North Coast Online

On Cutting Off Noses And Spiting Faces

Momentum for tearing down the I-190 along the waterfront continues to gather, but its proponents are ignoring the economic importance of the highway to the entire Western New York region.

We also visited the Riverfront neighborhood [in Milwaukee] near the former Park East Freeway, an elevated highway much like the Buffalo Skyway, which was removed and replaced with a surface boulevard. Since its removal, property values have climbed and mixed-use projects are common. Current Mayor Tom Barrett met with us and assigned two of the city’s economic development specialists to showcase the development of neighborhoods, housing initiatives and business strips.

Look, I think the 190 is a monstrosity, too, and I've little doubt that its removal would be a boon to the neighborhoods it passes through.  But we can't simply place a lovely boulevard there and expect it to handle the traffic currently coming into and leaving downtown.  Milwaukee had the luxury of an interstate highway very close to the one torn down,  I-94/I-43.  We don't.

50,000 people work downtown and presumably we'd like to see that number grow, but I've yet to hear any solid plans to provide an alternate route into downtown from the south once Route 5 is converted into a parkway and the Skyway Bridge has been torn down.  And now, the new urbanists are proposing another monumental bottleneck for traffic coming from the north as well.  Do they expect everyone to take the Kensington?

The most vocal advocates for tearing down expressways don't really care about the problems of suburban commuters.  They want to imagine that they'll either move into the city, take public transport or simply put up with a leisurely one-hour morning commute into the city on a stop-and-go boulevard.  They're wrong on all counts.

At a time when it appears that downtown Buffalo is beginning to redevelop, it seems foolish to cut off easy access to it.  This isn't very "regional" thinking.

Let's not also forget that the Peace Bridge is one of the most important border-crossing points in North America.  And ironically enough, its primary access is via the 190 -- the very stretch that would be replaced by the lovely boulevard.  Trade with Canada is still one of our great future economic development hopes here.

For years now, the advocates for a new Peace Bridge (who are by and large the same people who want to tear down the 190) have been justifying it for just that economic development potential. Well, force a few  tens of thousands of trucks each year to travel through choked city streets for an extra hour to get to New York or Pittsburgh and see what happens.  Or better yet, make them head north to the 290, east to the 90 and then back south for 10 miles and we won't even need the old Peace Bridge.

Maybe we could steer them onto the 198?  Oh, that's right -- we're going to make that into a parkway, too.
 

Industry will simply cease using Buffalo as a border-crossing point.  Milwaukee and Chicago (as well as Toronto) aren't border cities.  Their waterfronts can be entirely devoted to recreation and clever urban streetscapes.  At least part of ours will still have to work for a living.  This idea has not been thought through.

200 Delaware

I don't know how many more boutique hotels, Class A offices and $300,000 condominiums downtown Buffalo can support, but I can't help but be impressed by the plans to renovate the old Federal Building on Huron Street.

I'd like to think that development down there is reaching the proverbial critical mass where one new project helps feed the next.  But I'm still skeptical -- excited but skeptical.  As long as these aren't government projects, though, have at it.

A Victory For 'Modernism' In Downtown Buffalo

It turns out that the A.M.&A.'s building is suddenly not for sale anymore.

Fakiris said the AM&A’s complex was apparently placed on the selling block in error. He was looking into the matter Thursday but speculated that the “mistake” might have occurred when he was in Europe.

I hate it when that happens.

“I own the building, and the building is not for sale,” he said.

It's probably good news -- if he follows through on his plans to put a couple hundred apartments in the thing.

[UPDATE:] If you wonder about the 'modernism' reference, go here.

A.M.&A.'s

The battle over what to do with A.M.&A.'s is ready to heat up again.

Two prominent local developers are calling for the demolition of the long-vacant AM&A’s department store on Main Street downtown.

And they want the city to take the lead role in razing the deteriorating former store to create a “prime, shovel-ready” site.

