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Buffalo Waterfront Corridor Initiative

Executive Summary

The Queen City Waterfront plan is based on a clear and simple vision that Buffalo, once a waterfront city, will be a waterfront city once again. As a community, Buffalo is committed to making its waterfronts more accessible and environmentally healthy, to reconnecting neighborhoods to our waterfronts and getting best possible economic use from them, and to improving the efficiency of our waterfront transportation corridor and making sure it serves all our other goals.

This plan is based on a great legacy of over 120 plans on over eighty sites, all aimed at achieving the great potential of our waterfronts. It incorporates detailed analytical and creative effort, the work of thousands of citizens active in planning, and dozens and dozens of durable proposals for action to improve our waterfronts developed over the past thirty years. The vision is grounded in a methodical assessment of three important bodies of work: what we have done; plans we have made; and policies we have set.

For the first time in three decades, community aspirations for healthier, more prosperous and more accessible waterfronts are supported by a draft Comprehensive Plan for Buffalo, Queen City in the 21st Century, in its final stages of review and approval. Even more importantly, they are supported by a proposed City of Buffalo Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (Volume 3), also underfinal review. The foundation for the City of Buffalo Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (LWRP) was established, in part, by the inventory of projects (analyzed in Volume 2) influencing the strategic plan for transportation improvements, as well as by the comprehensive engagement of citizens, agencies, and other stakeholders. The robust legal framework of the LWRP can carry the hopes and dreams of Buffalonians for the transformation of its waterfront lands in concert with the transportation infrastructure. The NYSDOT Buffalo Corridor Management Plan, known as the Queen City Waterfront was developed with the LWRP as a complementary implementation guide reinforcing the LWRP policies. It contains an enumeration of the projects both from our legacy of plans and out of current work that can help us move toward achieving our shared waterfront vision. The projects are organized by four categories: recent achievements, emerging projects, projects that need a push, and longer term visions. The vision for the waterfront is embodied in the full range of projects.

This report also contains more detailed work on key nodes not already strongly addressed in current planning reports. Proposals for the improvement of our International Gateway Neighborhood Improvement Program (Volume 4) were developed, addressing both interim infrastructure and neighborhood improvements as well as presenting the long range vision for this important international gateway. Volume 5 includes a description and analysis of four other sites: Erie Street and Porter Avenue as primary nodes also have accompanying design guidelines, and the Virginia/Carolina/Niagara intersection and the Niagara Street/Scajaquada area as secondary nodes. Expanded Project Proposals volumes were developed for the primary nodes.

The Expanded Project Proposal volumes offer alternatives to establish Erie Street (Volume 6) as a primary physical and visual connection between downtown and the waterfront and to transform Porter Avenue (Volume 7) as part of the Olmsted Park and Parkway system from Niagara Street down to the water’s edge. The Erie Street reclamation is seen as a part of the “Great Streets” program of the Queen City Hub: A Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo, which was published in 2004 as part of the program of work implementing the city’s comprehensive plan.

To read the rest of this and the other volumes please follow the following links to the report volumes. All documents are in Adobe Reader (PDF) format.