Buffalo Rising Online

ANY WORD ON THE PROPOSED MIXED USE PROJECT FOR THE KFC SITE ON ELMWOOD???

Uh.

This is about the Medical Campus; I think the KFC on Elmwood is slightly outside that area.

Awesome! This is gonna be great (assuming law makers dont get involved)

...and obstructionists...i believe there are some lawyers somewhere licking their chops as we type!

This is bigger news than Bass Pro or other schemes. This is the future of Buffalo right here.

This is great news! I am glad that they found a quick use for the shovel-ready lots that so many people complain about.

It is good to see this area growing, let's hope it continues to spread.

Sally- full credit was given plus a link! Thanks!

the details.

This is great news. I hope it works out.

Is this good news, or shuffling of the cards?

800,000 sq ft of new space here. 700,000 sq ft closing at Gates Circle. Many services/jobs are simply moving.

I am a big fan of the Medical Corridor. I think the consolidation is great, I think the density is great, and I think a Global Vascular Institute makes us competitive. But I think a related question, which doesn't get asked much, is what happens at Gates Circle.

lololololol no shit. but---it was part of this planning board meeting, dumbass.

Gates Circle has a lot of redevelopment potential. If/when the hospital moves out of there, I don't see it taking very long before residential is built or redeveloped. Has anyone seen the view from there down Chapin? It is pretty stunning.

Prodigal, this is fantastic news because these developments are going to be much more than just Gate in the Medical Campus the biggest and most important thing in the article is UB.. This is going to bring UB's students, faculty and staff back into the city center. It will open up space for expansion of the graduate schools on south campus and hopefully help to enliven all the Main Street in the process. Having UB at the table as a major player, for the first time in my lifetime, is HUGE for downtown and the city.. and therefore the region.

Thanks for the one star - just trying to ask a question.

sbrof - I agree with everything you said. And UB is a huge piece of this. In the end, I think moving Gates services to the Medical Campus, plus the med school, plus research = more than the sum of its parts.

Maybe I've been back in Buffalo too long - I think not just about the new build, but the space that is being vacated. In Buffalo, there is no such thing as purely good news. I wish I was optimistic about the Gates reuse potential - space that size in likewise desirable areas has sat vacant too long. I don't want to be pessimistic, I just want to hear more about the plans. If anyone (i.e. WCP) knows them.

I doubt this is going to happen... very very doubtful given the current economic climate right now...another great idea that will never materialize..if they were going to do something why dont they fix up the current hospital buildings??

becuase fixing up millard filmore defeats the purpose of trying to move the hospitals together. The economy doenst play as big a role in the field of medicine as it does in other fields. There will ALWAYS be money available for hospitals to function and develop. People dont stop going to the hospital so they can afford a vacation to las vegas and insurance companies arent going broke anytime soon thats for sure

awesome news, let's get this moving asap.

Preservationists are have already filed suit against proposal stating buildings are too high

Interesting. I wonder how much of this business will be Canadians crossing the border for faster medical care (no offense intended, Canadian readers).

Keith- I worked in Niagara Falls for 10 years and many of my coworkers were Canadian. They complained about their health care system just like we do but none would trade it for ours.

Well, this is going to have a big impact on the wedge district. That slice of pie sandwiched in between Michigan and Main. I would look for the resulting impact to start on Linwood and Main and then filter to the other side of Main up to Michigan. Particularly in the area of infill housing. Good news for St Vincents.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE GATE CIRCLE CONDOS? I DONT SEE THEM GETTING BUILT AFTER ALL THAT BULL WE WENT THRU HOLDING IT UP.

660,000 sqft of Millard Fillmore Gates Circle could easily follow the Dulski in getting reskinned for residential and a badly needed hotel serving Buffalo State, Elmwood culturals and Canisius. I just think it has to much potential for college dormatories.

Positive impact...that long struggling district between Main and Delaware on the other side of the hospital.

ANOTHER PIECE OF NEWS IS THE PALLADINO WON THE LAWSUIT AND WILL PROCEED WITH THE COURT STREET TOWER (ALBEIT 8 STORIES INSTEAD OF 11).

Mixed impact....UB may be moving more facilities from the South Campus to downtown. I say mixed because the South Campus has been land locked for quite some time and this relocation could open the possibility to entirely new buildings and programs for the south campus now that there is room. Quite possibly in the growing school of pharmacological sciences.