“It’s a major eyesore, a blight on downtown,” said Ellicott Development chief Carl P. Paladino. “The time has come to knock it down.”

They're right, of course.  When it looked as if a big New York City developer was going to convert it into apartments, everyone was happy.  But now that the deal's fallen through, expect the preservationists to try and stop any attempts to tear the old pile of bricks down.

They'll claim that it's an excellent example of late 1940's modernism -- well, read for yourself.

The   former J.N. Adam department store, one of the best pieces of modernism on Main   Street, has been a major component of downtown streetscape for half a century.   It presents a masterful play of abstract form, interconnecting horizontal and   vertical elements with the sophistication of a Gershwin arrangement. Unified   horizontal window bands and layered horizontal monochrome materials: travertine-like   stone, buff brick banded with glazed buff tiles, subtly reinforce the linear   precision of the composition. The crowning glory of the whole complex is the   Washington Street elevation three earlier components designed by Buffalo architects:   E.B. Green, 1892 and 1896, and Esenwein &Johnson,1909, are well-preserved.

That's one way of looking at it.  On the other hand it's also a motley collection of very old and very inefficient buildings which have been disguised by a unifying facade.  And that facade, while admittedly created by "the designers of Saks Fifth Avenue,   Bloomingdale's Lexington Avenue and Lord &Taylor's Fifth Avenue", is just that -- a fake covering.

Don't be "guilted' into thinking that tearing it down would forever erase an irreplaceable part of America's architectural history.   It just isn't so.  The building's old and deteriorating and sits on, if we ever can agree to return cars to Main Street, a valuable piece of property. 

Now, I'm not saying that should be in any great rush to raze it.  We can wait a bit -- no reason to have a city block sit empty.  But we should agree now that if a solid proposal comes along like the one that would have seen HealthNow locate there, it'll be promptly demolished.  And an enlightened city planning department might even require that the facade of its replacement echo 1940's modernism.

Hey, fake now is as good as fake then.   
 

Only Politicians Would Make A Decision Like This

$225,000 for houses on Sycamore Street?  And the city's the developer?  I'd say this bears watching.

High Hopes For The Richardson Complex

Donn Esmonde lauds plans to restore the Richardson Complex.

We just got more evidence that saving great buildings in good neighborhoods is not just a matter of aesthetics, but economics.

In the case of this building we have no such evidence.  We have the opinion of a bunch of preservationists and a State Assemblyman that it will be a "bridge" between thriving Elmwood and crumbling Grant.

Don't get me wrong, the Richardson building is entirely worth saving; it truly is monumental architecture.

But trying to justify the expense by claiming it will help to revitalize the Grant Street neighborhood is just wishful thinking.  Just next door is Buffalo State College and we know that colleges can be tremendous economic generators.  Amherst around UB and Hamlin Park next to Canisius are illustrations.

But Grant Street's problems of blight and crime have grown so serious that 15,000 nearby students simply steer clear of it and head to Elmwood for shopping and fun.  The hundred or so condo owners and hotel guests at a restored Richardson Complex likely will too.

Now To Find The Money

I've had great fun mocking all the various and sundry ideas for museums that locals have coughed up over the years.  But I've got to say that a weather museum as described in the Buffalo News today would be very cool. 

Imagine an architectural masterpiece on the downtown waterfront that includes an Imax attraction where people become armchair storm-chasers.

If advocates can find the money to build a high-tech weather museum, they’re convinced that it would help draw visitors from across the continent.

Picture tourists from Tallahassee bundling up in borrowed parkas to experience a simulated winter storm, Buffalo-style, on a muggy August afternoon. Or visitors from a desert region peering through a massive window that overlooks Lake Erie, listening to a scientist vividly explain the link between ferocious storms and bodies of water.

I like it because it's significantly different from most of the museum suggestions we hear which typically involve exhibiting relics of Buffalo's past in the expectation that tourists will be motivated to come here and see them.    This idea is good.

