Here’s how I see it – yes, Buffalo has its problems.  But we’re not the only city that has problems.  We have great people, but we’re not the only city that has great people.  So what really distinguishes Buffalo?  What makes Buffalo Buffalo?  Location.  And History.  In one word – Place.  Our history is instantiated by the buildings we create and the monuments we construct.  Our location is defined not only by geography, but proximity to other population centers.

So what makes Buffalo Buffalo?  We’re located on one of the largest freshwater lakes in the country.  We’re on a heavily trafficked international border and a short enough distance from the largest city in Canada.  And because Buffalo was a major city in the early years of the United States, we have a lot of history and a lot of notable buildings that were created while that history was happening.  Our default action should be to save those buildings whenever possible.

Why?  These buildings are part of the city’s identity.  The more we lose, the less unique we become.  Buffalo needs every advantage it can get to regain it’s place as an burgeoning economic center, and having a strong identity is a major advantage.  Our social, commercial, and industrial heritage should be part of that, because it’s already here, and it is “For Real”.  We don’t need to fabricate an identity, we already have one.  We’re international, we have great natural resources, and we have history.  All we have to do is leverage what we have and build on it.

That’s not saying that there aren’t other problems that need to be fixed, or that preservation alone is going to save Buffalo.  But why not start there?  Historic rehabilitation creates coveted construction and highly skilled craftsman jobs.  Those are actual green jobs, because you’re not sending entire buildings to the landfill and replacing them with the disposable crap that many buildings are made from today.  And this type of preservation is tested, proven, quantifiable economic development.

What we need now is to convince our elected officials that this is the way of our future.  Preservation projects, especially the large-scale ones, require the cooperation of city, county, state, and federal representatives.  In our fractured political climate, this may be the biggest challenge, even moreso than finding the money to complete the projects.  Without their help in setting and dictating the vision, every new project is open for debate and petty bickering, and valuable time is lost.

In one conference session last week being given by a German man responsible for helping to establish Europe’s Industrial Heritage route, “People in Europe no longer question whether preservation is worthwhile, it’s already been proven and is accepted.  The demand to live in places with rich heritage sites exceeds the supply.”  We have the supply here in Buffalo and it’s our responsibility to not squander that.  In other places in the world, things like this are being built:

And the people there aren’t even laughing at the idea. They’re embracing it.  A lot of people came to town last week that see the potential that Buffalo has that a lot of people here refuse to acknowledge.  That’s a Place that they’d like to come back to, and a Place that we should be proud to call home.

One of the most frequently cited negatives of the Central Terminal project is that we’re located too far away from the downtown core. Yet with the Statler we have a historic building of the same age as the Terminal in the most prime location in the center of downtown. Yet, we have some people arguing it has a negative market value? That seems extraordinarily unlikely seeing that there were at least two bidders for it in the last auction, and the prior owner paid a couple million for it. There are hundreds of buildings in the city that you actually couldn’t give away which would fit the “worthless” moniker much better.

Of course, you have the people parroting for it’s demolition, but demolition is expensive for a structure like this. First, the building undoubtedly has asbestos that would need to be removed first. Asbestos removal is one of the costly items to deal with when rehabbing an old building. Second is the question of what do you replace a demolished building with? Buffalo isn’t in need of any more parking lots or shovel-ready sites. So if you don’t have a project waiting in the wings for this lot, and if you’re going to be stuck with an expensive taxpayer-funded demolition, what do you do? Exactly what is being done with the Statler – you seal it up and wait until the right developer comes along.

I think we can go one step better, actually. More needs to be done to preserve these key buildings that give Buffalo it’s unique feel and tie in it’s historical roots. Most business tax breaks are frequently criticized as being overly generous to a small number of companies, and many people are unsettled with the concept of handing over taxpayer dollars to businesses. The other “solution” has been instead to throw millions of dollars into brand-new development somewhere where there’s a clean slate, but that only distracts attention away from the problems at the city’s core.

