Making a Vibrant Downtown

Hopefully when HSBC leaves their building and Class B and C upgrade into the cheap class a space. It will leave a bunch of older building open to convert to residental or mixed use.

The expanding medical sector and Larkin district will also drive downtown living for those that desire that life style.

Who the heck considers Pittsburgh at the top of the success ladder. They are one of the few Cities/Metros in the country that have fallen as much as Buffalo. Pittsburgh lost more people as a percentage during the past 20 years than Buffalo has. It has gone from 650,000 in 1950 to roughly 300,000 now. It has lost 4 major downtown department store in the past 15 years alone and it's sole remaining one Macy's has shut down several floors. It was so bad there that during last years G20 summit in Pittsburgh they put in a whole series of fake storefronts in empty buildings to make it look like they were simply closed for the week. Some success.

http://www.fark.com/comments/4572955/Pittsburgh-is-dressing-up-vacant-downtown-storefronts-ahead-of-G-20-summit-presumably-to-make-them-more-attractive-targets-for-brick-throwing-anarchists

http://www.wtae.com/r/20155484/detail.html

unlike a lot of cities....housing in downtown Buffalo is more expensive (usually by a lot)and less practical then buying in the most desirable areas of the city...(Elmwood Vlg, Allentown, Parkside / N BUff).....so if you were young or even I old I guess...would you rather buy a condo in a ghostown (Elk lofts) for $300grand+...or buy a beautiful home for considerably less in more vibrant neighborhood?..

That's a great photo with this article. I love the new 700 block of Main Street.

Sitting here just off "downtown", I look over there and wonder where the hell are the residential units gonna go?

yes, it goes without saying that you need lots of people to make a downtown appealing, interesting, and economically viable. but we keep acting as though we need cars, lots of parked cars. like, if we can just cram more cars downtown as cheaply as possible, whether on surface lots or in ramp garages, then the heavens will part, a chorus of angels will sing, and nirvana will result.

fifty to seventy years of accommodating parked automobiles at the expense of every other activity and land use has produced a severely diminished downtown. i am grateful for every soul who moves in and calls it their own.

Everytime my lease is up we move closer to Downtown.

Downtown Buffalo is VERY hard on the eyes... even in the nicest parts of our central business district its not easy to look at.

You ever wanna take a road trip definately stop on Michigan avenue in Chicago. FLOWERS EVERYWHERE!! Landscaped medians, trees, decorative lampposts, GARBAGE cans, clean sidwalks... its amazing. I would imagine overall, done relatively cheaply and does wonders to soften the environment of a concrete jungle.

The closest thing we have here is Elmwood... if we could just replicate some of the positive street elements on Elmwood elsewhere in the city of buffalo it would do wonders for the "perception" of Downtown. We are the crews power washing sidewalks, picking up garbage, planting flowers, CLEANING?? They're non existent.

Ivans right... if you're just an average joe in buffalo you have two choices for city living: N. Buffalo bordering Kenmore/Tonawanda and South Buffalo. If not your either in a 300k victorian in Elmwood/Allen or a 29k double double on the East or West Sides.

Explain that logic when you can get a nice cape cod in Tonawanda for $115k or a new build in lancaster/hamburg for $150k-$165?

Two choices in the city or pretty much the suburbs.. those are your options in the city if your not a doctor or a gangster.

For me, the "lack of vibrancy" issue isn't just because of the lack of residential. A major issue is that the CBD isn't even that vibrant during office hours. Obviously, a high density residential/office balance would be nice, but there are plenty of cities that their immediate CBD is bustling during the daytime and then most people leave for other parts of the city at night (which would be acceptable in my mind). High density office or high density residential - either would make downtown feel more like a vibrant city and both hinge on the ability of downtown attracting the necessary number of jobs. Finding 5,000 Gen Yers wanting to live downtown isn't the issue; the issue is finding 5,000 jobs for those Gen Yers to have a reason to live downtown.

Ivan is on to something, decent housing in the burbs is quite affordable compared to Downtown lofts and condos and without a college or substantial entertainment options together with the ease of driving and parking and there is really no demand for density in residential. And then you face the reality of racism and prejudice vs. poverty by suburbanites. Urban Growth Boundries and very progressive government together with a plethora of young and progressive small business operators is what is needed as well. And regretfully middle class wny'ers are not attracted by public transit. I know young couples that cannot rub two nickels together but they have two cars, two cell phones, ipods and manage to party too. Taking the train is something they do for fun every now and again. WNY is just not a progressive and conscientious place that will ever truly adopt a diverse urban culture.

