Buffalo Rising Online

I have to disagree with Queen in saying "why construct a faux city when there is a real city that can be tapped into." I hope this doesn't come off as being rhetorical but I don't think that the goal for the amherst campus is to create a "city" as much as a "villiage" for students. As a former student I have to say that I was excited by the idea of the commons being expanded to include more restaurant hangouts and some shopping that catered to students. It would be a great place for students to hang out and experience retail that catered to their needs. As a former student who lived on campus in amherst and then off campus in U heights I can testify that each campus has its own indentity in terms of student living and I don't necessarity think it was a bad thing. I also disagree with you regarding the use of the lakes in amherst. The students who take advantage of lake erie and the niagara river not be taken away and move to the small lake. It will be the students who otherwise would never participate and waterfront activities that will make the short walk to the nearby body of water. Perhaps once they get board there, it will give them some drive to see what the Buffalo lake front has to offer. I think that on paper UB has some great ideas for its future and I hope they follow through on them.

Well I agree and disagree all at the same time. It would be great for UB to focus all of its growth along Main Street but unfortunately the political and financial realities won't allow for a total pulling away from North Campus. Amherst would never go for it and most of the workers, staff etc wouldn't have it either since they mostly live in Amherst now. Unfortunately the city and region is stuck with it for a LONG LONG TIME and probably forever.

What this plan is trying and attempting to do is distribute growth for all campuses because in the past north grew at south's expense and the University isn't going to make that mistake again, so the baseline statement behind ALL of the options for growth are that all campuses must grow.

Also the options, especially the redistributed growth plan, would significantly grow downtown and south by moving many schools and rethinking the purpose for each campus. This would bring upwards of 5 schools into downtown (maybe 6 if law gets it way) and all the associated facilities. Research Incubators, Student Housing, would be a part of downtown.

South Campus would also grow becoming a Professional / Graduate College campus. Management, education, social work would move to South Campus to fill in and increase the space vacated by those moving downtown.

North campus would then become (kind of what it already is) a defacto undergraduate college where the general eds, humanities and engineering are located. Growth on that campus focuses away from major academic moves but through wellness and quality of life issues for students and guests.

So while they would be creating a smaller city into itself by creating shops and a potential hotel conference center it is certainly positive for the city overall because those students rarely leave campus and when they do they almost exclusively go to the boulevard mall area. No loss for the city.

The city would be gaining some 5-7 new schools with all the benefits that bringing them in could have. I thought it was a very well thought out plan. It grows UB on all campuses and brings a lot of benefits to the city. Perhaps in 50 more years when the core of North campus needs to be rebuilt the discussion to bring more to the city and transition the lands to Amherst proper could happen.

The north campus is now integrated into the everyday operations of the school and surrounding community. It makes much more sense for the university to make small improvements to existing buildings, lakes, transport etc. I wish North Campus didn't happen but it did and we now need to recognize it as a tremendous asset.

The Amherst Campus is a fact of life. There are lots of strategic ways that the school can become more integrated with the city, and it seems like they're actually pursuing many of them. But refusing to improve student amenities in Amherst isn't part of re-connecting UB to the city.

If I'm on campus and looking for something decent to eat, the fact that there are great restaurants downtown doesn't really help me. Even if there was great transportation to get me there, it'd still take too long to fit the trip into my schedule. If we want people to start feeling a greater connection ot the school -- and to give money, and maybe even stick around after graduating -- we have to improve their experience. And that experience is going to revolve around the Amherst campus.

The sad truth about north as I have said in other posts is from an on campus student's perspective it isn't a great place to be. That feeling or boredom, blandness etc needs to change if we are going to change the perception of Buffalo as a whole. Remember when people come to school they are not in this day or in the past shown anything but campus features. To them UB's campuses and immediate surroundings ARE Buffalo. Amherst and Niagara Falls Boulevard are where they spend their money. If they want to go Downtown... They are talking about going to South Campus and main street. This is going to change significantly if the redistributed growth scenario happens. Students will now actually be going downtown again in much larger numbers.

If we can create a great place to go to College, whether it be on North, South or Downtown, ideally all three, then personal perceptions of Buffalo will change with it. how would you like to live on north for 4 years, what would you come away with about Buffalo... a cold wind swept swamp that they would never want to come back too.

