The New York Times had an interesting article yesterday on Buffalo architecture.

Buffalo is home to some of the greatest American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with major architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright building marvels here. Together they shaped one of the grandest early visions of the democratic American city.

Yet Buffalo is more commonly identified with the crumbling infrastructure, abandoned homes and dwindling jobs that have defined the Rust Belt for the past 50 years. And for decades its architecture has seemed strangely frozen in time.

Now the city is reaching a crossroads. Just as local preservationists are completing restorations on some of the city’s most important landmarks, the federal government is considering a plan that could wipe out part of a historic neighborhood. Meanwhile Mayor Byron W. Brown is being pressed to revise a proposal that would have demolished hundreds of abandoned homes.

The outcome of these plans will go far in determining the city’s prospects for economic recovery, but it could also offer a rare opportunity to re-examine the relationship between preserving the past and building a future.

As someone in the field of architecture, I certainly can appreciate the architecturasl history here. Unfortunately I also see a lack of progress it the city. We have unused waterfront property going te waste. We can’t even build a signature bridge without someone putting the breaks on it ever ridiculous reasons. And a small, but vocal minority successfully managed to derail a multi-million dollar casino project which would have pumped a lot money into the economy and created a lot of jobs.

Anyway, it is an interesting read. Check it out.

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An interesting fact via the Buffalo News ‘Inside The News’ blog:

Only two American cities, Detroit and New Orleans, have a higher percentage of vacant houses than Buffalo.

Yes, we all know of at least one horror story about the city’s vacant houses, but few of us are aware of the magnitude of the problem.

Did you know, for example, that City Hall is now Buffalo’s biggest landowner, and there are streets on the East Side where the city owns more than half of the properties are vacant or abandoned?

Did you also know that a third of all city streets have at least one vacant and abandoned property?

And did you know that new data indicates the city’s vacant housing crisis is spreading to Black-Riverside and Buffalo’s first-ring suburbs.

It’s a problem of immense proportions and, in the words of Kathryn Foster, director of the University at Buffalo’s Regional Institute, may pose the single biggest challenge to Buffalo’s neighborhoods.

There is apparently a lot of desire to tear down these vacant eye-sores from the city, which is a good idea, if combined with the proper planning for future development — which according to the article, doesn’t exist.

There is too much demolition, critics say, and too little effort at saving and reusing one of the city’s best assets — its low-cost housing.

“There’s no plan,” said Catherine Schweitzer of the Baird Foundation, a Buffalo group that the city approached for money to help pay for the demolitions. “Their strategy is a demolition-only strategy. There’s no sense of what should be saved.”

Buffalo certainly has the potential for a lot of exciting new development or redevelopment. The Erie Canal Harbor Redevelopment Project is a good example. The city could use some new architecture to attract businesses. There’s a lot of desire to see the Skyway taken down and replaced… I’d love to see something new and more reasonable take its place. The new courthouse downtown should be a nice addition to the citiy’s architecture… but it’s not enough. How about a viable plan for mass transportation into the city? With gas prices the way they are, I’m sure the desire for alternatives to driving into the city is at a high. 

Buffalo needs some good short and long term city planning to assess the city’s potential and develop a strategy. Tearing down the vacant homes doesn’t fix the city’s problems in the long term. But I’m all for it if there’s a long term strategy involved.

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Buffalo’s premier liberal rag, Artvoice, asks the question, “Who shrank the Peace Bridge?” It’s a question we all know the answer to: environmentalists.

“In Melbourne Florida,” notes one of the letters, “a very tall bridge presented a fatal obstacle to bird flight, and studies from 1989 to 1992 found 11 Brown Pelicans, 84 Royal Terns, 2 Sandwich Terns and 2 Black Skimmers were hit and killed by vehicles on the Bridge. Undoubtedly birds hit the bridge as well, however these would not have been recoverable…The Common Terns, Double-crested Cormorants, Black-crowned Night Herons, and Great-Blue Herons could easily have the same problems with bridge height that the birds encountered with the bridge in Melbourne, Florida.”

But by their own admission there is no evidence at all of bridge height being an issue in Melbourne, Florida. All the dead birds, in that area with vastly more bird traffic than Buffalo, were road kill—birds that landed on the bridge and were walking around when a car or truck came along. That could happen with a bridge of any height, or just a road near a waterway. The letter speculated that birds killed by collision with the bridge fell into the water, so no one ever knew about them. How can the PBA possibly respond to that?

