Ground level retail is required everywhere. We are looking forward to the Pritchard family, who are major hoteliers in Chicago, building three housing developments on this site, two major hotels and three office buildings along with very commodious open space. It is commodious in the sense that it’s compact and urban in quality and not suburban, with a wonderful tidal pool park along the harbor’s edge and a public marina in the cove that it surrounds.

The buildings are quite a bit lower, smaller, and less dense than the financial district buildings, but they are still at a density and a height that we feel is necessary to make it lively and interesting. I hope that as you think about your waterfront you consider active mixed-use development, but also give it some density. Make sure that there are people down there at all hours in the day and into the late evening and that it is part of the rest of the city.

Not all of the good examples are from Boston. Battery Park City in New York has a wonderful series of open spaces designed by some extremely capable landscape architects. In the summer you find all the people sitting along the water’s edge. In the wintertime there is a combination of city-like shapes, but also a lot of trees and big boulders and rocks. It is a very exciting concept for landscape design.

It is important to make sure there is activity on the waterfront, on the water as well as the land. Boston has a wonderful ensemble of tall ships. There are so many masts and all the rigging, so many ships, all compact together, wonderful and successful. The idea of having as many public events as you possibly can on your waterfront, large and small, is an important part of this whole waterfront revival effort. You need to draw attention towards your waterfront and to get people used to being down there and having a good time down there, sitting around outside, eating and enjoying themselves.

Seattle’s waterfront is absolutely packed with people. The wonderful aspect of Seattle’s waterfront is that it is a local working waterfront and simultaneously a public waterfront. People come down and there are places to buy fish, and sort of comingle with the maritime activities. It is very highly regarded.

Activity is also the key on Boston’s major shopping street downtown. At lunchtime, thousands of people in the sunlight are enjoying themselves in their short sleeves. At noontime it is packed to the gills. If you could see the doorknobs in that picture there would probably be fifty of them. It’s very vibrant and very busy. We certainly hope that our seaport one day looks exactly the same way.

Let me close with the ten principles for a successful downtown. These are general in nature. Allow each downtown to try and solve these problems and approach them in its own unique way. These are not in anyway meant to be specific beyond a kind of intent as a policy matter. The specifics are up to you, to figure out how to achieve these in your way, in Buffalo’s way, not anybody else’s way. The first one is largely a repeat of what I have been taking about.

1. Be wary of the novel, bold, sweeping vision, backed by large piles of money. The best cities will incrementally replicate familiar parts of themselves.

2. Identify attributes unique to your city and capitalize on them.

3. Promote and reward historic preservation.

4. Try to correct the past mistakes and embark on rehabilitation and new developments at the same time.

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