part of his mission is to grow the Medical Campus and build on the success that’s already there.
“How does it make you feel to be a part of all of this and to be one of the driving forces with your team to make this hwp-contenten for Buffalo?” asked Dudzik.
“The real exciting thing to myself and to our team is that every day we come to work and we’re trying to figure out by what we’re doing, how is this going to take Buffalo to the next level?”
The Medical Campus is much more than the health care industry. When we visited, the DIG workspace was hosting a Wine Down Wednesday networking event. The Kevin Guest House extension, which will be connected by a walkway to Allen Street, is being transformed into this year’s Decorators’ Show House.
By the end of this year, around 17,000 employees or students will be working on the Medical Campus.
“Is it more competitive now? Do you have more people contacting you saying hey, I want to be a part of this? How has that changed?” asked Dudzik.
“Yeah, I what you’ve seen with our institutions and the various companies that have moved down here have created a buzz. And so you’re seeing a lot of different companies, whether it’s a local company or a company from out of town that wants to be down on this campus,” says Enstice.
Over the next decade, Enstice says more companies will put down roots here and he predicts more academic involvement from local colleges and universities.
“I think the beauty of it is that, together with the community, we’re imagining what could this still really become,” he says.
If you know someone who is doing something great for Buffalo and Western New York, send Kelly Dudzik email and they might be our next City Shaper.