University at Buffalo’s South Campus will not become a ghost town when medical-related programs move downtown to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The UB 2020 plan envisions a “new purpose and identity” for the South Campus as a center of professional education. Over time, the School of Law, Graduate School of Education, and School of Social Work will move from North Campus to join Architecture and Planning to form a new graduate professional education campus.
The Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health and Health Professions are expected to move downtown in the nearer term. Dental Medicine and School of Pharmacy will stay on South Campus longer. The Pharmacy school is set to occupy the renovated 160,000 sq.ft. Kapoor Hall (former Acheson) in 2011 and will be there long enough to get good use out of the building (rendering below).
New student housing will be built and existing student housing will be renovated to better suit graduate lifestyles. An historic district is proposed for the buildings of the original campus and the constituent buildings will be restored. The hated Butler buildings — temporary since 1966 — will be removed. The old medical school buildings will be razed while the newer ones will be reused.
Over time, parking lots will be replaced with parking garages along Bailey Avenue and the great Main Street lawn will be reclaimed from surface parking. A new amphitheater and landscaping will welcome public use of the campus “front yard” on Main Street. Improved pedestrian and bicycle paths will connect to University Plaza and other commercial properties.
The campus loop road will become a complete loop. A renewed Harriman Quad and adjacent programs will provide a center of gravity for campus life.
In the interim — after Law, Education, and Social Work arrive and before Dental Medicine and Pharmacy depart — the total population of the campus, students, faculty, and staff, is expected to rise by a couple thousand people. After Dental Medicine and Pharmacy move downtown, the population will be about what it is today, but a very different mix of students and faculty.