Representatives of the Olmsted Parks Conservancy were happy today with an announcement from Congressman Brian Higgins that Front Park would be restored to its historic beauty. Part of the project will involve making a tunnel for cars and trucks to pass through (from plaza to roadway) where the southbound I-190 entrance ramp now exists.
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Higgins says that the tunnel will cost $20 million more than a new elevated ramp, but that the difference can be made up in $25 million in Federal Highway that was earmarked for Peace Bridge community enhancements. Of the entire $750 million Peace Bridge expansion project, Higgins says he looks forward to the "thousands of jobs" this will create for the construction trades, and that the Public Bridge Authority is close to final approval from the Federal Highway Administration.
Higgins reiterated from earlier speeches concerning the bridge project and its environs that the flow of goods and commerce would be restored. Once again, he said, "It's not about trucks, it's about people." When asked, he said he believes that the state of the homes in the Peace Bridge community that will come down for the truck plaza are "borderline" and that their removal will enhance the homes that will be left. He said limiting the size of the truck plaza is not being considered because he believes it will be another component in moving traffic more quickly.
When suggested that the plaza would be a site for a larger duty free store that Americans would not benefit from, and that the 3-story parking ramp might be excessive, Higgins again said that with the restoration of the park, and the elimination of Baird Drive and the homes, would enhance the neighborhood for those homes left. He also said that moving traffic further away from those homes would eleviate the high incidence of asthma in proximity to the plaza, just as it had on the Fort Erie side of the bridge. When asked if there were statistics to back that up, Higgins suggested that Public Bridge Authority General Manager Ron Rienas might have that data, but Rienas had already left the press conference.
Speaking for the Conservancy, board chairman David Colligan said that when Baird Drive is removed, the historic grand entrance to the park is restored, and the vegetative screen goes up where a wall was previously planned, the park will fit in better with Fredrick Law Olmsted's vision from 1868, when the park was designed.
Olmsted Conservancy CEO Thomas Herrera-Mishler said he hopes to see Front Park become a gateway to Buffalo's cultural community. The offer of a tunnel seems to be the trump card that reversed Olmsted from their original opposition, when all that was offered were berms and a re-greened Baird Drive.
An initial study of the proposed tunnel by the Department of Transportation has called the tunnel feasible, while it also recommends against it (see this Buffalo News story and this one on YNN).
Image: (L to R): Congressman Chris Lee, PBA Chair Ken Schoetz, Congressman Brian Higgins, Olmsted Parks Conservancy Chair David Colligan, Olmsted Parks Conservancy CEO Thomas Herrera-Mishler
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Higgy is right. I wish the PBA would demolish the rest of my neighborhood, that he deems "borderline" so that my home can be "enhanced" with a semi-truck racetrack. We should all be so lucky.
I find myself agreeing with both you and steel. Either I need to reconsider, or this plaza really is the stupidest f*cking idea imaginable.
Its the stupidest idea ever. We dont have to disagree on everything.
Are you as dizzied as I am by the plaza design? Between highways, ramps, streets, etc. there are more than 12 lanes of traffic. The system is not intuitive, both as it exists now and as it is planned. This is a traffic nightmare. There is bridge traffic, highway traffic, local traffic, bicycle/pedestrian traffic, a rail line, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels, etc. Some issues that have always confounded me: there is a road from that small pumping station just north of the Peace Bridge that connects to the 190 South off ramp - I have never seen a single car using it (on a side note, they had talked about turning that open space north of the rowing club into parkland – removing this road would really increase the acreage and the Riverwalk trail runs right along it); I have always thought that it would make more sense to have a full interchange at Porter for local traffic accessing the 190 to/from all directions - the idea of getting on the 190 South from Busti or exiting the 190 North to Busti has never made much sense to me. There really ought to be separate routes for bridge traffic and local traffic. I’m envisioning highway bridge traffic interchanges to the west of the site, local bridge traffic access from the north of the site, and highway/local traffic (no bridge access) south of the site. The way the design is now, there is too much intermingling of bridge traffic and local traffic. If I didn’t know the area and was heading north on the 190 and needed to get off in that area, I’d find myself competing with semi-trailers and thinking that I was on a one-way road to Canada. I think part of the problem is that the current plaza design is REALLY screwed up and they are trying to work within the parameters of the existing system instead of re-thinking what the most efficient system would be.