Anyone who thinks UB should be in the city hasnt spent any time at Canisius. Parking at a city campus is hell, and ours is a much smaller student body. In an urban area, the space simply isnt there. Ramps can’t be central to every building, so if you have an 82 story ramp in one place, people who live in the other 99% of the campus are pissed. Of course, the entire campus could be funded by Buffalo parking enforcement giving out $50 tickets to a couple thousand people a day, so maybe that works.
AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That might be the best way I’ve ever heard that put.
Meh. Parking parking parking. Okay, so you have to walk! Oh no! It’s not really a huge issue at some of the best universities in the nation that find themselves with very little parking due to being in an urban setting.
Big difference though… Those other city universities are in cities with real public transit systems and centralized populations. Most of the people going to UB don’t have the option of not taking their car, and moving it downtown would not solve that.
And no, they’re not talking about moving UB, and thank god they put it in the right place to start or it would never be the huge university it is today. But they are constantly talking about building a downtown ECC campus.
Ralph was just on the news talking about suite sales, specifically about the 200 suites the new Jets stadium is going to have selling at 250000 each, bringing in 50 million in revenue. He said the Bills have to pound on doors to sell 7 million in suites. That’s where my new stadium suites comment came from.
JayS; you’re a good guy, but i disagree with you on bass pro, and on the casino, and your logic makes my head hurt (no offence, just very frustrating to hear these kinds of opinions)
and as to the slot machine profits, lol I think we’re only getting like 17% or something (i wrote a paper on it a while ago but forget the exact number. very nominal). not to mention that the sale price of the land is 1/3 the assessed value. also, the sovereign nation doesn’t pay tax, but will use the city’s services. we will pay for the roads. we will pay for the sewer. we will pay for the fire, and we will pay for the police. you think the casino will have all these things? HA! that shit will make us broke.
Tom (dozr) answered the debate w/ 2turboz well on pg 2 and I agree w/tom
the aud, as much as I’m into historical preservation, isn’t really rational to keep around. we built the hsbc arena because the aud is severely outdated, and the design is not conducive to any current uses we could have. but i mean we dont really have anything to put there at this current time, so i’ll leave that alone for now.
since people have been bitching about a new convention center, maybe a dome stadium/convention center isn’t a terrible idea. You guys have been to the Toronto auto show. they pull the merge off pretty nicely.
The Casino has ALREADY been advertised as not being quite extravagent, and NOT having a huge advertising campaign to bring people from out of town. So they want it to be used by locals. The last thing a blue collar town needs is a casino with which to lose their paycheck
besides, there is already a casino 20 minutes away. and a whole nother slew of then 5 minutes over the border from there. So people will stop going to these nice casinos, to go to a run of the mill one in a brownfield area downtown? give me a break.
the mistake with UB has already been made. it’s too late. Genrich made his deal for the land in amherst, and that’s that. we can and are changing focus with things like the medical campus downtown(ish) which is cool
btw, it’s funny when people from the suburbs make these matter-of-fact statements about what needs to be done. you know what the city needs? PEOPLE LIVING IN THE CITY. it doesn’t do buffalo any good to have a million people in amherst. it doesn’t do any good that susan grelick prevented the expansion of the subway to amherst (even though north campus is there, durr). It doesn’t do the city of buffalo any good to pay to maintain highways and snow plowing on roads just so people can drive to work, then drive home and pay the property tax on their $250,000 house to Amherst.
also, the city put out a modified master plan between 1 and 2 years ago. in that, they outline that the skyway WILL come down in the next 15-20. I hope it is WAY sooner than that.
I think a nice quaint waterfront village would be great. Condos, small retail shops, etc.
ikea would be a good idea too, it draws people in from other areas. Yes there is one 1.5 hours over the border, but then you have to deal with customs. People from surrounding states would come to buffalo’s ikea to avoid border hassle. it is that much of a burden. And who knows, maybe if we had a sustainable environment in the area, people would even stick around for the rest of the afternoon/evening. maybe even catch a show in the theater district, or eat at one of the many nice restaurants we have.
since tom brought up the larkin building;
there is a market for class a office space. and lofts. rocco termini has a lot of shit going on these days. as well as clover management, who is supposed to be doing another loft down the street from the sidway now that they sold it. if people will be living downtown, and are already working downtown, lets give them a downtown they can stay in. I took a real estate finance class with alan dewart of seneca development that ended not a week ago. trust me, the demand is there, and the availability is rising, and the potential is endless.
lastly; jays; public transportation is a vicious cycle. you say there are not means for public transportation. this is because their budget is tiny due to the low rider participation. if more people rode, they’d have more money to run more frequently, and expand their services. how else do you propose making the public transit system more viable? millions of tax dollars that the city and county already dont have? and we’ve already covered ub will not be moved anywhere, so lets move on from that.
I’m not going to get into a big casino debate, but I will point out that you’re wrong about it not being a grand casino. The only time they planned to scale back was when Brown would not release Fulton St. Now that the Seneca’s have finally acquired that the plans are back on for a huge casino. Looking across the border, and even in Niagara Falls (check out the checks NF has received from their share) it’s hard to argue that the casino don’t bring in money for the city. With there being really no other businesses in the NF area it’s hard to see if the money was simply transferred from one business to another though.