We need a great north campus just as much as we need a great downtown and south campuses. It would be great up and close it and incorporate the campus into the city holistically but it isn't going to happen. We need to deal with the campus until there is a time and mentality that would allow for radical change. For thirty years it has been giving Buffalo a piss poor reputation to thousands of new students each year and it is time to change that.

reflip, agreed and I think everything you say is strongly supported by those developing the master plan. It is one university with three campus centers. Hopefully UB can do something the City and Region can't.. is have the administrator's actually follow through and do what has been laid out by the professionals before them.

Alright, though, Sbrof, I was at two of these meetings, and it definitly appears that South campus is getting the least amount of investment. How does moving grad schools to Souith, but taking away other school, infuse life into the campus? It's going to be the same then, a wash. I don't get the impression that UB wants to build up South.

It's funny how UB boasts being an asset to the region, but to its host neighborhood (Heights) it's a liability. PRoperty values have gone down because of the student ghetto. UB acts as if it has no responsibility to this neighborhood, and maybe it doesn't. I was just really hoping that UB 2020 was going to be South's chance to have new life brought to it. I love this neighborhood and feel its up to the city and UB to strenghthen and stabalize it.

buffwing98, sure schools are leaving for downtown.. Good for the city overall. A city without a strong vibrant downtown isn't ever going to great city. BUT they are moving more and larger schools to south from North. Larger schools require more faculty and staff to support the larger student base.

Plus look at the type of students that would be coming to south. If they move towards the graduate / professional schools like they are talking about you are going to bring in an older more established crowd that would if it could live like adults and not like college students. They are people who buy a home instead of sleeping on a couch all semester. You will be attracting a much larger crowd, one that currently live and reside in the apartments surrounding North and rarely venture south.The drunkies will still come to frequent the bars and restaurants because while winning on convenience UB would never allow the types and variety of bars and restaurants that happen off campus.

South gets bigger, Downtown gets bigger and so does north. Everyone grows. I like the way they position the city in this plan.

RonR.. I think we are separated twins. The metro UB argument is just about the exact same thing I have been pushing for years. I have slacked off though and perhaps it can be done above ground to north.. I could live with that. NFTA only wanted 35 dollars / semester.. UB's admin (almost all of whom that I have met drive from Amherst, Williamsville) felt that was too expensive and students would want it... But they are OK.. charging them close to 1000 dollars in fees to cover parking, shuttles, and the stampede...

Like other people have said, Ignoring the North Campus isn't the way to improve the campus. Although we have the City and Lake Erie as major destinations, they're still in their infancy as being a recreational destinations. You have to remember, right now, the only college friendly places in the city are Elmwood and Chippewa. Those places are great, but only offer booze and shopping as major draws. On the Lake front, there isn't really any affordable and fun activities that people, especially students, can take part in. They're opening the inner harbor in the next couple of weeks and all that is down there right now is a museum and some authentic looking canal slips. Whoop dee do. Maybe in a couple of decades when the inner and outer harbors are finished and filled to capacity, will the lake front be a fun destination for people who don't already own boats at the marina.

Your other options require massive infrastructure overhauls which would require extensive cooperation between the school, city, state, and NFTA. I think it will be decades before we'll see any sort of expansion of the metro rail into Amherst and even then, I'm sure a handful of crotchety residents living close to wherever the proposed path for rail might be will complain that it will bring the end of civilized society much like the lifestyle center on Maple will.

The best option right now is to improve on the Amherst campus since it's still the core of UB. Bringing recreation closer to students will bring new life to a pretty bland campus. They can continue to bring tie the campuses together, but we can't forget the students who don't have to go downtown or don't want to.

if you actually went to UB you wouldn't think those were bad ideas.

Having the infrastructure investment that UB has in amherst...how the hell are they going to attract world class talent to their schools on north when its a souless place? Tell them a mediocre downtown is 15min away?

And idk what school you went to but students don't really have the time to take the journey into the city just to achieve recreational happiness.

Making north campus a village-type locale will only help make UB more marketable and that in itself will help the city of Buffalo.

North Campus was the worst planning mistake in the history of our region but that doesn't mean we should just let it rot away in its outdated sterility when we claim that higher education is the future of our local econmy.