Most people agree that infrastructure maintenance is a role of government. So, why not treat these buildings as infrastructure and take the money being thrown away for silver-bullet development and given away to companies that can afford to operate without the various tax breaks and subsidies and instead create a fund that will be directed towards preserving and preparing these key structures for the future? Focus on the areas that are expensive and problematic which deter the private developers – remove lead paint and asbestos, prevent water damage by sealing up roofs and windows, keep drains flowing and basements dry, and prevent scavengers from getting inside and stripping elements for scrap. Rather than letting the building sit dormant and slowly decay, make the investment to keep it usable for the future and more attractive to a developer who can focus on redeveloping it for current-day uses.

Everyone agrees that vacant, boarded up buildings have a negative impression on their area, so making sure there is a few of them as possible is an improvement to the entire community. A reinvestment plan like this makes the area more attractive to businesses, and will ultimately lower the cost of doing business by making buildings cheaper to rehab, thus lowering rent. It’s an investment in the city itself, which is what our tax dollars should be going towards.

It’s laughable to hear people say that the Statler it’s past it’s time. The Statler is nowhere near unsalvageable – it still had tenants in right up until it’s close. The Central Terminal has been largely vacant for 30 years. The Statler is a general-purpose building that can be easily adapted to a variety of purposes, unlike the Central Terminal’s purpose-built function which requires more imagination to adapt. And yes, the Statler is within spitting distance of the City Hall, not segregated a few miles away. I’ve read some comments from people saying a group like the CTRC should take over the Statler because we’ve done a commendable job with the Terminal, but volunteers are not what the Statler needs. If our group could get the Central Terminal back to the condition the Statler is in, that would be a success in itself. It’s the next phase of restoration that’s difficult and expensive and can’t be done simply by having dedicated people that love the project. Fixing the problems of the past to prepare for the future is where government can step in and do something tangible to help. Investing in your own property is something individuals and businesses alike can understand and regularly do, so we should be able to extend that philosophy to the public level.

Interestingly, the city of Long Beach owns the Queen Mary, and purchased it for $3.45 million – considerably more than it’s scrap value in 1967. It now leases it out to various entities, where it’s used for an amazingly diverse set of things – tours, a hotel, private banquets, shops, restaurants, night clubs, a multimedia “ghosts tour”, and even a spa. Needless to say, it was a very successful restoration project, even though much of the ship was reconfigured to accommodate it’s current day needs.

While it’s a much better concept than Tielman Park, again, what problems does it solve? It’s an incredibly inefficient way to get to the outer harbor by foot, and it doesn’t solve the biggest problem caused by the removal of traffic from the Skyway – how do you get all the vehicular traffic to and from the 190 and downtown?

What each of these concepts are is nothing more than a solution to a totally different problem. We don’t have an abandoned Skyway that’s too expensive to tear down, we have a functional road that some people want to shut down without providing an alternative.

Now, let’s think back to all the reasons that people bellow forth as to why the Skyway “needs” to come down:

1. It’s ugly
2. It’s expensive to maintain
3. It’s taking up valuable land
4. It’s blocking access to the outer harbor
5. It’s dangerous with all those high winds and blizzards and stuff

Now go back and look at the rendering and ask yourself what does “Skyway Park” solve for each of the problems listed above?

1. It has moss now. It’s green!
2. Two sections of road deck have been removed!
3. Look! Grass!
4. You can walk under it!
5. Ummm…

Surely the “community” will see through this farce and recognize that NONE of the issues have been solved, right? Let’s go to the comments and find out.

OMG this is amazing its too bad our politicians have no foresight.

this would be cool…..hopefully it will become a reality. anything is better than what we have now.

This is very clever. Probably not useful to keep as much of the Skyway structure as shown here in the rendering, but wouldn’t it be a neat 110-foot-high pedestrian bridge? What a wonderful place to bring an out of towner – there’d be no place like it in the world!