Don’t turn this into a city vs suburbs thing. It has always been, and always will be, the American dream to own a home with a yard where your kids can grow up and play. Look at any medium sized successful city and they all have booming suburbs as well, proving the two are not mutually exclusive. By the time Susan blocked the metrorail from coming into Amherst she had good reason to; the city was already too far gone and it would not bring the right element into her town. Want proof? Look at the declining property values in the Cheektowaga neighborhoods that border Buffalo. These aren’t racist statements or made up. It’s simple fact that Buffalo has a serious crime problem, and anywhere that you have a lot of public transit from Buffalo crime is on the rise.
You’re right about public transit now being a catch22 though. It needed to be built back when Buffalo was a thriving city and had the money to do it. Now is certainly not the time to invest millions on it when the few striving businesses in the suburbs are struggling under the regions oppressive taxes. And there in lies the critical problem with all solutions to renewing downtown. Almost all of the solutions involve incentives, tax breaks, and outright legal “bribes”, and the region has no money to do any of that.
To bring about real change you have to start at the root of the issue, NYS taxes, and as evident by how people vote in this state that is never going to change. Two NYC politicians run this state, Silver and Bruno, and since they draw their own districts to guarantee they’ll never get voted out, the status quo will remain. You will never draw lots of business downtown, suburbs, or bum fuck nowhere for that matter, with taxes the way they are in this state. The first time I saw Bass Pro start to backpeddle was when the legislature raised our sales tax. If you’re a company who’s business model is to build massives stores that draw people from long distances how much sense does it make to put a store in one of the highest taxed areas in the US?
So work hard, be above average in your field, find one of those few good jobs in the area, and move to the suburbs. Then sit there on your computer and point how all the things that could be done to fix downtown knowing full well it’s never going to happen in this state.
they should bulldoze the aud, and sell all the shit inside it to collectors.
I’d like to see an ikea store in buffalo.
:wtf: Do you have a spycam on me or something?
I think you’re right about having to get at the root of the problem. I’d bet that anything that turns buffalo around will be more of a 20 year change than the opening of any single retail store.
Many of the students at UB don’t bring their cars. :dunno: Canisus students hardly represent UB students…
How many students commute to UB? Are they mostly undergraduates?
The approximate number of commuter students on the UB campus is 19,700—or 72 percent—of which approximately 11,000 are undergraduates. Sixty-two percent of all undergraduates commute to UB. There are approximately 7,545 beds in the University Residence Halls and Apartments.
http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol35/vol35n31/columns/qa.html
Article is 2004, but I doubt the % has changed much since then.
Knowing how limited the public transit is, especially where UB is, I would be willing to bet a vast majority of that 72% are driving cars.
Well there’s no doubt that the PT is horrid–but with more people using it bringing in more money it would give it the ability to improve. More people would be forced to live on campus, and that’s a GOOD thing.
It’s a useless argument because it’s not happening, but the medical campus seems to be doing just fine downtown.
lol @ there being no market for high end shops/living in the city. There’s no shortage of big money in buffalo to be spent. Place like the Chop House & Hutchs are full every night and those are by no means low end dining. Big money condos built downtown will sell, shit I’d prolly buy one in 5 years instead of building a house in the burbs or renovating a house in the elmwood village.
Personally I think an extravagant downtown casino will be good for the city, it’ll keep a lot of the wealthy business travelers in buffalo instead of going up to Seneca Niagara
^^^^ Word…they are building Hi-end condos right by my office and there are already a ton of hi-end waterfront Condos here…so the demand is there…for the businesses as well
I just heard on the radio the city of Buffalo made a last ditch effort to attract bass pro…the offered them 35 mil to come.
WTF
so many better ways to spend $35 million…
You’re right. 50% of our student body lives on campus whereas 72% of UB’s commutes. So UB has more cars, not less.
Why are we comparing Canisus to UB when we should be comparing UB to decent universities that are in urban settings? The area grows to accommodate the school. People adapt to the school.
Canisus is hardly a university.
This isn’t happening, it was a mistake. Building anything in Amherst is only a good idea if you don’t want to see lesser beings.
edit: stating how many people commute hardly proves any causality. Maybe people commute because it is convenient? But dig deeper into UB’s archives and you will see that they find that people that live on campus do better.
There are enough small schools in Buffalo to have a better shot at urban renewal then you think…not on the scale of UB north by any means but there is:
Canisius, Medaille & Buff State (which is more responsible for the elmwood district i think)
But they are in the outskirts of the city parkside area…not so much downtown.
ECC is the only one in the actualy downtown area.
How’s the main place mall doing these days, what with the huge demand for downtown stores people believe exists?
And more importantly… is there still a Gino And Joes pizza there because if so that might be worth seeing some lower life forms as Cory calls them and dragging my ass out of Amherst for a bit.
apparently the suburbs isn’t the american dream of 285,000 in buffalo
just because you want to live in the suburbs, jays, doesn’t mean everyone does.