Weeds and Asphalt

The proposal to replace decades’ worth of weeds and asphalt with a shopping mecca that pays homage to that neighborhood’s vibrant past has, as we all know, run into loads of often sincere, sometimes sanctimonious opposition.

I wasn’t around in the late 90s and early 00s when the deal was struck to create an Erie Canal Harbor terminus historical area, so forgive my admitted ignorance.

I read this opinion piece by Roy Mann, who is billed as “senior principal of the Rivers Studio, author of Buffalo’s 2000 Erie Canal Heritage Waterfront Feasibility Study and Plan.” Let’s deconstruct:

Big cities make big mistakes; great cities make few of them. That’s why they’re great — and stay that way.

Boston is a great city, and it’s got Government Center instead of Scollay Square and the entire old west end. It’s great in spite of its big mistakes.

The Bass Pro development plan is a grave error, based apparently on a conviction that sales tax revenue and the prestige of a national sporting goods store will more than compensate for the loss of the treasures of the historic waterfront. Visions of public enjoyment of a transformed Central Wharf have been painted in rosy swatches. Intentions of homage to the city’s significant historic past have been warmly recited.

What “treasures of the historic waterfront” are being sacrificed?

The problem is that the Bass Pro building and parking ramp will deaden the area, rather than enliven it. Retail stores close typically at 9 p.m.

Restaurants and bars – especially on weekends – typically close much later. What’s closing time in Buffalo again?

Boston’s closing time is 2am. Her Quincy Market keeps going despite the closing time of the retail outlets. Go figure. (And see below).

Their storefronts and sides, particularly with bigbox entities — where ground level street-edge floor areas are too valuable for the company to lease out to restaurants and such that cater to street pedestrian traffic — turn lifeless and discourage pedestrian circulation and interest.

I think most people who have seen the Canal Side renderings might balk at using a term – “big box” – that is more commonly associated with such things as shopping center BJs and Wals Mart.

Parking structures, visible from and adjacent to the street, are even more detrimental. Not only are people disinterested in reaching restaurants, entertainment venues and other evening offerings overshadowed by such realities, investors shy away from opening public-dependent businesses in their vicinities. Evening entertainment — which begins to live and breathe at 9 — has little chance at thriving.

I have no idea how this statement can be supported. If the parking structure is made to blend in with the rest of the streetscape, it can be as much a boon to the project as a detriment. If people are to come from Cleveland or Toronto or Niagara Falls to see this new destination (and make no mistake – as historic as this area is, everything there will be new), they need somewhere to stick the wheels.

Streetside pedestrian activity is not of real value to a sporting goods store, where customers’ cars and trucks, essential in the carrying away of purchases, govern store planning.

All they need is a customer pickup bay. It could even be off-site.

One question that might have been asked: Could Buffalo achieve a comparable total sales tax revenue for the Canal District’s 12 acres by implementing the 2000 Erie Canal Heritage Waterfront Plan? Without running the numbers for this alternative, there is no way of knowing whether the Bass Pro plan is the best for Buffalo — in economic terms alone.

Contrary to Erie County Executive Joel A. Giambra’s statement on March 30 that the Bass Pro program “is very similar to the design standards that Roy Mann articulated in his (2000) plan,” the new design echoes the past only in a pale cosmetic sense. No one passing a big-box store with facade gestures to the 19th century will understand that the structure is a legacy of Buffalo’s storied past. The vastly more important potential of historic replication or simulation, with contemporary, economically profitable uses housed in buildings externally expressive of the structures of the old Canal District, will have been wiped off the chalkboard.

Except that nothing’s yet been designed. The renderings are not final, and there will be an architectural review and planning board with several slots reserved for architects involved with historical preservation or similar. So, perhaps the people screaming bloody murder at the idea of a shopping district at the aptly named Commercial Slip might start nominating architects they like so the thing gets done the way they want.

The foundations of those lost buildings have recently been exposed with the tantalizing promise of replication — or simulation, a promise that now seems about to be buried yet once again.

I’m beginning to get the sense that building a replica of the old street must be accomplished without regard to the economics.

The old Canal District’s assets — Commercial Slip and its Bowstring Bridge, the traces of Prime Slip, Central Wharf, Prime Street, Hanover Street, and the Lackawanna’s railroad bed are not simply an aggregation of artifacts of interest to local preservationists. They are an American legacy, the focal point of mid- and late-19th century national growth, when the Erie Canal tied into the Great Lakes and 2 million hardy pioneers took the first leg of a journey that moved through prairie schooners to the saga of the nation’s entire western development. This is an adventure, if told in a Canal District that wears a convincing historic mantle — not false veneer, that will draw historic sightseers, tourists, weekenders, leisuretimers, diners and shoppers from considerably farther than a simple two-hour driving radius.

How will that story be told that isn’t being covered by Canal Side? I haven’t had anyone explain to me exactly what it is that’s missing from the Canal Side project from a historical-replication standpoint.

In our 2000 studies, we recognized the potential of a revitalized Erie Canal heritage waterfront to draw robust numbers of visitors from Cleveland, Toronto, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York City and beyond. Support for downtown Buffalo’s dining, entertainment, retail and hospitality sectors would be substantial.

The key word here is “heritage”. What about Canal Side is missing “heritage”? Why must everything be a carbon copy of 1870? The mistake was tearing it all down in the first place, not subsequently trying to find an economically feasible way to rebuild in that location. The tugging on your emotions about “heritage” and authentic replication is, to me, a thin veil to disguise opposition to a national retailer and parking.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was signed into law after urban renewal bulldozed vast posterities in America’s cities in the post-war years — Buffalo among many others. Boston, rather than tear down its three decrepit Quincy Market buildings in the ’60s, elected to restore their exteriors and bring new retail and restaurant life to their interiors.

Right. They restored something that was already there. We’re talking about building on empty ground; replacing weeds and asphalt with something people will want to go to, and also pays homage to Buffalo’s heritage.

But “pays homage to” is different from “replicates”. Will the demands for authenticity expand to a ban on flush toilets? Shall the sewers be open? How about no electricity or phone? Candles and torches only. And ice boxes.

The project’s chief proponent was, interestingly, a private developer, the first of a new wave of investors who grasped the great potential of historic areas to restore public confidence in older downtowns while meeting entrepreneurial aspirations. He was James Rouse and the Quincy Market conversion, named Faneuil Hall Marketplace, has taken its place in history as one of the most successful enterprises in the annals of American urban redevelopment.

Yes. Faneuil Hall was never torn down and it’s ridiculously rich in history. Quincy Market was never torn down.

Buffalo cannot restore the buildings of the old Canal District, razed to the ground in 1918. Replication and simulation of the district’s structures at its peak are possible, however, and compatible both with historic site preservation and dramatic economic transformation. For Buffalo to sacrifice its inheritance — this legacy with a promising future based on a prodigious past — would be an unfathomable and costly mistake.

So come up with your own new plan and present it. Show me the alternative instead of tearing down what’s being proposed. How’s that for an idea?

Yeah, and make sure we preserve that green space right on the banks of the river, because even though it didn’t exist back in the 19th century, it’ll make all the big box haters feel good about themselves.

Incidentally, that green space that many are shedding a tear for – where Bass Pro is going – wasn’t on the final 2000 plan. The Bass Pro plot was a marina. The marina has been moved further south and replaced with Bass Pro. It was green space in the plan put forward in December 2006 when Canal Side was first announced. Where was the outcry then?