The members of the coalition opposed to adding a Bass Pro to Canal Side have been throwing around a lot of allegations and charges with respect to, among other things, the delay that the revision to the 2004 plan has caused. The preservationists would have you believe that, but for the addition of a Bass Pro and the resulting environmental review process, the construction of the master plan and its quaint seaside village design would be well under way by now. To get the other side of the story, I spoke yesterday with the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation’s Executive Director, Chuck Rosenow. Points that he made during our conversation are submitted here without comment:
1. The Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for the Bass Pro Canal Side plan has been underway since early July and will take about 9 months to complete.
2. The EIS has not put a halt to construction at the Canal Side site.
3. The old EIS for the Master Plan covered only 12 acres; only 2 acres of which included develop-able parcels. The new EIS covers 100 acres, including all of the Canal block, the Cobblestone District, the Donovan, Aud, and Webster Blocks. Currently, much of the Cobblestone district is zoned industrial. The current EIS will enable that to change.
4. Under the 2004 Master Plan, the only thing that was to be constructed was the cobblestone street grid, the parks, and the installation of infrastructure to make it “shovel-ready”. There was no commitment to build all the pretty brick buildings one sees in the renderings. Instead, they were to be constructed by the private sector whenever they felt it reasonable to do so. While seemingly noble, there is no guarantee that anything would actually ever be built there. After all, there is no retail downtown as it is.
5. By including a Bass Pro in the plan, you all of a sudden have a retail anchor that isn’t just well-known and popular. You have a unique type of retailer that has the ability to draw in people from outside of the local market. In other words, it doesn’t matter if Joey from Lackawanna goes to Bass Pro or not. There will be many people from outside the area who will go there. The reaction that the city got at a recent national retail convention based on the Bass Pro announcement underscores that.
6. There will be public access to the waterfront on the water side of Bass Pro. The contract for that public walkway has been awarded. As to the question of whether Bass Pro will have an entryway on the waterside, no final plans have been drawn up, but the ECHDC is paying attention to public input on that point.
7. As to the charge that ECHDC is “ramming” a “done deal” down people’s throats, there are going to be at least 3-4 public hearings held on the Canal Side / Bass Pro project in the coming months. The sheer size and scale of the project, as well as the law, mandate public comment and hearings.
The next ECHDC meeting will be held at 11am on September 11th at Empire State Development offices in the Liberty Building. The meeting will be webcast.
The Buffalo Record 
Alan–Thanks for the scoop. I’m not one of the “impatient”
younger generation that thinks microwave popcorn should be done in 10 seconds. This has taken WAY too long already, but the hearings make sense. There just doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency up there.
Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall at some of the meetings that take place at Bass Pro HQ??? I wonder just how hard they are laughing at Buffalo.
Right on Hank…..
Laughing all the way to the bank with this absurd package of public money, incentives and prime waterfront land that we are just giving away to them…..
I would like to know what good is prime waterfront land if there’s no businesses to use it . If no retailers come to build on the land how prime is it? If you don’t use incentives to bring in ventures, how is it going to get done. I have not seen retailers beating down doors to come into downtown. It’s been dead for 20 years!!!
Prime waterfront land is being created currently by the 2004 plan because they are building quality infrastructure. Can you name me one place on the entire city waterfront where a business can locate today without haveing to construct anything but their own building? It doesn’t exist. There is no retail on our waterfront because there is no place to put it – the infrastructure has not been created. You incentivise retail to come in by creating an attractive place for them to locate. Does anyone notice how incredibly busy The Hatch is every single night – and guess what, theres no big bass pro or other fake draw anywhere near it, except that its on prime waterfront land. Yeah, we don’t want a bunch of ice cream and hamburger shops, but I’m sure they’re not the only ones that would be successful at such a location.
Excuse me but the Uniland Office buildings bear Shanghai Reds originally had retail. Where is it now? The infrastucture is complete there so where is all the retail. And who constucted and own the building the hatch is in?
should read constructed and owns
“The Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for the Bass Pro Canal Side plan has been underway since early July and will take about 9 months to complete.”
