City Eyes Brownfield Purchase
The City of Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency has taken preliminary steps to acquire a significant brownfield site on the near East Side. Covering the full-block of Broadway, Sycamore, Spring and Mortimer streets, the property once housed Buffalo Forge Company. Current owner Howden Buffalo applied for and received permission to demolish the factory at 490 Broadway due to unsafe conditions and structural problems last year.
Besides the main factory site, Howden owns five adjacent parcels that had primarily been used for parking. The City has not announced what the future holds for the property but expect a mix of residential and commercial space.
The Willert Park neighborhood has seen several hundred infill homes built since the early 1980’s. Belmont Shelter recently completed nineteen subsidized homes north of Sycamore Street on Davis, Camp and Kane streets.
Site work is underway at the Sycamore Village subdivision adjacent to the Forge properties. The subdivision at the corner of Sycamore and Jefferson will feature 25 single-family homes, many with alley-loaded garages. The homes, to be sold at market-rate and constructed by multiple builders, are going on land that required environmental remediation.
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bradon
What a great place for the Bass Pro shop!
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eyepharded
Why not try and really clean up the area? Why more subsidised housing? if we are trying to improve down town so much and this site is very close then why not build something that would attract the people who work downtown to want to live here? How about a grocery store or department store so that people wouldn't have to leave the city or travel all the way to the other side of town. In my opinion they could use the space for something better than more shitty subsidised housing.
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xmissanthropex
I agree with eyepharded, I was hoping to see something go up that would usurp the usual bee line straight out of town. As much as I loath Walmart I tend to believe it would be a positive influence in this case, in that area. And more subsidized housing? They're are untold numbers of vacant residences on the East side that could be used to house the poor. Better yet, give these unwanted houses to the poor and allow them to become a vested part of the community, knowing that any improvements they make to the place will belong to them.
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SLEEPL8
I heard they are using this site to build a new stadium for the Bills.
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chris69
ok here is my two cents.
First, the valueof this land would skyrocket if my advice was followed and the Kensington access was at Jefferson. Abolish the Elm-Oak Arterial! People exiting the Kensington should be distributed onto urban streets at the Jefferson exit (Michigan, Spring, Virginia, Genessee, etc)....and the same for traffic entering the Kensington.
Second, this is a perfect site for an urban office park and this is where the city should step in and help finance underground parking to alleviate fears of security and safety....and smooth the inner city investment. This is an opportunity for a grouping of sidewalk fronted buildings covering the entire city block.
Urban office parks should be considered in every district of Buffalos urban neighborhoods. We cannot put urban factories in the city...but these sites have enormous potential to return jobs back to these communities. The mistake would be to develop these sites as one would in the suburbs.
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bradon
Gee Chris, what about the people who travel from North Buffalo to M&T, HSBC, etc? Should we make everyone travel on congested streets from Ferry to Chuch because you don't like the expressway? Maybe this is a ploy for you to erradicate other races from the East Side and repopulate with whites, that is your master plan after all.
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xmissanthropex
You missed it Brandon.... The only color is green!!!
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RonR
Brandon, you do realize that Buffalo is a grid right? The easiest solution that would not cost much is making Elmwood and Delaware one way streets. Time the lights during "rush hour" and poof you have two arteries that can get you from downtown to north Buffalo in the same time as the 33. This is the beauty of a radial grid.
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RonR
I think they should demo everything West of Jefferson, South of the 33 and North of William including the suckmore village. Make it open fields for the next 30 years until the rest of the mess can get ironed out.
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MasterofUrbanPlanning
Bass Pro needs to go in the Old-Aud, so it won't bother anybody.
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Denizen
RonR, are you effin' serious?? Make Elmwood one-way so cars can speed down it going 50mph??? You obviously need to get out of your car more.
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RonR
Yes I am serious. Every major city has one way streets on major arteries. It was also the original plan to have streets going one way in Buffalo.
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RonR
And I did not say 50mph. You would be surprised how fast you can get somewhere on a 35mph road that is one way and lights are set up correctly. It really is a nice thing.
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peterkoch
Sounds like more half-assed new housing in a city that's got an overstock of 10,000+. Good plan…and, honestly, what is "market value" in this neighborhood? I'll bet they sell for a lot more than the market in that area can support. And then folks will have mortgages in the $100k range, which is more than a house is worth over there (based on recent sales data). Can anyone say foreclosure?!
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Denizen
By "lights set up correctly" you mean in a manner where cars constantly stream through and pedestrians and cyclists never have a chance of safely crossing?? No thank you. You can keep that lame shit in Grand Island, or Lancaster, or wherever the hell you live.
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RonR
I live in a San Diego. And 5 other cities before. Your understanding of real cities is lacking kid.
Please do not tell me what I mean. You can ask.
By timed lights, it means during rush hours you allow for traffic to get several blocks between lights not every light. Really simple kid. Maybe you can hope on a bus and check out how a big city works someday.
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chris69
Buffalo is actually a pretty small city...its not that unrealistic to be able to ride a bike: - from hamburg to downtown Buffalo - from Transit to downtown Buffalo - from UB Amherst to downtown Buffalo though I wouldnt want to smell you when you stopped for a drink....LOL
my point is simply that we get so used to our own neighborhoods that other parts of town just seem a huge distance away.
heck in some cities Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Batavia and Rochester would be one city about the size of Dallas or San Francisco or LA or Houston....
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chris69
Buffalo is actually a pretty small city...its not that unrealistic to be able to ride a bike: - from hamburg to downtown Buffalo - from Transit to downtown Buffalo - from UB Amherst to downtown Buffalo though I wouldnt want to smell you when you stopped for a drink....LOL
my point is simply that we get so used to our own neighborhoods that other parts of town just seem a huge distance away.
heck in some cities Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Batavia and Rochester would be one city about the size of Dallas or San Francisco or LA or Houston....
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Denizen
Nuff' said.
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RonR
Ah Denizen you are one of those. I am in Buffalo so I am the only one who knows Buffalo. Funny.
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Denizen
Nope, I'm just sayin'....what gets done in big sprawling cities down south and out west won't help attract people back to Buffalo's URBAN core.
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RonR
You are missing the point. If you look at dense urban cores the one thing you will not find is multiple lane freeways cutting them up. Elmwood, Delaware, Niagara, Broadway, Genesee and others should have most of the traffic on them. Not the 33 and 190. At least in the city core.
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chris69
RonR may I suggest you contact Hal Morse at the GBNRTC as well as the NYSDOT....
we may not be able to remove expressways but we can more their access further and further away from downtown and our urban core which would serve its purpose of putting traffic back on city streets, unifying our downtown and surrounding urban neighborhoods and using our existing radial system as feeders and alternative routes.
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