Waterfront Idea is Worth a Second Look
By Donn Esmonde
The near-vacant downtown monolith of Main Place Mall. The too- small, instantly obsolete convention center. The neighborhood- killing Kensington Expressway. The waterfront-blocking Niagara Thruway.
To lyrically alter the classic song: These are a few of our least- favorite things.
They all — and the granddaddy of them all, UB’s North Campus — have one thing in common: Folks in charge told us they were a good idea. Each caused damage that we still feel.
People keep leaving, and our economy keeps drooping. Desperation divides us into two camps on big-project proposals: Those who say Just Do Something and those who say Do the Right Thing, because history shows that the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing.
The latest dispute concerns the nearly sealed Route 5 plan. Altering a 3-mile stretch of waterfront roadways south of downtown will fast-forward waterfront progress. The question is: Choice A or choice B?
The state, backed by Rep. Brian Higgins, wants to keep the slightly elevated Route 5 as a commuter road — at least for now — and create a parallel, slower-speed boulevard.
A coalition of more than a dozen civic groups backs the state’s other option — a single, slower-speed boulevard. They say it makes no sense to prolong the life of Route 5, an above-grade expressway that cuts off the waterfront. Replacing it with a boulevard opens land on either side for development. They say we need to take another look, given that we will be stuck with whatever gets built.
Having now gotten a good look at each option, I think the boulevard coalition might be right.
“We’re not trying to stop anything,” activist Harvey Garrett said. “We’re trying to make sure that it gets done right.”
These are not people who stumbled out of a bar with a brainstorm. They range from urban planners to engineers, from environmentalists to neighborhood activists. Some of them helped to clean the Buffalo River, others revived desolate streets. Some work to hold back resource-sucking sprawl; others help towns rediscover a sense of place. They are not obstructionists; they are assets.
Their push for the boulevard is backed by Buffalo’s Common Council and, at the commuter end of Route 5, by Hamburg’s Village Board.
“Wait” is a hard word to say around here. A half-century of decline, some of it self-inflicted, breeds impatience. We are tired of seemingly nothing being done — somehow ignoring a new airport, a Sabres-saving HSBC Arena, the repopulating of downtown in restored buildings, the rise of the Chippewa nightlife district and a reclaimed Erie Canal Harbor.
Higgins wants to move ahead with the state’s plan and deal with Route 5 sometime down the road. He earned credibility by almost single-handedly pulling the waterfront out of its inertia.
The coalition says the boulevard plan improves on the state’s idea and is worth waiting a year or two for. In fact, there is work common to both plans that could start now.
A similar coalition recently persuaded the state to ditch its wrongheaded proposal for a Bass Pro store on the Erie Canal historic site. It saved us from a monumental blunder and led to a better plan. If they had not spoken up, a bad idea would have become reality.
Coalition members want to sit down with Higgins, make their case for a boulevard and listen to his arguments. After an initial reluctance, Higgins — to his credit — told me Thursday he will arrange a meeting.
Our legacy of mistakes and the current climate of desperation argue for another look. We waited a lifetime for something. We can wait a little longer to make sure it is the right thing.
e-mail: desmonde@buffnews.com
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