Great stuff! Be sure to show up and express your views at the downtown neighborhood workshop coming up!

Central (Downtown, Erie Basin, Outer Harbor)
Monday, February 28
6:30 - 9:00 pm
Hutch-Tech High School
230 S. Elmwood Ave.

http://www.buffalogreencode.com

Jessee..try the endless amount of surface parking lots and a majority of the half filled office buildings in the cbd

What they really need to do is improve the Buffalo public school system. In every city in the US, a dense population of young urban families is always the most desirable place to live. Most young families in Buffalo opt for the burbs because they dont want to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to send their kids to private school. Bring in the families and you bring in the dollars.

Honestly,

You can slide and dice the data 50 ways, tell the story another hundred and nothing has changed in the last 50 years and you're not telling me anything new....

If you want to address the problem try gearing your article themes toward the following:

- downtown restaurants
- downtown living spaces (what's on the market, not just development projects)
- interview people who live downtown, what they like about and have them shed insight on things that most of us would not know about

These are the types of things that will make people excited. Everyone in America knows how bad our downtown sucks, keep painting the same picture in your articles and it will stay that way...

too bad this website carries the crappy buffalo mentality that the rest of the journalists around here do...

Good article, thanks Greg.

I have to agree (for one) with a lot of the viewpoints above, but I also want to remind people how much Buffalo has changed in the past 5-7 years. The buzz, positivity and renewed interest in Buffalos' core is palpable...after 50 years of utter neglect.

A lot of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together: people ARE actually living downtown, arts organizations are clustered on main street, there are key events (Powder Keg, etc.) that are bringing people down in masses, etc. All of this activity will continue to coalesce and help to make Downtown more vibrant.

I agree with grad (and others) that the prevalence of (surface lot) parking has been one of the biggest annihilating forces to downtown: it prioritizes the vehicle over the pedestrian, it encourage the demolition of so many great buildings, etc. We need to not let that happen anymore-bury it and build on top! We need more green (to soften the edge as mentioned above), more infill, more destination sites and, again, more residents.

All of which is happening......

Here is a link for those who feel there is not enough "affordable" housing downtown.

http://www.buffaloplace.com/apartments

There are plenty of complexes with starting rents in the 400-500 per month range in some of the older developments(ie: Ansonia, 267 Franklin, Franklin Tupper, Marine Drive etc).

The newer developments tend to be on the high end of the rental market but there are still places to live in and adjacent to the central business district that are within most people's budget.

I always wonder if we aren't foolish to look for cause and effect (as uninspiring as that may be): Are downtowns crowded because their cities are vibrant, or are the cities vibrant because they have bustling downtowns? When you phrase the question like that, doesn't it sort of suggest that we cannot reliably attribute cause and effect?

Consider that if there were a reliable (and knowable) causal relationship, it would imply that all urban areas could prosper simultaneously, which seems, on its face ridiculous, sort of like Lake Woebegon's wondrous children, all of whom are above average.

Much of what drove urban success in the past (access to natural resources for the purposes of production or the transportation and sale of produced items) has been rendered less important as we became a society of doers (a service economy). What can be done to drive urban success when that success is determined by the ability to appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of highly mobile elites (decision-makers)? The variables are now attributes of the population, rather than the location.

Cities of the future America may be affinity associations, populated by persons brought together not by immigration waves or demand for unskilled labor (or inertia--never underestimate inertia), but by common desires for a particular climate or population density (don't we all know people for whom the cheek-by-jowl density of Manhattan is literally frightening?).

As a confirmed city-dweller, Manhattan-lover, transit-rider, I am mindful of the fact that as real incomes rose following World War II, the first thing people did was run like hell for the less dense suburbs. Any urbanist needs to answer the question implicit in that historical fact: Why?

Buffalo's population (and thus density) and its proportion of the metro population peaked in the 1950's. The IRC streetcars stopped running in the 1950's. Cars were not yet the dominant mode of daily transportation for anything like a majority of metro residents. The corner began to be turned before Bethlehem Steel closed, before the streetcars went poof, before the 33 was built, etc.

