Dante Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Could use some manufacturing in the area. Good downtown may follow. No? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.Biscuit97 Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Does anyone actually live DOWN TOWN that's on this thread? A couple I know have a loft downtown. It is one of the most amazing places I have ever been too. I can't imagine how much it would go for in NYC. slowly but surely, a lot of new buildings are being put up. Still for most residential needs, it is a ghost town after 6pm Sunday through Wednesday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tcali Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 Good call. It completely ignores the reality that Malls are dying all over the country but surely a big shopping center with a bunch of minimum wage jobs is exactly what Buffalo needs to reverse a half century economic downturn. F downtown.Its over with. Any building will fail and any green space will turn into a slimey druggie hangout. -pardon me..have a Buffalo chamber of commerce meeting i need to dash off to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tcali Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 A couple I know have a loft downtown. It is one of the most amazing places I have ever been too. I can't imagine how much it would go for in NYC. slowly but surely, a lot of new buildings are being put up. Still for most residential needs, it is a ghost town after 6pm Sunday through Wednesday. at least in Buffalo before 1990 u could go down to Chippewa from downtown and experience some solass and slimeitude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drinkTHEkoolaid Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 building a super wal mart where the aud was is just about the worst idea i've ever heard. just terrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drinkTHEkoolaid Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 A couple I know have a loft downtown. It is one of the most amazing places I have ever been too. I can't imagine how much it would go for in NYC. slowly but surely, a lot of new buildings are being put up. Still for most residential needs, it is a ghost town after 6pm Sunday through Wednesday. i agree, some of the lofts downtown are AMAZING if you are into that type of lifestyle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chalkie Gerzowski Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 try not being so tacky. don't enhance your "ALL-AMERIKANA" designation I see on the 90. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PromoTheRobot Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 Downtown Buffalo needs a....MONORAIL!! Oh, wait, they built something like that and it didn't work either. PTR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Senator Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 To the Public Officials who run this town..... Downtown could use a large strip Mall. Not a Walden Gallarina but someplace where you can do some one spot shopping. Put a Target or a large Walmart somewhere close to HSBC arena. Something like the one across the street from UB south but bigger. Do you really think that a Bass Pro would do better than Walmart in the old Aud location??? I would love to see a maga Walmart go up in that spot. Think of all the feeder stories that might pop up. Burger King, McD's, Pizza hut, you name it. Walmart would be the top store, Wegmans would be a nice fit also. Instead of trying to lure the fishermen downtown, why not put something there that EVERYBODY could use. It would be visable from the 90, and the Skyway. Steal some of the customers that use the Peace Bridge to get to the USA that are going to the Walden Gallarina. Steal some money from the people who live in the suburbs but work in the city. Give people who dont have cars that live and work downtown a nice place to shop. It is way over due IMO Thoughts please We already have a downtown shopping mall. In 1959, the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation hired a consultant from Cambridge, MA - Arthur D. Little - to help develop a plan to revitalize downtown Buffalo. His recommendation? A downtown shopping mall. So they tore down the old Erie County Savings Bank (a magnificent structure), and destroyed Joesph Ellicott's original radial street design (Buffalo's original street design is loosely modeled after Pierre' L'Enfant's plan for Washington, DC, featuring streets 'radiating' from hubs, like the spokes of a wheel), building in its place the monstrosity known as Main Place Mall. Leave it to a New Englander to f&ck up downtown Buffalo. Here's what used to be there... Shelton Square The mall was built, and three banks also built huge downtown towers (Marine Midland - now HSBC, Erie County Savings Bank, and M&T). It did little to save or revitalize downtown. Buffalo's population shrunk throughout the 1960's from it's high of 532,000 in the '50's to 462,000 in 1970, to 357,000 in 1980, and now stands around 270,000. Downtown also had a McDonald's, Burger King, and other eateries, now all closed. The flight to the suburbs in the 1960's & '70's - and the subsequent rise of suburban mega-malls - doomed downtown Buffalo. (Closing down Main Street for several years to build the surface railway was the final bullet for many remaining downtown merchants.) Folks want convenience - they want a safe place to shop, near their homes. If more people