All of a sudden, keeping the Skyway is a brilliant idea… as long as it can’t be used to DRIVE on. Nevermind the fact that you still have to pay to maintain it, high winds won’t blow a car off but they might blow a person off, and it is still taking up just as much space as it was before.

I don’t blame Tim, though. He’s just a preservationist, and this is a way to preserve the Skyway. The real beauty of this proposal is that it opens the door to keeping the Skyway for both driving AND pedestrian uses. If adding some hanging plants to the Skyway beautifies it, fantastic. Go for it. If people are in love with the scenic vista (which really is nice) then let’s hang a pedestrian walkway off the lake side of the Skyway. Put up a barrier between the traffic and the pedestrians to cut down on the noise, and voila! Scenic pedestrian bridge to the outer harbor! I might suggest an escalator or something though to haul our chicken wing-laden asses up to the top of that thing. Or maybe if there was just a way to drive up there…

Here are the photos.

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The inclement weather setup they used this year certainly made it a bit more difficult to navigate. All the food vendors were stuffed under tents, as were all the people trying to get wings from those vendors. That made us avoid some of the more popular stands like WingStop which just had insane lines and you couldn’t get close enough to see what their choices were. Luckily most of the time it wasn’t raining, so we’d duck into a tent, grab some wings, and then run back outside to avoid the mob. The upside to this is that it appeared that the festival was very well attended, although it could have just been the compaction making it seem that way.

One other point of contention – the ticket booths were set up completely bizzare. This was the first year where they were selling both food and admission tickets at the entrance, although you couldn’t get both from the same person. They didn’t require you to wait in line twice, but it just seemed clumsy because after you got your admission tickets you stepped to your side to get food tickets, but had to wait for people already getting food tickets. It was all being fed by one big line, but you still felt like you were cutting in front of people. Not to mention some lazy volunteers at one booth with some misleading signage sat there and watched the line get longer and longer and never bothered to say “We can help who’s next.” We must have been in line for 10 minutes before someone just walked up to them to see if they were also selling tickets (they were) which then caused a stampede from the back of the line to that booth. One more person to wrangle the people into different lines would have helped a lot.

On to the wings… my favorites this year were:

#3) Imperial Pizza – These guys know how to do BBQ wings. Both their traditional BBQ and their Surry BBQ (spicy!) are excellent. I remember after last year saying, “Wow! Wings so good and so close to home (they’re on Abbott Rd). We have to go there sometime!” We never did. We won’t make that mistake again this year.

#2) Fiddle Inn – These newcomers from Harborcreek, PA had two types of wings that actually got me to come back a second time – their Pepper Jack wings, which were based on a blend of a Jack Daniels sauce with a strong pepper kick we’re excellent. TGI Friday’s has nothing on this sauce. They also have something called an Everything Wing, which despite my best efforts to analyze, I couldn’t place all the flavors. There was definitely a blend of a traditional wing sauce and some finely chopped garlic, but beyond that, all I can say is that it’s the wing’s culinary equivalent to a Kitchen Sink pizza from Santora’s. Excellent! As an added bonus, the Fiddle Inn itself is housed in a circa 1800 stagecoach stop. Outstanding wings and adaptive reuse to boot!

#1) Wahoo Willies – While I certainly wouldn’t advocate anyone leaving Buffalo to go to North Carolina for wings, if you happen to be in the area this place is worth the stop. They took a slightly different approach with their wings, cooking all of them in a blend of caribbean jerk seasonings, and then letting you try dipping them in their various sauces, which were conveniently for sale. The best part about these wings were that the jerk seasoning itself without any of the sauces was better than a lot of the wings we tried. Topping them off with a bit of their Caribbean Ranch dressing made it that much better. You can order the sauce on their website, so we may need to attempt to recreate these at home. Outstanding!

Financial recap:
$4 Parking
$10 Admission (for 2)
$20 Food Tickets
$8 Drinks (1 Pepsi, 1 Budweiser)
——————————-
$42 Grand Total

Not bad for an afternoon of food and fun. I overheard one great exchange between two 20-something guys as the rain started to fall:

“More rain? Buffalo sucks!”
“No, rain sucks. Buffalo rocks!”

