The public tab for the proposed Canal Side project is $154 million, including $46 million to build four parking ramps and $35 million to build a Bass Pro store.

About two-thirds of the public money to pay for the $294.8 million project came from a financing agreement reached only last month with the New York Power Authority. Private development is projected at about $140 million.

The amounts were contained in a general project plan issued by Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. that was up for discussion at a public hearing Tuesday in Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The figures do not include the $47 million spent to redevelop Erie Canal Harbor and rewater the Commercial Slip that opened in 2008.

Thomas P. Dee, the development corporation’s president, defended the subsidy prior to the hearing. The proposed mix of public, retail and entertainment space — currently on target to gain final approval in March — would stimulate economic revitalization for the waterfront and downtown, he said.

“We are currently the third-poorest city in the United States, so we need to make a change. This is something where the money has been appropriated for this project. So the money is there, the vision is there, the leadership is there, and we have been on this path now for 10 years, so it’s time to make this investment, not take a step backward,” Dee said.

The proposed variety of planned experiences and environments at Canal Side was reviewed at the outset of the hearing by Stanton Eckstut, the New York City-based lead architect.

The 125 people in attendance seemed about evenly split over the plan.

“We as a community have something to look forward to, that we can grab onto, that’s tangible and welcomed with optimism,” said Erie County Legislator Timothy M. Kennedy, D-Buffalo.

“Everything we’ve seen tonight indicates we’re going to get a stunning waterfront,” said Stephen Fitzmaurice, a Buffalo Place board member.

Preservationist Tim Tielman, a critic of the project, said that it is the wrong project for the waterfront that was the terminus of the Erie Canal.

“It’s a bad project because it forfeits what is our strength — the historic authenticity that we have at the site, and replaces it with something that is utterly fake and of questionable economic utility,” said Tielman, executive director of Campaign for Greater Buffalo.

Tielman warned a provision in the final generic Environmental Impact Statement will allow all local land-use regulations, and the 2004 Erie Canal Master Plan, to be usurped by Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp., creating a “super agency with a chunk of sovereign property in downtown Buffalo.”

Jordan A. Levy, the development corporation’s chairman, has rejected that criticism, saying the 2004 master plan will apply to Canal Side.

Attorney Joseph G. Makowski said his clients, Marine Drive residents, continued to oppose the placement of a parking ramp by their complex. He said Empire State Development Corp. prepared a supplemental environmental impact statement, as requested, but found it to be “the same bureaucratic double talk.”

He questioned the $24.5 million price tag for the ramp and said the residents wanted another site considered.

“We’re not ruling anything in, we’re not ruling anything out,” Makowski said when asked about filing a lawsuit.

The Rev. Derren L. Young of St. John Baptist Church was one of two speakers who pleaded that blacks not be shut out of job opportunities that have eluded minorities in Buffalo.

Earlier, Dee said infrastructur work was expected to begin in the spring, with actual construction of Canal Side to start in late summer.

“It’s probably about a two-year construction project, so things will be open and people will be buying stuff in about two years,” he said.

Dee said discussions with Bass Pro and Benderson Development, a prospective developer, continue to move forward.

“We’re meeting with Bass Pro and the Benderson Group almost on a weekly basis, and everything is moving to the pace it can move. Without the public process and the environmental review process completed, we really can’t sign any contracts,” Dee said.

Earlier in the day, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, acknowledged that without the financing agreement reached with the New York Power Authority in December, the project could have collapsed without other funding.

That deal doubled the 2005 settlement from $54 million in current dollars designated for waterfront improvements to $105 million.