Buffalo Rising Online

Nice try for them, but that parcel needs to be developed. And some retail to turn it into a bona fide "village".

As it stands now, that whole area is Amherst-on-the-Lake.

The Erie Basin is no place for detached single family homes. The waterfront needs density, and excitement. Not lawns and swingsets. We're in the city after all.

Can't you just picture it: suburban, McMansions with three car garages and driveways. Is that the image we want for the waterfront?

This development is alread too suburban. It I had my way the street system would aslo be attached into the park at the north end. Why is it separated??

If I had my way it would be even more dense than planned.

One thing to note is that they have that many commitments before start of construction. Very good!

There is no need for greenspace in waterfront village there is a giant park right next to it, there is a lalke right next to it

Just an FYI, that's the only Republican district in the city.

I'd like to see that area intertwined with the street system of downtown by continuing streets under the 190 into the village. imagine if you could drive straight down Court St. past the onramps for the 190 and a new sign that said "Waterfront" with a view of the attractive waterfront village and straight to the Erie Basin Marina and Naval Park. Instead of the current route on narrow streets through the filthy underbelly of the 190. I'd like to do an experiment to see how many suburban and out of town visitors can actually find their way to the Buffalo waterfront in a car. Itis not nearly as easy as it should be. Also, I'd absolutely love to see Lasalle Park connected to the waterfront village by road. The park is currently quite underused and it would do wonders to have more than one access road into it. Use Lasalle Park, instead of preventing development on a piece of land that will be best used for dense residential.

Let's do ourselves a big favor and expunge the abstract and useless phrase "green space" from our vocabularies. When we look at a vacant lot, do we say, "Gee, we need some 'built space' here?" Of course not, we think in specifics: this would be good for a restaurant, or a warehouse, or a mixed use retail & apartment building, or whatever.

We have to think with the same specificity about landscaping: do we want a vast unadorned lawn? Do we want a playgound? Do we want a formal garden? Do we want it to naturalize over time, like Tifft Farm? Do we want ballfields? Do we want habitat for wild animals? Do we want fountains and monuments? And so on.

We also have to demand good buildings, pedestrian-friendly, mixed use urban buildings, so that we can stop reflexively protecting useless suburbanesque "green space" against bad buildings: single-story, single-use econoboxes fronted by parking.

I'll go even further. "Green space" does not belong in the heart of the city except in small, formal doses, like public squares (Lafayette Square, Niagara Square). We have large, superb Olmsted parks already; we don't need bad imitations of them downtown. We need housing and retail and restaurants and offices and light manufacturing and nonprofits and churches and every other human activity. We need "built space."

Get used to it folks. This is the price we will pay for not having even an adequate public school system. I know it seems like a leap, but consider this. Developers can't put up luxury lofts downtown fast enough, high rents and big mortgages. And most of the people biting are empty nesters from the suburbs. Now I'm not hating. God bless them for coming back into the city. But the community they will create will not be collective and vital and hip and urban. Instead it will be insular and selfish and geriatric and suburban.

It's real simple. If you can't teach kids, you can't attract young families. If you can't attract young families, you can't have a vibrant downtown--you'll get a suburb with lots of old people with money who see downtown not as the epicenter of the city but as an extension of Amherst.

But Buffalo will have a real downtown. It will begin in about 10 years. And it will be here:

http://www.buffalorising.com/city/archives/2005/11/perfect_blue_bu.php

I think dcoffee and Cynthia said it all very well.

What does being Republican have to do with it? Bad urban planning exists across the political spectrum.

Let's create a real village.

BuffaloFan, it's not really familes that drive downtowns, it's usually young single professionals with disposable income. An abundance of creative white collars jobs in the CBD is what drives this, and unfortunately, Buffalo's downtown is largely lacking in this. Otherwise, condo towers would have been going up for quite some time. What we are now experiencing downtown is more of a gradual process--the beginning stages of a rebirth that will hopefully attract more creative people and businesses.