On the subject of transit-related development, the issue reemerges: What's cause, what's effect? The streetcars were removed in favor of buses, in order to be able to more nimbly respond to changes in the urban environment (shopping and residences); that was how they were sold to Buffalo (and probably LA). Unfortunately, bus routes calcify as readily as rail routes, it appears. Almost every NFTA bus route extant today has buried streetcar tracks running beneath it, yet travel patterns have changed since 1950, have they not? All I think when I read the contemporaneous news accounts of the streetcar-bus changeover was: Business would not have built where no one could reach it. If the streetcars had remained, higher-density development along its corridors would have resulted, IF (huge if) road development had not followed as strongly as it did.

Y... thanks for reeling this trainwreck in. Everyone is throwing all these theories and ideas out and then trying to show ciuse and effect and in fact, important variables are skipped and lesser important ones are held up as significant.

In simplest terms, even hypothetically with an Urban Growth Boundary in place as someone suggested which would allow us to make the assumption that sprawl would be minimized, the economics of this region and irs aging AND declining (double whammy) populaation are the tost critical issues.

Some comments after running through these above:

1. The culture of WNY is a suburban one. Normative agruments that city life should be required or that it's the only way to live dismiss reality and dismiss economics.

2. As for economics, most people recognize that there are tradeoffs between the city and the suburbs. First, you can buy a house on a larger lot for less money in the suburbs in a better school district. Despite this fascination with density, it's not actually what most people want. So if they don't prefer that and can get a nice house in a nice suburbn for the same price as a home in Elmwood Village and with better schools (assuming the have kids), that's what they'll do. You can argue until next year about school quality, but research continues to support it as critical in the housing decisions of the most important age groups, those young professionals with school age kids who contribute to the economy.

3. Measuring GDP output against population is insignificant. It's cherry picked data to support your argument but wrong on many levels, most critically it assumes GDP, a flawed measurement in its own right, is the right measurement for all local economies.

4. Design-based solutions like the Green Code won't have any impact socially or economically in the short term (10-20 years) and is likely to have minimal impact in the longterm. If the Code is adminsitered in the same fashion by the same city with the same departments and same employees, its an epic failure. Until systematic changes are made politically in the city, new laws and codes are public relations and re-election fodder. Let me ask you this.... what is the timeline for completion of the Code and when will Byron Brown have his next mayoral campaign in full swing? Coincidence?

Here's a simplified formula for the future:

Regional Population decline + Aging Remaining Population + Government Fragmentation and Municipal Competition = Decline of this Region

The chart says we're already double Cleveland's portion, more than Providence, and tied with Hartford. Less than Columbus, but them being a state capital brings extra office workers who might be downtown minded.

But we're still behind Cinci, Louisville, and Pittsburgh. How to catch up and pass them?

Maybe start with some math and marketing. There probably aren't 1000's, or tens of 1000's, of residents now in our uptight boring suburbs who want to move to the city. I'd believe at any time there's at least dozens or 100's, but unlikely the many 1000's needed for a big boost of vibrancy. And we probably won't have net gain of people moving to WNY from elsewhere any time soon, so urban growth boundaries won't force anybody into downtown.

But what could be tried is to lure big numbers of residents to move downtown who already live in other parts of Buffalo. They obviously won't complain about phony issues like schools, etc.

For that target demographic, how about some creative negative advertising?

TV spots with sad music can show comparative disadvantages in traditional residential neighborhoods. For example - corner deli's all over, oversized pharmacies and other big box stores in N Bflo, smells from the zoo in Parkside, etc. And pretty much everywhere else too much un-urban green space, too much car traffic & driveways, not enough bars, not enough live theater, and so on.
After that it can show upbeat images of how downtown is better those ways.

I would love to live downtown. But, a car is still necessary. If my kids were still school age, I would not consider it for a moment. Education is a serious concern to families. Un fortunately, there are not enough services or activities enough to attract me there. Cause and effect relationships can be difficult to determine in a complex argument like this. And, irrelevant. How does one get increasing services and an influx of people to occur concurrently? What comes to my mind first is the lack of a centrally located supermarket where daily living supplies can be purchased at reasonable market prices.
Has anyone mentioned safety issues? I for one would not feel comfortable walking to a store after dark in a nearly empty concrete jungle.

I live in downtown (we call it Center City)Philadelphia, which used to be a pathetic ghost town after 5pm and starting in the late 80's, escalating in the 90's and going strong in the '00's, has become very, very lively. The influx of highrises (many are warehouse/office conversions) and restaurants seemed to go hand in hand. Just waking around today I popped into a two week old gastro pub and it was packed. It is one of about eight new places within 2 blocks over the last 12 months.