lived withing the city limits - particularly in the downtown area - the lack of a downtown shopping district would take care of itself in short order, as residents would demand places to shop, and retailers and enterprising entrepreneurs would quickly fill the void. All that said, I do think downtown is slowly coming back. The UB medical campus and burgeoning biomedical corridor will attract physicians, scientists, and entrepreneurs - folks that earn lots, work long hours, and want decent housing convenient to their jobs. As more downtown housing is built, be it new or converted 'lofts', a more affluent inner city population will create the demand for restaurants, dry cleaners, grocery stores, retail, etc., and eventually there will be a downtown Buffalo again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bufcomments Posted July 24, 2009 Author Share Posted July 24, 2009 The above post opened my eyes. Did not know that they have an historical gem downtown, all they need to do was save it and upgrade it, which the cheap fools did not what to do. But the Mall was poorly designed. It would have been much better if it was an open air market, even in the winter. Then you can at least see what the store had to offer from the outside. Pity ......the building they had in that spot was much better than what stands now. Thanks Senator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Senator Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 The above post opened my eyes.Did not know that they have an historical gem downtown, all they need to do was save it and upgrade it, which the cheap fools did not what to do. But the Mall was poorly designed. It would have been much better if it was an open air market, even in the winter. Then you can at least see what the store had to offer from the outside. Pity ......the building they had in that spot was much better than what stands now. Thanks Senator My pleasure - when I'm not engaged in all-out war on TSW, I occasionally try to post something constructive. BTW, the Bass Pro project is a good one. We just have to watch over it to make sure over eager-developers don't, in their haste to put up anything at all, destroy Buffalo's greatest assets - its rich history and its storied architecture. We almost had Masiello, Bob Rich, and Larry Quinn shove this plan down our throats... Rendering - Waterside View Rendering - Ariel View ...which would have obliterated the 1999 Master Plan's call for public 'green space' at that location, along with restoration of the original Canal Zone street plan. (The original cobblestone streets were discovered in tact under a few inches of gravel that was just dumped over them to create parking lots when the Aud was expanded to accommodate the new NHL expansion Buffalo Sabres). 1999 Master Plan Site Detail (As with most grand projects here in WNY, this one is way behind schedule. ) Thanks to the efforts of some tireless preservationists (some would call them 'obstructionists), we now have the original plan back on track, and a much better design for Bass Pro at the original and more appropriate location - the site of the old Aud.... 'Final' Canal Plans Revealed As you can see, it's a much nicer plan, and actually involves re-watering a small stretch of the original Erie Canal (which ran right next to the Aud), along with unearthing and re-watering several old slips and constructing new ones, taking the waterfront further inland. The whole thing is very reminiscent of Boston's Quincy Market area or Baltimore's Harborplace, abeit on a smaller scale reflecting Buffalo's more modest means. Now, if we can just get that casino finished - only about 3 blocks away from all of this and HSBC Arena... Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino ...we'll have a nice little core in downtown Buffalo on which to build and grow. Too bad we drag our feet so much - we could have had all this done in time for St. Paddy's Day weekend in 2010 and the return to Buffalo of... March Madness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spartacus Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 To the Public Officials who run this town..... Downtown could use a large strip Mall. Not a Walden Gallarina but someplace where you can do some one spot shopping. Put a Target or a large Walmart somewhere close to HSBC arena. Something like the one across the street from UB south but bigger. Do you really think that a Bass Pro would do better than Walmart in the old Aud location??? I would love to see a maga Walmart go up in that spot. Think of all the feeder stories that might pop up. Burger King, McD's, Pizza hut, you name it. Walmart would be the top store, Wegmans would be a nice fit also. Instead of trying to lure the fishermen downtown, why not put something there that EVERYBODY could use. It would be visable from the 90, and the Skyway. Steal some of the customers that use the Peace Bridge to get to the USA that are going to the Walden Gallarina. Steal some money from the people who live in the suburbs but work in the city. Give people who dont have cars that live and work downtown a nice place to shop. It is way over due IMO Thoughts please Walmart is the evil empire all that cheap stuff they sell must be produced overseas so in addition to destroying the small local shops, Walmart is also destroying the industrial workforce in America. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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