That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Although it could have been one of the spicier wings too, I suppose.

Update: Looks like the festival also agreed with some of my picks:

Best Hot Traditional Wing Sauce, Fiddle Inn, Harbor Creek, Pa.
Most Creative Sweet Wing Sauce, Wahoo Willie’s of Wilmington, N.C.

Dear Derek,

Thank you for your interest in the Marine Star Project. We do have the option from the vessel owner, to market the ship, purchase the ship, and versee its restoration. The ultimate goal is the University at Sea School Project. We have not yet reached agreement, with any schools to oversee or to be the funnel for accreditation of the administartive portion of the program.

At this point all we are looking for is a University that is accredited that will say “Yes to sanctioning and marketing a University at Sea Program aboard the Marine Star.” Money to restore the Marine Star is not the issue. If we can secure a University Agreement, we are certain that the bond financing will be an easy step to restore the ship. We have the full and complete support of the owners in this endeavor. This has never before happened in the last 20 years.

With the vessel looking unsightly, it is hard to market the vision, and yet it is structurally sound. This is a ship that has not even found its purpose

We are looking at an interim plan to secure a Ferry Agreement for Marine Star for a line across Lake Erie or Lake Michigan. The primary pupose being to have an economically viable reason for its restoration, and then in Phase II, in the off season implment the Seas School Project. We are in discussions with four different cities at this time in this regard.

In our view, any person that has ever seen this ship sail would tell you it is the grandest thing the Great Lakes has ever experienced. A tremendous ship that was 50 years ahead of its time.

Thank you for your support, and feel free to write anytime,

We may need your concurrence, if we start moving the ship towards federal grants. The United States should not lose this ship. IT is a rarity. We only have a short time to bring a project to the table, otherwise we could lose it.

God Bless,

Larry Lallo

Their plan sounds pretty solid to me. I don’t know the difficulties involved in gaining accreditation, but it can’t be much more difficult than trying to raise the money needed to actually do the restoration, and they don’t sound very concerned about that.

I wish the project the best of luck, because it’s a win for everyone – a win for Buffalo to have one more blight removed from the waterfront, a win for the ship as it gets to continue to serve it’s purpose and not be destined for a scrap yard, a win for all the people who have sailed on it in the past who’s memories of the ship won’t end with a vision of a rusting hull, and a win for all the future occupants who get to build off that history and add their own experiences to it.

Afterwards, I was searching around the internet for some history on the ship, and ran across something I hadn’t heard about before. There’s a new group that’s looking to restore the ship and turn it into a floating mission and university.

The Project purpose is firstly to restore the ship Marine Star. And secondly, to convert the Marine Star into an active Mission University at Sea Campus. Imagine a 520 foot 60 year old ship that has only been in use for less than ten years of its history, with its hull preserved in fresh water. This is a ship searching for its destiny.

The Marine Star SEAS School Project has two phases. The first Phase of the Project is dedicated to the preservation and adaptive retrofitting of the WWII era Ship known as the Marine Star, and also known as the Aquarama, during her service on the Great Lakes from 1956 to 1962.

The second Phase of the project will be the establishment of the University at Sea campus and curriculum. That is to carry passengers and carry cargo. These passengers however would not be soldiers or vacationers, but they would be students of all ages enrolled in a Christian Faith based on board accredited school, studying to obtain college credits. The ship when in port, would serve as an active outreach station for the students to apply what they have learned in their classes, in real life sustainable education ways. Even teaching others what you have learned. For example, nursing students would do nursing humanitarian outreaches. Computer students would train others how to do what they have learned and complete selected projects for local schools or businesses. Hydrology students could work with a missionary team to dig wells for those that may have to walk a mile to obtain potable water.