Lets be real...none of the residents living down there want to have an opening to the Park...too many ethnic types go to the park. Waterfront residents dont want that.

What this developer is proposing is straight out of Cheap-to-vegas. Let's not be fooled into believing that devoting such a vast land resource to new waterfront sprawl will do us any good. The Erie Basin waterfront neighborhood needs density and mixed uses on a renetworked system of pedestrian-friendly streets. This development will destroy that dream. Has anyone ever noticed that this so-called Lakefront Boulevard is 50 feet wide and contains no sidewalks? The entire neighborhood can still be rescued from this escalating suburbanization, but if BURA has its way. Neither the NIMBY residents or the developer (also a resident) has the right vision for this space. BURA has made the mistake of attempting an inside deal rather than pursue thoughtful planning and a competitive process. The City is supposedly reworking its 1962 Waterfront Plan to include mixed uses and an urban neighborhood development formula. Why not demand that this process be complete before handing over an entire plot of valuable land to one developer -- a parcel large enough to fit the HSBC Arena *and* its parking ramp more than once? Moreover, why don't we begin developing the waterfront the way urban neighborhoods all over the world develop best, with multiple owners who have varied dreams, interests and plans. Has the city forgotten about the 30x100 foot lot pattern that made Allentown and Elmwood Village so pleasant, so interesting, so layered, and so pedestrian-friendly?

Does anyone at BURA have any idea what they're doing?

Not gonna happen guys. Too many powerful people live on he waterfront for there to be any type of neighborhood. The residents like the suburbs in the city concept...no riffraff, no crime, no drugs, no homeless, no muggings. That is why they pay to live there. Just being realisitic. I know.

The parcel in question is located behind the Admiral's Walk tower in the photo attached. It is a corner property next to Marina Park and Portside, next to the Marina Park tennis court. It doesn't sit on the water and is 2.4 acres. The large vacant parcel in the photo is the property Ellicott Development is going to develop: 50 units in a mid-rise tower and 30 townhouses. Paladino was proposing some commercial space on his parcel to provide some services for residents, but I'm not sure if that is still part of the mix. This larger parcel was offered through an RFP process and only two developers responded.

Lets face it, Waterfront Village is what it is and drastic changes are a pipe dream. If anything, the city should have required more density. Hopefully we get it right at the foot of Main and at the outer harbor.

Its a Republican District because its residents are the only ones with wealth in the city...with a few minor exceptions.

Here's one reason only a few developers respond to an RFP: the expense. When cities like Buffalo are built, they are built by many people, not always with million-dollar credit lines at the bank. 2.4 acres is quite vast by urban standards, greater than an entire city block. If someone wants to build a single townhouse for themselves, or if they are a small builder interested in doing only a few homes at a time, they are left out of the process. Nothing ever gets built. Ever wonder why Erie Basin has taken fifty years to get only where it is, or why the Elm-Oak Corridor and the Ellicott District is still largely empty? Because the economic mindset of big government, with its preference for big developers and headline-grabbing projects, has left us dreaming of forests while refusing to plant trees.

Let's also look at another fact. The Erie Basin is not merely "what it is." It is mostly undeveloped. Only the shoreline itself can claim an almost total build-out. Dozens of empty acres remain, much of it under blacktop. There is still a great opportunity to mix what is already mostly-dense housing with a better, more finely grained street grid, a greater mix of neighborhood conveniences, better connections to downtown especially through pedestrian bridges over the highway, the extension of Erie Street as a center of gravity and boulevard for the neighborhood, and an infusion of new mixed uses and even higher densities.

The City is supposedly moving forward on this in its re-planning of the 1962 Waterfront Urban Renewal Amendment. But no one knows about it because the general public was never asked to participate, so no wonder no one's noticed that the completion of the planning process is seemingly stalled.

1962 and still nothing...doesnt this say something? Ooops, we just reelected asnother one of those people...shame