Electronic Snake Oil?

Would one of you in City Hall please ask Mayor Brown to read this?  He's intent on blanketing Buffalo with free Wi-Fi.  There's a general consensus (not proven at all) that universal Internet access is the road to economic development -- especially for the poor.  But Wi-Fi's not as developed a technology as some seem to think and cities across the country are experiencing cost overruns and unhappy customers as the networks don't meet users' expectations.  Buffalo can't afford many costly mistakes.

Across the United States, many cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest than expected, leading to worries that a number will fail, resulting in millions of dollars in wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been roads to build and crime to fight.

More than $230 million was spent in the United States last year, and the industry Web site MuniWireless projects $460 million will be spent in 2007.

Without revenues they had counted on to offset that spending, elected officials might have to break promises or find money in already-tight budgets to subsidize the systems for the low-income families and city workers who depend on the access. Cities might end up running the systems if companies abandon networks they had built.

The worries come as big cities like Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., complete pilots and expand their much-hyped networks.

"They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered," said Anthony Townsend, research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank.

Municipal Wi-Fi systems as the "monorails of this decade" -- hmmm.

Maybe we'd be wise to think about it some more.  The latest "great thing" often turns out, as did the monorail, not to have been.

Legislature In Favor Of Weather Museum

Will its logo be a politician's finger in the air?

There's Still An Economic Heartbeat In Buffalo

Finally! Someone's talking about real economic development in Buffalo.  You know, the kind where people can make money -- not the fake stuff where lofts for artists and subsidies for the theater district with a dollop of park space are supposed to cause outsiders to break our doors down for a chance to get in.

Bass Pro Shops has gone from “quarry” to “bait,” as Buffalo leaders look to lure other retailers for the proposed Canal Side project in the city’s Erie Canal Harbor neighborhood.

Among the targets: home furnishings giant Ikea and a powerful urban investment group led by former basketball great Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

Mayor Byron W. Brown is joining forces with Benderson Development Co. to pitch the $275 million mixed use project — to be anchored by a Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World store — at the International Council of Shopping Centers annual convention this week in Las Vegas.

“When Bass Pro is part of a project, other retailers sit up and take notice,” Brown said. “Having a commitment from Bass Pro and a physical plan for Canal Side puts us in a very powerful position to sell Buffalo.”

I love it.  Mayor Brown's my new hero -- as a well-deserved poke in the eye to the meddling preservationists this is better than Fred Thompson's video was to that fat film-maker.

Canal Side will be anchored by a waterside Bass Pro store housed in a period-style building along the Buffalo River, flanked by a public market and museum. It also will include an additional 600,000 square feet of retail/ office/residential/entert a i n m e n t development on adjacent blocks.

The mix of retail, residential and commercial projects will sprout up on the sites of the idle Memorial Auditorium and vacant Donovan State Office Building, as well as the Webster Block, which is currently a surface parking lot. Neither Brown nor Benderson officials would disclose their full list of retail, restaurant and entertainment targets but did confirm they will sit down with Ikea, the popular Swedish seller of sleek furniture and contemporary home decor items. Ikea’s closest stores to Buffalo are in Burlington, Ont., Toronto and Pittsburgh.

Ikea would be a great catch.  Remember all those city-types who pooh-poohed the idea of a "bait store"? Well, I can see them now rushing down to the waterfront in their ubiquitous little Scion xB's to stuff them full of sleek, packaged faux-Scandinavian furniture.  I might even join them. This might be one big-box they could learn to love.

Like every other business proposal (anywhere, not just in Buffalo) this one will probably be scaled down substantially before it gets built -- if it gets built at all.  But it's the best indication I've seen in this town that there are still some people who "get it" when it comes to development. 

And wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall at the next Preservation Board meeting?  Expect great second helpings of shame-on-us from Donn Esmonde, too.