It may be a reshuffling but its a very powerful reshuffling. Residential, Hotel, and other facilities serving Canisius and Buffalo State would allow the continued growth of that communities engines of growth....plus by sharing resources it might get the two colleges talking more on aditional shared resources.

More growth downtown and the life sciences campus

This really emphasizes that the Kensington Expressway should end at Jefferson/Best distributing traffic onto the urban grid...but continuing into Elm-Oak as a Parkway instead of an expressway.

This would really help all the streets and neighborhoods west of the Kensington, especially those between say Utica and Broadway

This medical complex may become very powerful in the future when we finally offer universal medical care to all Americans, just like other civilized societies do.

I think the city needs to step in and secure the neighborhoods surrounding the medical complex. We need additional policing and improvements to the streets. The city should secure funding to restore houses and buildings in the four - five blocks surrounding the complex for the residents in the area. We could restore the fruit belt for employees of the new medical complex.

I think that the St. Vincent's orphanage could be turned into dorms for Hospital employees and medical students. Not traditional dorms, but as professional apartments that are paid for by the medical complex.

Wonderful news!!! Strengthened UB presence (if I remember correctly, UB's Urban Planning Dept. is committed to downtown also). Can tie in to the Genesee residential plans of Cityview, and others, to start the stabilization of the East Side. Based on the current development, it would be nice to know the job creation to date and the projected job growth. I hope some developers are considering moderately priced URBAN HOME ownership not suburban tracts. Downtown will stabilize with ownership, not rentals. Supporting businesses, and more jobs, will follow.

Amen, with this news...get Childrens Hospital off Elmwood.....

Yes, Yes! Here, Here! We need to move the Women's and Children's hospital to the medical corridor and leave an emergency facility and community health center near Elmwood.

More pork and corporate welfare.

When will they ever learn?

Kaleida is broke. Who is giving or lending them money? (I mean, it's the taxpayer, somehow.)

Ciminelli--total political donations--

$222,425.63 (state only)

"hope that UB can act quick"

It's a bureaucracy; they are slow by their very nature.

This project makes no sense. We had "too many hospitals" so we needed to close some. Now, we are building more hospital buildings.

Please explain.

Anyone hear the news on Issa? At least we know this stuff will get done while Issa can't even be found and is rumored to be back with his fam in Jordan. Its good to see projects by companies with track records go up rather than one hit wonders.

As a current medical student at UB and supporter of Buffalo, I can't tell you how great this would be for the university, hospital system, and region. Like the above readers have mentioned this will allow for the compilation of research, patient care, and education all at one site, which has always been lacking in buffalo's current medical education program. The UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences is one of a few medical schools in the country that does not have its teaching facilities within its university hospital. In fact, UB does not run its own university hospital, instead we use all the local hospitals including ECMC, Kaleida, and the Catholic health care system (the university loses about 50 million dollars a year in state aid because of this). Although it is great we can use all of these hospitals, it would be truly amazing if the medical school was central to all of the potential development at the downtown site. It's funny we call Roswell Park, BGH, as well as the other buildings around those sites (especially the bioinformatics and hauptman-woodward) the "Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus" however, there is no medical school at this campus. By putting the medical school downtown, it would add a great deal to UB's medical school program and would attract more world class physicians to the region while most likely strengthening our existing residency training programs. This goes hand in hand with UB's 20/20 campus-wide expansion program. I truly hope these ideas can come to fruition because their impact on local healthcare would be absolutely huge. One other thing is that the American Medical Association is requiring American medical schools to increase their enrollments by upwards of 20% because of concern of physician shortages by 2020. If UB were to prescribe to this there is no doubt larger facilities are needed. Currently, each class has about 140 students. There is just enough space at the south campus to accommodate this number. The goal is to get each graduating class up to around 180 students. This is another reason new facilities or upgrades are needed. Why not go back to UB's roots and put the medical school where it began, downtown?

BuffFan08, Im not disagreeing with you....but moving so much out of the South Campus to downtown is going to kill the South Campus and the University District.

My only thought is to take 1 or 2 or 3 of the viable UB Research and turn it into another Center for Excellence and/or turn 1 or 2 or 3 of its existing centers and advance them into a Center for Excellence (which may or may not involve research).

