Buffalo Rising Online

Jun 12th 2008, 11:07am By STEEL

I was recently in Vegas for a few days. Except for the beautiful distant desert mountains and a relatively small but extremely concentrated part of this city known as the Strip, this place known around the world for its gambling is quite ordinary.

The city could even be described as boring beyond the bounds of Las Vegas Boulevard and its over the top dedication to human entertainment. Oh, but what a place the Strip is! While there I could not help rolling the phrase "Learning from Las Vegas" through my brain. That is the title of a 1972 book by well known architects and architectural theorists Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

The book was a controversial examination and glorification of the temporary and kitschy nature of everyday American architecture; the architecture that tended to be embraced by the general public (as it does today as well). They gave validity to the type of buildings that the elite dismissed as non-architecture. The book is mostly comprised of their observations on the Las Vegas Strip concentrating heavily on the Casino signs. Earlier Venturi had written the even more controversial 1966 book entitled Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, which is credited with kick-starting the anti modernist movement known as "Post Modernism".

Together these books set the groundwork for that post modern (anti modern) movement which is known for buildings rendered in cartoonish and ironic representations of historic building forms. Today in post-post modern Vegas almost everything discussed and illustrated in the Learning from Las Vegas book has been wiped away in favor of more extravagant hotels and casinos. The Las Vegas Strip has been taken to an extreme beyond anything Venturi could have imagined back in the 1970s and the Strip itself as an experience, now rivals gambling as a reason to go to Vegas.

So after that long-winded intro, what does this all have to do with Buffalo? While I was there and knowing that Buffalo was throwing its hat into the gambling ring, I wondered if Buffalo could learn anything from Las Vegas. Certainly, Buffalo will never be a Vegas in terms of gambling, entertainment, or shopping. Buffalo's whopping new $300 million casino would be but a spec on the strip where the new casinos are costing over $2 Billion a pop and sport more that 2000 hotel rooms each. All 4 casinos in the (Ontario and New York) Niagara area do not add up to one Vegas casino. Even in light of this overwhelming difference, I think Buffalo has a lot to learn from Vegas in terms of urban design, architecture, and in how gambling relates to the city. Architectural snobs among you might stick up your noses and say, "Oh, but buffalo has such a grand architectural pedigree. How could it possibly learn from cheap garish and temporary Las Vegas?"

I say, "Plenty." In an odd twist of irony, Vegas, that Mecca of bad taste, just may be producing some of the best urban design in America (at least along the strip). Take away the excessive architectural frill, and the strip still offers one of the greatest urban pedestrian experiences in the world.

Long gone is the car-oriented Strip of Venturi's Vegas. Today's Vegas is built for the pedestrian. The sidewalks provide continual new experiences as views and vistas open up and recede. Gambling halls often open directly to the street, feeding their energy to the city. This is not the case with most casinos (or most buildings of any type) being built around the country today.

Generally, casinos (outside Vegas) are promoted and licensed by governments as an easy source of new revenue, and struggling municipalities look on them as a possible means of enlivening long-dead downtowns. This is the case in the old industrial suburbs of Chicago, the center of Detroit, both sides of the Falls, and in downtown Buffalo among many others. Unlike Vegas which has a mostly continuous sidewalk circus of pedestrian events fronting its casinos, these other cities have built casinos as isolated islands with no relationship to their surroundings.

Detroit may be the most egregious case of anti urban casino building in the country. Its four new casinos are built remote from each other in various corners of its sprawling downtown. Worst of all, the Greek Town casino was built on a rare vibrant block-long part of the city. Instead of building on the synergy of this popular strip it actually displaced most of it. None of the Detroit casinos relate to each other or their urban setting. Each is designed to bring people inside and keep them there. Certainly that is the goal of the Vegas casinos as well, but Vegas understands that the interrelationship between casinos is an important part of their attractiveness and success. Joel Giambra understood this when he suggested that the Senecas build their 2nd WNY casino in Niagara Falls rather than in Buffalo.

Unfortunately Buffalo is following this same island building scenario. The Buffalo Creek Casino which is being constructed in a remote corner of downtown will be surrounded by a massive parking garage on 3 sides and a park on the other. It is also being built by the sovereign Seneca nation, meaning that the city has very few opportunities to influence its design. From all appearances it is not the kind of place you would tend to stroll by. That pretty much puts the kibosh on the idea of enlivening downtown. All hope is not lost however.

Based on renderings released, Buffalo will not have an active street-side casino, but that does not mean that plans can not be made to make the streets surrounding the casino lively. Already plans are well along to reenergize nearby the Canal-side and Cobblestone neighborhoods. Unfortunately these emerging downtown entertainment areas are separated from the Casino by a massive moat of parking. Is any planning being done to link these areas that promise to draw large crowds? I have heard nothing. Can Vegas teach Buffalo how to draw Casino Crowds to new Canal-side shops? I think so. Buffalo can not wait for the Senecas to repair this dead part of the city. The city must take advantage of the draw that will be Buffalo Creek Casino and make certain that people do not come only to gamble but, as in Vegas, to stroll the streets and spend money around the casino.

How about this to begin with - Start planning for a massive new convention center in this area - perhaps linked to the casino hotel? Start planning an extension of Metro Rail to the casino. Start planning the elimination of the massive parking lots in this area. Ask what can replace these city killers and draw people through the area on foot. Think big, and believe that it can be done! Oh, that sounds like "vegas think" (of course, there is a lot of money in Vegas). With the right kind of planning, the Senecas will need to be part of the city instead of an island.