We are very excited about these prospects. But if we had been handed this project twenty years ago, I’m not sure we would have done it right. We’ve gained a whole new level of sophistication over the past twenty years. We’ve learned a lot of important lessons, and we’re much better off for it.

I’m not suggesting that Buffalo should copy Boston. But I think we can learn some things that are applicable from city to city. I’m suggesting that you should identify those special attributes Buffalo possesses – which are considerable – and work to preserve and repair them. This is a wonderful city. Like other cities, there have been some mistakes made, probably during that same time period. The question is: how do you patch up these mistakes? How do you repair them? How do you move on with your Canal project and other projects in a way that can complement a wonderful existing city, instead of trying radical new concepts that will, in all likelihood, not work?

Go with the tried and the true and the tested, being cautious and wary of the experimental. We expect that our first 300 acres of development will take about 30 or 40 years to complete. At that time, we will assess the status of the waterfront. If the waterfront is active, and if it is working and growing, we will stop at that point. If the stamina of waterfront activity, the shipping and manufacturing, has dwindled and jobs have declined, obviously we will consider expanding the city further.

In the last ten years, our financial district has miraculously, all by itself, and almost overnight, gone from being a single use area of offices empty at five o’clock to being a lively mixed use area. There are a bunch of small 19th century buildings down there that simply do not meet modern office needs and have been converted to boutique hotels. What those boutique hotels do is provide live, warm bodies there after five o’clock, which, in turn, produces the need for restaurants and taverns and some entertainment. So, all by itself without any push from the planning agency, or without any effort on our part, it’s starting to turn into a vibrant place and the trick is that there is more than a single use. I know that I am hammering on that a lot, but that’s really the key of my whole presentation today.

But we also hope to do this on purpose. One day soon we hope that the vast, vacant parking lots out toward the seaport will be filled with a vibrant, mixed-use neighborhood. There will be a spectacular new convention center with 600,000 square feet of exhibition space. But there will also be an extension of the existing small street grid from where the warehouse buildings are all the way to the water’s edge. The block sizes are small and familiar like Boston’s.

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