I am not convinced that Buffalo is ready for UB yet. We are making great strides towards reinventing and rebuilding the city, but we are still a couple years away from having a viable urban core than can support the needs of students. I know that there is a chicken and egg or build it and they will come argument, but I fear that UB could lose even more ground if the migration of schools and programs is not well executed by everyone involved. This includes the University, the City, the State, the Students, and most importantly the residents and business owners of Buffalo. These groups all played a role in pushing development to Amherst in the 70s, and we all know what that myopic thinking has done to our region.

As far as "Amherst bashing" as someone put it, I no longer expect anything less from this site. Amherst is the primary recipient of the City's missed opportunities. We can't undo 50 years of poor practices overnight. Keep in mind that the city residents did a great job of alienating the university community, the current University Heights is a great example of this. The residents of University Heights despised sharing their streets with college students, they hated the bars, the house parties, the parking issues, etc. The students moved to Amherst leaving a shell of a once vibrant community. We blame Amherst and UB for building housing on and off campus in Amherst, but fail to take responsibility for our piece of this complex equation.

We need to take a unified approach to this and ensure that we are moving in a calculated and thought-out manner. I welcome UB's commitment to improving and expanding the Amherst Campus. I welcome their plans for the South Campus and surrounding neighborhoods, and look forward to their expanded presence downtown. We need all three elements, not a mass-migration of students, faculty, services, etc to the city. We just can't handle that yet.

I look at it like this.. would the average incoming student, undergrad or grad, feel welcome downtown? Would you feel comfortable taking them for a walk or drive down Broadway or Seneca? What would they think of the vacant buildings lining Main Street, an area that should be one of the most vibrant and active areas of the city. Sure, you can take them to Elmwood to show them the activity from Buffalo State, but what about taking them for a tour of the North Hampton and Michigan, just a few blocks from the proposed campus. Take the parents of a prospective 18 year old college freshmen who dreams of becoming a Doctor (she hasn't taken UB chemistry yet, so the dream is still real) through a tour of the Medical corridor. Let them see where their precious daughter may be taking classes or working late nights in the labs. This would be a deal breaker for many families, especially given the competition that UB faces.

You can say whatever you want about UB North, and I will probably agree with you. The choice to build in Amherst was devastating to the City, but so were a thousand other poor decisions made by the city. The demise of Buffalo was not solely caused by UB and will not be resolved by UB. UB plays as much of a factor, as touting the next HSBC or Delaware North to move a couple hundred or thousand new positions to Buffalo. Resolving the cost of living and quality of life issues in the city is probably as, if not more, important than moving UB. Fix the schools, tame government corruption, lower taxes, bring in new residents, stop the bleeding of residents to the South, own our natural resources, etc, etc, etc... the list goes on. UB is a piece of this, but I wouldn't advocate for any type of mass movement until we, as a City, can figure out how to get out of our own way and make the difficult and unpopular decisions necessary to truly make change happen in Buffalo. We have to look beyond shuffling our existing resources and focus on re-creating this city as the next best place to live, work, and play. Without that, we will just continue to throw good money after bad as we try to find the easiest way out. This hasn't worked for the past 50 years, I have no reason to believe that it will work for the next 50 unless we change.

There can be no talk of the Amherst Campus, South Campus or the BNMA without a light rail extension to it. The parking situation on all three locations is horrendous and its a hidden student fee with students forced to pay parking tickets just to attend class.

There can be no discussion of the future of UB as a whole until the fate and future of UB students is placed on the agenda. The students of UB need access to downtown so they can be networked and integrated into the core of their professions (journalism=downtown, law=downtown, performing arts=downtown, etc). If these kids dont have access to downtown then they will never understand what Buffalo has to offer outside of the amherst campus and they will leave along with their talents and future small busineses.

There can be no discussion of the future of UB as a whole without considering not just the growth of the downtown campus but the possibility of UB using ECMC as a COE for Psychological/sociological sciences (psych center), without planning for the addition of programs, the addition of small business incubators, additional centers for excellence and high level local and regional partnerships with other colleges like Buffalo State, Canisius, Medaille, Trocaire, Niagara U, D'Youville, etc to expand under represented/omitted programs while weeding out the duplicitive generic programs that give people degrees that serve no local/regional economic function (no local/regional demand)!

Kudos to those who want the bed tax taken off budget and a new convention/conference center built around a rewatered ohio basin and canal which would extend the Cobblestone District all the way to Hamburg and Katherine which were its original boundaries. The current convention center is outdated and no longer welcome which will become obvious as soon as the Federal Courthouse and the court street tower (if 10 stories is considered a tower) is completed.