As someone that lives in an established 1920's highrise, I can tell you that the market for these buildings are being driven by empty-nesters, by far. They are done with driving everywhere, lawn maintenence and roof repairs. They often still want a car, but want a new, healthier, pedestrian lifestyle with closer access to the arts, restaurants and entertainment. The more people move in, the more businesses to cater to them will appear. Most of the people in my building used to live in the suburbs.

One of the most significant things the city did was to install stylish yet high illumination street lights in the 90's, as people feel more secure when not walking in shadows. No question about it, a big move. The best bang for the buck. I find Buffalo to be under-illuminated at night.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_City,_Philadelphia

CK

20 years ago while on a cross country flight, I sat next to a young BofA executive who was charged with facilitating the project in Philly known as Center City. I was facsinated with the concept, but held that I didn't think it held much promise. Of course I was thinking only from the parent's point of view in terms of my children's needs.

But, it did happen! Over a long time that is. And it spread to large urban centers especially in recent years. When the Elk Lofts emerged on our local scene, I found it very exciting despite its ghost town location. Could EL been any further from services??? But, it was a start.

The collapse of the economy has sent an enormous ripple thru the lofts/conversions movement. There is now a very high rate of foreclosure and auction sales in places like Los Angeles.

Some one in a different forum suggested that if I beieved in it as much as I espoused, why don't I just go ahead and purchase one in Buffalo anyway. Be a pioneer who puts your $$$$ where his mouth is. Sorry folks, I am too old to have to defend myself. I have been relegated back to the burbs with a lovely yard my grandchildren will never enjoy. Each of my highly educated children all card carrying memebers of that Brain Drain group left for greener pastures never to return to our beloved city. But my support for this new urban way of life will continue.

We're the only nation In the world where the richer live further from the center. Unless Buffalo has a dramatic population influx and there aren't any other options, downtown will continue to be doomed. Sure, sure there may be small strides made here and there, but it will take generations before the majority realize sprawl is destructive and move back towards the city center. This is a problem facing every American city.

To ponder why things are the way they are is silly when the reason is literally surrounding us (on 3 sides atleast)

Some thoughts on housing subsidies:

There are properties for sale in Buffalo. Subsidies are available for purchasing them, too. Check out SONYMA. My wife and I got one: $5000 closing cost assistance IF we stayed put for nine years. $5000 closing cost assistance (which I believe was unrelated to purchase price) makes a bigger impact on the final cost of the average city property versus the average suburban one! Thus, the subsidy is effectively greater for the city than the suburbs.

The mortgage interest deduction against the income tax is a huge subsidy program, but folks forget that it is also available to developers of multiunit properties, just like its available to developers of factories, stores, etc. A business expense (such as interest) is fully deductible against income before tax is applied. In a competitive market (like housing certainly is: Many buyers and sellers, relatively equal knowledge on the part of both, etc.), that means that the "benefit" of the deduction will be competed away and ultimately benefit the buyer of housing (which includes renters).

I rent apartments, BTW. Anyone who suggests that my tenants don't ultimately pay property taxes is a fool: If I couldn't write off property taxes as a business expense, you'd better be sure they'd be paying more in rent! (Thus they "deduct" them, same as me, except whereas I do that on Schedule E once a year, they do it monthly, on their rent checks.)

There IS an inequity in the mortgage interest deduction that irritates me, though: Taxpayers who have large mortgage interest payments get to choose standard deductions or itemized as it benefits them; taxpayers who do NOT have large mortgage interest payments (and this would include the largest number of city taxpayers, reflecting the lower purchase prices of average city properties) have no such choice. (Yes, of course this produces the most advantageous result for these taxpayers too, under current law, but read on.) I would much prefer, from a equity standpoint, a mortgage interest deduction following the standard deduction FOR EVERYONE. As this would move the needle for mostly low-income folks, it would be a subsidy to them, but not be very costly to the Treasury since the numbers are relatively small (that is, the interest paid on small mortgages coupled with the low marginal rates low income taxpayers pay). Good social policy on the cheap.

