Killing With Kindness

The rebuilding of Main Street has caused a lot of pain in the University District -- which is supposed to benefit from it it.

It has been three years since the city began its largest and one of its most expensive highway reconstruction jobs on Main Street in University Heights, a stretch of road in North Buffalo that sees 26,000 cars daily.

When the Heights part of it is finished this summer, few disagree it will be time and money well spent. But for the residents who have seen business drop and quality of life decline, the end can't come soon enough.

"It has been significant, highly significant," said Jon Welch, owner of Talking Leaves bookstore. "It's been rough on most of us. I don't think there isn't anyone who hasn't been impacted."

University Heights was already a struggling neighborhood before the reconstruction began.  The loss of the bulk of UB's student housing to Amherst combined with a drop in the drinking age which cut local bar patronage and the general flight of Buffalo's middle class to the suburbs (Charlotte's) were already resulting in the district's worsening outlook.

Throw in a three year construction project and you might just duplicate in University Heights the destruction of downtown during the last major Main Street reconstruction -- the building of the subway.  In addition to reining in New York State's government, someone should lasso the engineers in the DOT who design these projects.

They look lovely on paper but they have the potential to destroy the cities they're designed to help.

Comments

[Bill Altreuter]

The difference is the presence of the main Street campus. There was no similar "anchor" downtown.