Study Richardson Site ; State Must Take Comprehensive Look at Moving or Keeping Psychiatric Center

One grand vision for the rehabilitation of a Buffalo architectural masterwork, the historic Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane complex designed by H. H. Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, would have been compelling. But a national panel of experts who recently spent a week immersed in the site and the city’s architectural context instead provided two such grand visions — and should have opened some local eyes, in the process.

Their study of what they termed the Richardson-Olmsted International Complex provided an exciting look at how the site at Elmwood and Forest avenues can travel from collapsing 19th century masterpiece to a vibrant part of this city’s cultural and heritage tourism future. But it also presented an immediate fork in that road.

The Urban Land Institute team thoroughly analyzed issues of preservation, strategic planning, organization, architectural and landscape restoration, marketing and financing. But the visions for the future did not include recommendations on a political issue that shapes the site’s future more than any other, and should be tackled immediately. The experts laid out a site plan that incorporates the existing Buffalo Psychiatric Center buildings — and a plan that showed what the site could be without those structures.

Moving the Psych Center has been suggested quietly before, but it now deserves a thorough and immediate feasibility and cost study by the state’s Office of Mental Health. Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer, who inherited the state’s moral responsibility for an architectural masterpiece that it had allowed to decay, should push for that.

There are many positive things to say about the Urban Land Institute study. Although the institute itself was paid, its team members deserve huge thanks for donating their time and expertise as unpaid volunteers. They left convinced Buffalo could become a cultural and architectural tourism mecca and that the Richardson Complex was less of a tough challenge than it was a great opportunity — a position this newspaper held long before publisher Stanford Lipsey, an editorial board member, agreed to chair the site’s state-appointed Richardson Center Corp., and will continue to advocate in the future.

The experts also said that the entire complex, even the west wing in the greatest disrepair, could be saved — and that replicas of long-demolished parts of the east wing could be rebuilt as part of a museum district hotel complex. And, importantly, they gave as much attention to Olmsted’s landscape goals as to Richardson’s Romanesque buildings. But the most immediate issue to address is the hospital one, because it shapes everything else in site planning.

Because the Psychiatric Center’s bed needs have declined dramatically in recent decades — down from a peak of about 3,200 patients to about 220 today, although its outpatient clinics are now more important — it would have made sense to include the facility in the recent Berger Commission hospital study. Not doing so inappropriately sets mental health care apart from other kinds of health care, and it ignores some opportunities — possible relocation to a medical hospital slated for closing, for example, or County Executive Joel A. Giambra’s suggestion that the center move to the expansive Erie County Medical Center grounds where it could tap the hospital’s medical and psychiatric capabilities.

Such issues need consideration, for patient care and continued community accessibility. They could use immediate consideration, for the sake of site planning and a chance for Buffalo to polish an architectural and landscaping jewel of national significance that will boost this city’s image, help power its tourism initiatives and ultimately help revive an economy that will pay dividends in neighborhoods throughout the urban area.

(c) 2007 Buffalo News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.