You want Buffalo to have a vibrant downtown, well for starters we need to make this city more business friendly and we need to sell our city's downtown as a viable business location especially for corporate headquarters of large corporations looking to relocate from another city. You cannot convert every building into residential. The downtown core is the central business district not an exclusive residential district. The HSBC Tower should remain an office tower. Converting it into residential is foolhardy. The owners of HSBC Tower need to do a better job meeting the needs of HSBC Bank and their other tenants. The skyscraper is approaching 40 years of age and is in need of major upgrades. Another major point is that the City of Buffalo has been totally governed by the democratic party since 1964 and what direction has the city gone, obviously downhill. It is time to rid Buffalo city government of the democrats and their horribly failed, business unfriendly policies. It is time for a moderate GOP takeover of the City of Buffalo. A differant political party will inject fresh ideas and change the course of governance in Buffalo. Another major point is that we need to change our development patterns in WNY. Instead of permitting suburban office buildings to be built in the outer ring suburbs ie Clarence, Elma there should be emphasis and incentives to encourage business expansion and development in downtown and in other aging business districts. We also need to tell these NIMBYs that their opposition is not supported and that they need to get out of the way and let the city redesign, rebuild, and reinvent itself. You can't save everything from the past. This is what is hurting Buffalo and why most businesses and corporations shy away from the city and develop in the suburbs instead.

The opening paragraph of this article makes a few broad and lazy assumptions. Along with many other people, I do not immediately think of "downtown" when I think of New York. I think of the neighborhoods I lived in, places where there was far more urban affection than the "official" downtown. Wherever that is. Same when living in Toronto--I think of the few charming neighborhoods where people really knew each other, not the sterile, gray "official" downtown financial area that cuts the real neighborhoods off from the water.

Second, what constitutes downtown? I now live a ten minute stroll from so-called downtown Buffalo; I don't see my neighborhood as remote from it, but a part of the city core, a more useful term than the stale "downtown."

And where are all these recent articles in newspapers bemoaning Buffalo's depression? I'd liked to see them.

Buffalo just isn't set up to thrive. I moved (back here) from DC and have lived near Lafayette Sq since August and my thoughts are as follows:

1. I truly believe 20somethings could set the city in the right direction. We're too poor to move out after college, but we can escape mom&dad's basement for a decent price (I live in a loft with a roommate for $380). There's enough of us to turn the wheel if we're all pushing in the same direction.

2. I got rid of my car because parking around here is so ridiculous. I'd rather walk. Or give me a metro that.. you know.. branches? But even if you did,

3. Where am I going to go? DC's neighborhoods are within a metro ride of each other, and they've all got a different (is it lame to say) flavor. So you can meet your friends at A and then get dinner at B. Bored? Jump back on the metro and see what's happening at C. It's less than $1.50 to ride. Boom, you're spending money all around town. It'd be nice to grab dinner in the theater district, catch a concert at the waterfront (hey, somebody reopen the Pier)and ride on over to Allentown without having to pay for gas, parking, cabs, etc. Make going out an event rather than a hassle. Who WANTS to be "tipsy".. driving.. in the slush? I'd rather stay in.

4. A few bike lanes in the CBD would be nice too.

5. Tidy this place up! Georgetown's architecture is on par with ours but theyve got clean streets, trees and flowers. When's the last time you think they power washed some of those buildings on Main? Sure it cant be springtime year round, but I think a little investment in sprucing would go a long way to improve everyone's attitude about having to look at this city's ugly mug.

6. Start hiring kids to update these old buildings for energy efficiency. I canvassed for wind farms along the waterfront (for one day, it was terrible) in Orchard Park and some lady told me she was "against them bc theyre ugly." Uglier than a coal plant? Uglier than your energy bill? Uglier than that frack water they're dumping in the water system? Plus, you live in Orchard Park. How often are you looking? (

5. Give me a flippin bike lane.

And just a note to the folks talking about housing and education in the burbs. Thing about that is, when you fill up a space with housing development after housing development, you leave little room for culture so you get a concentration of bored, self-absorbed white kids shooting heroine and lacking any worldly sense(I grew up in Lancaster). Central Ave in Lanc is dead too, regardless of the population density. We've gotta find a healthy balance downtown.

so, yeah.. I vote for infrastructure.

Just a lurker - never leave comments, but damn hubera06 - I'm with you!!! Great stuff. Spot on, really.

If UB 2020 actually happens..... 1000 college students living in and near downtown would have a huge effect. College kids blow mom and dad's money and don't worry about stereotypes of areas...