The common ground I see in entering this Canal Conversation is that there’s agreement on a number of things. There’s an agreement about invigorating downtown. There is a commitment to the community. There’s an agreement that the Canal and the Canal story is important and that this whole project is part of larger place-making goals and there’s an agreement — and I think that this goes way, way back in time to when people first started looking at opportunities for this parcel, and I have been fortunate to be among those groups examining alternatives for the Inner Harbor over the last five or six years — to have a legitimate process at arriving at the decisions.

So, what’s the real debate? Essentially, we found the Canal… now what? What level of authenticity does the significance of finding the Canal, the structure itself and the stories that are associated with it, demand and require of us as responsible people who are committed to honoring our past at the same time moving forward to the future? And, that begs the question — and this is the key one — what degree of context is necessary to do that story justice? Because it’s an enormous spectrum. If you want to think about that spectrum as a range, what’s the low end? Well, the low end is probably throwing up a plaque. Throwing up a plaque that says, here’s the Canal slip. Here’s a map. Here’s how it fits into the city. Thanks a lot. See you later. Bye. (laughter)

Then you’ve got the whole other end of things where it’s: let’s make the Canal a centerpiece of an entire environment that honors the Canal and its role in Buffalo history. Maybe it has a living history component. Maybe you’ll be making future people climb the rigging. But, it is some sort of very large facility that makes a statement that this is the most important thing about this area of our community and it’s going to be the thing that drives all the other decisions about our built environment.

But then in the middle, there’s a whole other range of opportunities and potential solutions. And, they don’t rule each other out. You can choose to alight on a part of this spectrum and move forward or backward later, to a certain extent, although not completely. And the mid-range is some kind of interpretive center.

But in turn, if once you choose that point of view, then you’ve got to think through things like, what aspect of the Canal story are we telling? Are we telling the story of the technology? Are we telling the story of the people? Are we telling the story about the place? All of those stories? In order to provide the context for the visitors to appreciate the Commercial Slip and the Canal, do we have to tell those stories right here next to it? Like you would with a plaque or like you would with an immersive environment? Or, can we do it somewhere else or will the visitors not get the connection?

By visitors I’m speaking broadly in this case. We want Greater Buffalo residents to be sure that they appreciate the heritage of their area too. So, it’s a very broad question about providing enough context for people to get what the significance is of what now looks to an uneducated eye like a hole in the ground with a bunch of rocks in it. We all know it’s much more than that, but how can we make sure everybody always knows it’s much more than that?

Then there are the people who are focusing on the fact that this is a critical waterfront site for Buffalo. Well, what makes a good waterfront project? People bring up places like Baltimore or they bring up places like Chicago or San Francisco, and what’s going on in those waterfronts is that they have a number of things in common.

There is a lot of activity at the point at which the water meets the land, whether it’s piers or whether it’s a shoreline — there’s a lot going on. It’s reliable that there’s going to be people and activity there. There’s activity on the waterside as well as on the landside. You can see things come and go. You don’t know necessarily what you will see, but you can guarantee that there’ll be something happening. There’ll be boats going by or there’ll be somebody rigging a sailboat or there’ll be fishermen bringing in their catch, depending on the location.

What you wind up having on a successful waterfront is a place that derives its identity from the things that happen on the waterside as well as the things that happen on the landside. That’s how it becomes a destination. You don’t necessarily know what it’s going to be when you get there, but something that’s kind of fun and visually interesting is going on.

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