Design Revised for Roswell Park Clinical Sciences Center

Nice! More of these please.

Interesting project.

Look at the firm's river museum project in Pittsfield: www.fxfowle.com/projects/cultural/the-housatonic-river-museum.php. It would be great to juxtapose our historic relics, such as the elevators, with an interesting newbuild like this.

Love it. It is coming together. Love the movement.

I hope this project makes no concessions to the single biggest evil of the 21st century: someone from the suburbs driving a vehicle (e.g. SUV) who defines sprawl, a Chris Collins type but really aren't they all. High five.

Looks really good.

Just wish there was more glass at the first floor on Michigan.

Let me get this right.. a new 11 story tower, a university medical center and new childrens hospital...all soon to begin construction. Can't wait to see the services fill in, grocery market, restaurants/cafes, bank branches, dry cleaners, florist, newsstands.

Love seeing the medical campus continue to blossom! This is great news.

Wow! When I heard a building was in the works for this parcel, I wondered just what they would come up with for this long, shallow lot.

Nice work by the architects. Since they designed the B&L world HQ in DT Rochester (when they were still known as Fox & Fowle), a really stunning post-modern, I've been a fan.

One of my other favorite buildings, the Sagamore on East in Rochester, was built on a similarly proportioned long, shallow lot (in that case, on a small surface parking lot in front of a large parking garage). That was designed by Craig Jensen of Chantreil, Jensen, Stark, the Buffalo office of which (now in a rehabbed building in the Larkin District) is run by Bob Stark.

With all the momentum down there I wonder where the large pharmaceutical R&D operations are? When do significant private sector investments take place and large numbers of new good paying jobs move into the area? When do the Wyeth's, Pfizers, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Merck, Eli Lily's of the world start putting pinnacle signs on buildings? Will it happen? I hope so. Something needs to reverse the continued city and regional bleeding of population. When I hear of locally based medical products firms in 2012 moving HQ's (Greatbach) away with all that momentum going on in the medical campus I dont get a good feeling.

I suggest Roswell focus less on brick and mortar and medical procedures, and back onto one of the most important parts of their mission. . “prevention.” (“Prevent, understand, cure.”) We need less cancer in the first place! It’s hard to justify requests for our precious charitable contributions for buildouts when some clinics are only open two days a week, banker’s hours, with rooms unused the reset of the time. Convenience to employees has trumped rational use of the space. The tail is wagging the dog. I ask donors (e.g. "Ride for Roswell") to either earmark Roswell donations for true prevention (nutrition, environmental carcinogens, etc.) or consider other charities that do better in this regard, like the Breast Cancer Network of WNY.

Maybe I'm suggesting that "the emperor has no clothes", but here goes. The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus is becoming a medical *fortress*, not a medical *campus.*

Stop this sterile suburban-style office park, segregated from its host community! Rather than merely providing the illusion of safety for suburban commuters, actually improve the neighborhood. 3 ways to integrate architecturally with downtown:

1. Flexible boundaries: Rehab properties in fruit belt, and across the Kensington, (said expressway hopefully soon to be eliminated as a barrier). E.g., century old brick houses right next to Roswell; Sheehan Hospital.

2. Save McCarley Gardens. Keep life beyond a 9-4 suburban commuter presence. Nothing improves safety more than concerned residents. This is one of HUD's few success stories.

3. Bulldozer moratorium. Postpone all Campus demolition, including the Trico building. Use *existing* resources efficiently. Donors and politicians, resist calls for more brick and mortar in this “Great Recession milieu of scarce resources.”

Economists agree: the health care bubble will pop. I do not buy into “Medical Campus as the be-all-and-end-all economic engine for WNY.” (Think Bass Pro.) I would rather be left with history and a viable neighborhood, than with abandoned architecturally insignificant hospital grounds.

Im just a little confused.

Donovan building design: Everyone says "horrible!"

This building: Looks exactly like Donovan design "Amazing!"

Why the difference in opinions?

I would like to see a dorm for students in this area !! Perhaps a tall tower !! And maybe a tower or 2 for the doctors etc !!

Not sure the new RP building is just like the Donovan rehab, but close enough, I get the point.

I think the criticism of the Donovan/One Canalside is because the canal area is all about bringing people and activity to the waterfront. This is part of the Master Plan, and shows up in the Design Standards that call for buildings to be constructed to the sidewalk, have retail etc.

While I wish the RP and Medical Campus were more pedestrian friendly, and relate better to the existing neighborhood, I don't see this as the main mission there.

The very success of Canalside will depend on the architecture and building design. And while I think the BNMC buildings should be more urban, I don't think that the success of RP and BNMC is as dependent on design.

Hospitals and University Medical School not exactly a suburban 9-4 environment, I'd say more like 24/7. Students will need housing, there will be shift work by maintenience and service staff, doctors, there will be weekend visitors and extended stay visitors, staff and visitors need to grab meals, books/magazines, coffee and just go somewhere to kill some time.

I have to agre with the previous posts that say the 1st floor is pretty much hostile to pedestrians with little more than blank brick walls.

Certainly the medical campus can do more to create cheerful and engaging surroundings than long expanses of dead space on the 1st floor for pedestrians.

This building or tower is also an excellent example of why housing should not be built anywhere near the medical campus!!!

If you build housing then you will lock up land so that towers like this 11 story building which are creating jobs cant get built.

If this site had residential or low income housing....then you could kiss those sweet jobs goodbye. There would be zoning and protests and accusations of prejudice and racism from those who dont want to move / or want to profit from being forced to move...after they already profited from government subsidized housing.

Buffalo you have 1 good thing going...dont kill it with housing when there are plenty of areas of the city to live...even for low income people.

Does this medical campus bring in a good deal of new money to the region from outside of the region or does it exist and succeed on the existing regional population?

A high profile medical campus/institute will attract prominent researchers. These researchers in turn will write multimillion dollar grants to support their research. Those research dollars come from outside of Buffalo (usually the federal government) and are spent inside of Buffalo paying for research personnel salaries, institutional overhead, supplies, etc.

So when you support Roswell and donate money, some of that money goes on to become start-up funding for research projects which the institute hopes will take off and be substantial enough to apply for and win grant money from sources outside of the institute.

A high profile program will also attract medical tourism. These people come from outside of Buffalo and get their medical care here. Insurance companies then pay Buffalo insitutions for these patients' medical care. These patients also spend money in Buffalo staying at hotels, eating, sight seeing while their relatives are being medicalized, etc.

If anybody has ever been to the campus, the design of the new bulding would make more sense. The east side of campus is full of blight. I would want to build a wall there too. Also, the front entrance to the hospital is south facing and the parking garage is directly off of the south side of the building. Having the entrance where it appears to be stream lines the flow of traffic for visitors. Why would you want multiple main entrances? That just confuses visitors and allows too many security breaches. People expect to be safe in a hospital and one way to ensure that is to control the entrances.

Remember this is a building that has to function properly besides being architecturally appealing. I would say the proper function is even more important than being architecturally appealing because if it doesn't help accomplish the institute's goals then it's not going to matter how pretty it is, it will still be a disaster and waste of resources (and potential money).