The MOU and the sexy renderings were trumpeted out in March. So why exactly did the environmental process not get underway the following week? Why does the ECHDC wait four months before commencing work on the studies?
Another year lost; another construction season gone. Timetables pushed further back; another year, another decade, another century of looking at boarded up Auds, decrepit Donovan buildings, rubble strewn parking lots.
Perhaps one of the problems is that we keep bringing back retreads like Chuck Rosenow (anyone remember that moron Dennis Gorski and his Horizons Waterfront Commission?) instead of putting “go to” people in charge who will get the process moving, the job done and shovels in the ground.
Ugh. another dreary and depressing story on this issue today. Really… why do I give a shit!?
Chuck Rosenow is misinforming you. Here’s a point-by-point take on his remarks:
1. When Chuck Rosenow says the Environmental Impact (EIS) Statement will take nine months, what he really should say is that legally an EIS *can* take nine months. That is very different, isn’t it? The contentious nature of this project will guarantee a significant delay as an existing, fully-funded plan is uprooted and the community is dragged through yet another series of studies and public comment sessions. Buffalo has already been through this. It’s done. It’s finished. It cost a few cold million to complete. We’re halfway done constructing the existing 2004 Master Plan. Please don’t let Bass Pro and the ECHDC continue to hold up progress as they conduct more of their studies. Enough already!
2. Correct. The EIS has not held up progress on the waterfront. The ECHDC’s decision to halt the construction of the cobblestone streets and the Central Wharf plaza is what’s holding up progress on the waterfront. The Bass Pro original and current proposal would be built on the Central Wharf and would cut off a section of one of those streets. The Bass Pro would be built literally on top of the historic location of Prime Street where it connects to Main. The entire site has to be reevaluated to accomodate the needs of a large retailer.
3. Chuck Rosenow is making up facts. The 2004 plan is mostly development. Only the streets, the alignment of the Commercial Slip, the Steamship Hotel ruins, and the Central Wharf are public space. Rosenow is lying about the zoning. The 12-acre site is covered by a court-ordered, revised Urban Renewal Amendment, which is a zoning overlay, that encourages a mix of uses throughout. That URA, by the way, forbids large retailers on site because it would conflict with the small-scale urbanism of the original fabric. Rosenow’s spin isn’t fooling this urban planner one iota.
4. Poor argument. The ECHDC is holding up the construction of the street infrastructure that would create value for development and would create the necessary access for development in the first place. The RFP for development would come after the completion of the infrastructure, not before. The ECHDC is the primary obstruction to getting things done on the water – and they absurdly claim a “commitment” when they have nothing in writing committing Bass Pro or Benderson Development to one solitary thing. The existing plan is designed to bring many developers on board with many small components of a larger development. The most successful waterfront neighborhoods developed recently (Battery Park City is a larger example) are implemented under this model.
5. No one in the preservation community disagrees with that position. The original 2004 plan always assumed a Bass Pro would be located in the Aud. It’s the location of a Bass Pro – on the Central Wharf and blocking critical views and accessways to the water – that is the source of controversy. Adjacent blocks like the Donovan, Webster and DL&W passenger terminal sites are ideal locations for a Bass Pro, parking and destination retail-type development. Placing the Bass Pro within the 12-acre project area only guarantees delay, controversy, and costly repeats of the many waterfront studies we all thought were completed. Move, improve! We can have a win-win here with a continued build-out of the 2004 Master Plan and a Bass Pro/destination retail environment.
6. The existence of a large retail building directly on the water inherently hinders waterfront access and viewsheds. The Bass Pro, no matter which side of the Central Wharf on which it’s located, performs the same waterfront-disappearing magic.
7. I’ve already been to countless public hearings on the Canal District. The community came together and in a rare moment in Buffalo history a near consensus was hammered out. The 2004 project is already approved, funded, halfway completed, and ready to be finished. No more studies! Let’s get it done already!
The preservationists were right on the money about keeping the original canal stones, a fake canal would be so lame and uninteresting. These new buildings are going to be different, though, and they can be as good or better to walk through as a row of 1800’s style shops or whatever. Even if I personally don’t like whatever’s built, if it’s a success it will be an improvement on what’s there.