All of the reports refer to Menn’s bridge as 590 feet, as if it were 590 feet high from shore to shore. But it’s only 590 feet high at the top of the pylons. Between the pylons, it’s not much higher than the current bridge. Watch birds fly over any cable stay bridge: Some go over the pylons, some fly between them. If 590 feet is an issue (none of the birds mentioned is incapable of flying above 590 feet), why wouldn’t the birds fly between the pylons, as they do everywhere else? (If the 590-foot rule obtained, we wouldn’t have the Golden Gate Bridge, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge or George Washington Bridge, all of which are taller and are in busier bird routes.)

Spend an afternoon searching Google for reports of birds flying into the wires of cable-stay bridges and you’ll come up empty. When Hong Kong wanted to build a new bridge, they did a search of 1,500 bridge projects and found nothing. None of the dozens of cable-stay bridges built in the US in recent years have resulted in any significant bird homicides.

What amazes me is why it took the potential scrapping of Christian Menn’s design for so many people, particularly those on the left, to suddenly wake up to the fact that environmental concerns are sometimes hogwash.

So many have accepted global warming as fact, without giving any consideration to scientific evidence that either contradicts that global warming is occuring, or that while climate change is occuring that it is not caused by man. No, when it comes that issue, the environmentalists aren’t challenged as they have been with this Peace Bridge nonsense.

The challenging of the environmentalists over the Peace Bridge design should have people asking whether they’ve been duped by them before. True enough, environmentalists and their Democrat minions in Congress have prevented drilling in ANWR and the building of new refineries in the United States. The end result? Gas prices nearing $4.00/gallon. There’s no way to calculate what kind of negative impact alleged environmental concerns (especial ones that result in governmental regulations of all kinds) have on our economy.

If Artvoice can question the environmentalists assessment of the Menn Peace Bridge design, perhaps they (and others) can take the next step and start to question other potentially bogus claims they make.

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Christian Menn’s winning design for the new Peace Bridge appears to be doomed after environmentalists have conjured up fears of dangers to birds. The jury that selected the design back in 2005 is less than thrilled with the news.

“It’s ridiculous to think the Niagara River is the one river in all the world where birds would be befuddled by a cable-stayed bridge,” said Lawlor F. Quinlan III, a Buffalo lawyer.

“I’m so disappointed I could scream,” added Martha Bliss, another juror. “There are huge, tall bridges all over the world. I don’t know why it’s not possible in Buffalo.”

The potential risk to birds arose during the 32-member binational jury’s deliberations more than two years ago –but no expert or consultant warned them the proposed bridge’s height could be a deal-breaker, the jurors said.

Instead, consultants said steps could be taken to mitigate potential problems with migratory birds along the Niagara River corridor.

“We were told by the consultants and the Peace Bridge Authority that all the bridges that the jury reviewed could be built,” said Robert G. Shibley, a University at Buffalo professor of architecture and planning who served as cochairman of the jury.

Will environmentalists kill Menn’s bridge design for good? The concern over birds is ludicrous, and there’s no evidence that the concerns over dangers to birds is based on reality. Menn’s design is similar to an earlier bridge he designed: the Zakim Bridge in Boston, MA. As a former Boston resident, I can tell you that the bridge has yet to cause any bird fatalities. So, unless the birds in Boston are a significantly smarter than the the birds in Western New York, there really is no reason to scrap Menn’s design.

Despite the so-called environment concerns, Menn’s design has an ally in Senator Chuck Schumer:

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., has said he’s not willing to give up on the cable-stayed design.

“This signature bridge was far and away the consensus choice as it provided a stunning architectural monument to serve as the gateway between Canada and the United States,” Schumer said in a letter to the secretaries of interior and transportation. Others hope Schumer and the rest of Western New York’s c ongressional delegation will continue that fight.

“To our knowledge, the throwing out of Menn’s design based on birds is without precedent,” said Patrick McNichol, a spokesman for the New Millennium Group of Western New York, which has championed a new signature Peace Bridge since 1999.

“No evidence has been provided to support such a drastic change,” McNichol said.

The organization called the decision to abandon the cable-stayed design “unacceptable” and said it “undermines what little confidence the public had in the process.”

I have no idea what the ultimate fate of Menn’s design is, but I am sure the fight will go on for quite a while.

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