![The Urban Design Project : Queen City Hub Plan [header images/logo]](../../images/headerHub.jpg)
5. A Regional Framework for Planning and Action
The History of the Plan
The Queen City Hub: A Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo is the product of nearly a decade of continuing and conscientious visioning, action, and accountability. The process began on October 22, 1994, when more than 300 people gathered in the new studios of WNED-TV to outline their vision of the future for Downtown Buffalo. Citizens focused on topics of living, working, meeting, feeling safe, shopping, learning, accessing, and having fun in Downtown. That public conversation laid the groundwork for the evolving community consensus about the vision and priorities for Downtown and for action over the ensuing decade.
After that day, there were five more summits over eight years to refine the vision, set priorities, and review progress on implementation. A second summit held in March 1996 focused on the details of housing and security, as well as on a critique of the vision work up until then. A third summit, held that same fall, refined the vision and focused on more details of Downtown improvement. These community discussions, augmented by focus groups, interviews, public hearings, and plan reviews by experts all helped to forge a consensus on the current plan and continued action Downtown.
Achieving the vision, however, required a clear and disciplined public approach to plan implementation. On September 14, 1999 Mayor Anthony M. Masiello unveiled a consolidated Strategic Plan for Downtown Buffalo. Emphasizing the theme of Downtown as a good place to work, live and play, the plan presented a tentative vision of the future and offered a preliminary action plan to achieve that vision. Close on the heels of the release of the Downtown Strategic Plan, the Mayor also announced a new initiative to get the plan done.
Downtown Buffalo 2002! was a working partnership of the City of Buffalo, Buffalo Place Inc., and the Urban Design Project of the School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo. They were charged with the task of reviewing the plan, seeking public priorities for immediate action, shepherding those priority projects to completion and preparing The Queen City Hub. These partners managed an Implementation Council representing 18 public and private implementing agencies working together to solve problems and hold one another accountable. Of the fifteen priority projects in the Downtown Buffalo 2002! implementation portfolio, twelve are done, and two more are headed toward completion in the next few years. One has been overtaken by events.
The Downtown plan implementation process continues to combine collaborative problem solving and accountability with broad public communication and consultation. Two more televised citywide summits were held, one in December of 1999 to seek consensus and establish priorities for the 1999 draft Strategic Plan and another in April 2002 seeking final public comment on the revised Queen City Hub. More than 7,000 Downtown citizens received regular newsletters. The public reads progress reports in the local press. And 57 presentations of the plan and work in progress were made to community and business groups. The project web site continues to be active and commentary on its contents is brisk.
The implementation process will continue under the guidance of the Director of the City of Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning. A powerful constituency with strong habits of collaboration and accountability remains to help carry the process forward with established approaches to plan implementation that have been tested and proven successful.
ROBERT G. SHIBLEY, AIA, AICP
Director, Downtown Buffalo 2002!
