By JAMES FINK
jfink@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1611

The National Trust for Historic Preservation annual conference is still two months away, but local officials report that more than 1,400 people already are signed up to attend the week-long gathering.

In fact, Visit Buffalo Niagara - formerly the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau - said downtown hotel rooms during the conference - are getting scarce.

Buffalo's advance registration has outpaced cities such as Austin, Nashville and Tulsa, which hosted the conference in recent years. Reservations have come in from representatives of all 50 states for this year's event, scheduled Oct. 19-22.

"Members of preservation organizations from across the country are excited to be coming to Buffalo to see our architecture, to understand our challenges and to learn from what we are doing," Preservation Buffalo Niagara Director Henry McCartney said. 

Members of the local organizing committee, led by Preservation Buffalo Niagara and Visit Buffalo Niagara, have spent four years working to build interest and attendance for the conference. That included advertising in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's magazine called "Preservation" and assisting with an eight-page cover story in the magazine's current issue. They also created the "Buffalo: This Place Matters" video, which has had more than 185,000 views on YouTube; distributed more than 5,000 DVDs of WNED-TV's production, "Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo;" and sent a delegation to a trade show at each of the last four conferences.

"Visit Buffalo Niagara has been working hard with the local organizing committee to drive attendance to the National Preservation Conference, and it is exciting to see these efforts begin to pay off," said Dottie Gallagher-Cohen, Visit Buffalo Niagara president and chief executive officer. "This is precisely the audience that we have been targeting with our 'Buffalo. For Real' campaign - they are well-educated, they have expendable income, and they are the opinion makers and influencers within the preservation community.

According to Gallagher-Cohen, "We plan to roll out the red carpet to ensure that they have a wonderful time in Buffalo this fall, to the point that they feel inspired to visit again."