Another Voice / Harbor redevelopment
Let’s keep waterfront route at grade level
Buffalo is positioned to reclaim its greatness and take a bold step to crack the dam we’ve built against our own success.
I am the daughter of South Buffalo Irish and East Buffalo Polish parents, a blue-collar to white-collar upstart. I’m a neighbor, a friend and a proud citizen of Buffalo. Our glorious City by the Lake has an incredible — and incredibly rare — opportunity to do something magnificent. This comes along once in a generation, like whether to build a downtown domed stadium or move the University at Buffalo to the waterfront or build a new Peace Bridge.
Right now, along our beautiful lake shore, construction crews are dismantling the elevated sections of Route 5. They mined slag that supported the roadway, tore down bridges and created an alternative route for travel. Transportation experts tell us that we no longer need the elevated stretch of Route 5 between the Skyway and Lackawanna. Removing the elevated section can return 77 to 80 acres of land for additional waterfront development to Buffalo tax rolls and provide the needed cash to get the work done now.
Let’s tell the Department of Transportation not to re-elevate Route 5. Leave it at grade. Make it all at grade. Create a boulevard.
This an opportunity — an opportunity with the potential to dramatically transform the physical, psychological, ecological and economic futures of our community at a price we can afford — that is too valuable to let slip away.
Removing walls is an act of wonderful significance. Removing walls changes our perspective. Removing walls creates connections and reclaims space lost to division. Removing walls opens possibilities and is absolutely essential to ending the gridlock Western New York placed on its own future.
We are tantalizingly close to shedding the Route 5 collar that has choked off our relationship with our waterfront for generations. Former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist, a well-known proponent of new urbanism, endorses this move, as do key Common Council Members David Franczyk and Mickey Kearns. Dozens of environmental, economic development, historic preservation and recreation groups support it.
They back it because removing Route 5 has been a business community priority for 25 years. With the removal of the Ogden Street tolls on the Thruway, Route 5 is not as crucial a commuter route, and a boulevard would only slow slightly the flow for those who want to use it. An at-grade Route 5 leading to the Skyway will make removing the Skyway — the ultimate wall — more likely. A four-lane, at-grade boulevard along the outer harbor will dramatically increase access for all people.
We are so close to taking a first step into a bold and glorious future. We can do this, Buffalo. We can do it with the help of state bulldozers or with our own shovels and buckets, if need be. But we have to decide that we’ve had enough of walls. I’ve had enough. How about you?
Julie Barrett O’Neill is executive director of Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper.