Wow. That’s a big task, but it seems that they have done quite a bit of planning and at least some hunting for funding. Their blog hasn’t had any updates since March, but it seems that there are other similar successful projects that have already been realized. It would certainly be a better option than scrapping it, or letting it sit there continuing to rust.

Incidentally, those silos that sit next to the Marine Star seem to be in pretty good shape, should someone want to turn them into a waterfront attraction of some sort. Think of the awesome waterslides you could have coming out of the top of that thing!

The fact is, one of the few bright spots in Buffalo’s economy has been the power of the city’s high quality historic architecture and a recent wave of restorations to stimulate growth. Buffalo’s historic Allentown, Elmwood Village, and several north Buffalo neighborhoods have leveraged the power of their unique architecture and urbanism to fuel major renewal in the city. Much of downtown’s new residential growth is taking place in historic loft buildings that were recently slated to be demolished for a now tabled convention center. This renewal has even started to attract developers who plan new buildings. Almost every major renovation in Buffalo has met with indignation by those who would claim that it was a waste of money, not feasible, and not worth the effort. Yet time after time these projects have proven successful while those cherished shovel ready sites languish in their emptiness.

I hope that the shovel-ready trend is finally over and the city “leadership” recognizes that Buffalo’s niche in the incredibly expensive New York State is it’s heritage. Of course we want to attract businesses and need economic development for this area to survive, but to do that Buffalo needs to leverage every advantage it has. Nice people and cheap housing aren’t enough.

Quarry Market is a beautiful new shopping center built on the former site of the Alamo Cement company. They kept a lot of the original elements of the industrial site and built their theme around that. Contaminated buildings were razed, in some cases a replica was built in it’s place.

The smokestacks are a beacon to this place that are clearly seen from several area highways. While actual preservation would probably be considered “light” by most historical preservationists, I think this illustrates that you can preserve some history of a site while still making it a useful, functional, and revenue-generating addition to the city. Leveraging the history of the site gives it a unique draw and an experience that truly can’t be duplicated.

From the Hunt & Joiner Design Awards site…

http://www.h-jinc.com/awards.html

For almost two decades, a landmark 41-acre industrial site adjacent to the affluent Alamo Heights neighborhood in San Antonio sat vacant and deteriorating. The site was the former home of the Alamo Cement Company, which abandoned the plant after nearly seventy years of operation. The unsightly cement plant has now been adaptively renovated into a new 520,000 square feet upscale retail and entertainment complex.

The signature elements of the historic cement plant include five 200 feet tall concrete smokestacks that ranged from 40 to 74 years old, a 600 feet long by 90 feet tall clinker shed building that was built in phases in 1923, 1927, and 1973, the original rock crusher building which was also constructed in the 1920′s. The three north stacks, which were built in 1923, were significantly distressed and have been completely restored, using an innovative epoxy fiberwrap repair system. Four of the five smokestacks have been incorporated into the façade of a new 34,200 square feet retail building. The original single story clinker shed building has been transformed into a new four story flagship building containing approximately 171,000 square feet, including a new book superstore, a health and fitness club and a state-of-the-art sixteen screen cinema multiplex with elevated stadium seating in all auditoriums. The rock crusher building has been renovated and expanded into a new 6,500 square feet theme restaurant. The original power generator building, which had to be razed due to environmental contamination, has been replicated using brick covered concrete tilt panels that extend to 55 feet in height. These buildings are surrounded by seven new conventional retail buildings containing approximately 320, 000 square feet all designed with a neo-industrial architectural theme.

Historical photos of the smokestacks…

The Canyon Cafe (Highly recommended!)

This original machinery is above the refreshments stand in the cinema.

Historical photos of the machine…

Successes such as these are why preservationists believe what they do. They illustrate that it is possible to revitalize old industrial wastelands. That it is possible to just sit on a site until the right development opporunity arrives (the Alamo Cement site sat unused for 20 years). Not all preservationists are just obstructionists. They’re some of the few people with vision that truly care about the success of an area.