The South Campus could then keep Dentistry and Pharmacology but perhaps expand into centers for:

-Center for Global Enterprise Management into a Center for Excellence encompassing international trade, logistics, suuply chain management, etc etc

-use UB research into nano materials and nano structures along with Buffalo States basic research in basic materials into a combined Center of Excellence for Material Science & Nanotechnology. This would be a wonderful local addition considering how many local companies are involved some way in materials, chemicals, metals, gases, ceramics, etc.

-or start something entirely new like a Center for Excellence in Energy production, distribution and management. This would be wonderful now that Globe Metallurgy is giving our region a major presence in Silicon for Solar panels, plus we have wind, coal, hydro, geothermal (heat pumps), gas, oil, ethanol, wood, and biodiesel to name a few.

(Combine the two and we could attract research and manufacturing for super-conductor technology for wires and motors and generators, etc)

-another thing we could create entirely new would be to leverage Buffalos international super high speed network access which gives UB its supercomputers for say a Center for Excellence in Networking, Communication, Ecommerce, etc.

MY POINT IS SIMPLE....IF SO MUCH OF THE SOUTH CAMPUS IS TO MOVE DOWNTOWN....THEN UB NEEDS TO EXPAND THE GROWTH OF THE SOUTH CAMPUS INTO A NEAR COMPLETE RE-THINK.

Chris69...why the name change? buffaloweiner?

hahahaha sleepl8

The South Campus must be completely rethought as the medical school moves out.

The sooner this dialogue happens the better.

The sooner other growing areas of UB are untethered and replanted in the South Campus...the less destructive the change will be....to the university district

Another point needs to be brought up add nauseum...and that is....it was a viable possibility to run a shuttle between the North Campus in Amherst and the South Campus. However, it makes no sense to run a shuttle from Amherst to downtown and it makes no sense to run a shuttle to south campus then have people transfer to the light rail to go downtown.

As the South Campus relocates downtown....it becomes ever more of an imperative for light rail to extend to the Amherst Campus

Weiner,

South Campus isn't moving downtown. Some of the medical facilities are. The university is growing in general and a few of the programs are slated to move from North to South. The pharmacy program for one is moving into Acheson once that rehab is done.

I understand your concern however for not leaving the campus half vacant. Last year, UB even ran a shuttle from South Campus to the Medical Campus, do they not understand what the rail is for? Oh wait, UB students dont get free NFTA passes like all of the other schools do. What a missed opportunity.

TranspoGuy is right. I don't think anyone official has ever hinted that UB is even considering moving the whole med school away from its South Campus. It could make sense to have *some* med school space near Buffalo Gen, Roswell, and the proposed heart disease center. As BuffFan said, this could be part of med school future expansion. But it's a huge leap to stretch that into spending a lot of money and effort to relocate the whole thing and abandon the current med school site. Some commenters here are imagining things if they think that's being planned.

Off topic but since there won't be a BR article about it, here's a link to today's Bashar Issa news that Sally and Steve mentioned above:

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/08/18/daily19.html

Weiner man, I think you may have the wrong idea about the effects to the south campus. Conversely, the south campus would probably be better off without the medical school within its complex of buildings for the following reasons. The only necessities of the medical school are two lecture halls, a computer lab, several anatomy/pathology and histology laboratories, and some other miscellaneous rooms. This is by no means that much space that is used within the south campus buildings for actual medical school needs. Most of the space is occupied by phd faculty that perform their research as well as other health sciences programs at UB. I am quite confident that the university would love to free up some some of the congestion created at south campus as there will be need to be some changes as UB plans to add 10,000 more students in the next 10 years to its 3 hybrid campuses. I am sure many of the research faculty would remain at the south campus, however, its better for the medical school to move where there is patients and not solely test tubes. Although this might sound like it goes against the idea of having "research" at the medical center downtown, plenty of medical research occurs at the BNMC especially with Roswell Park, Hauptman, the Bioinformatics building, etc. Buffalo has a significant opportunity to become a major player in regional and national medicine practices with the current consolidation of resources that is now occuring. I hear every day how patients choose to go to the Cleveland Clinic or to the Pittsburgh medical system. If Buffalo were to really focus on the BNMC by improving and updating the facilities there while adding the medical school within its borders, we will become very much more competitive in securing top physicians and most importantly improving patient outcomes and satisfaction. The south campus would not be affected, and it will probably be better off as there will be more classroom space for other programs at UB to grow in alignment with the UB 20/20 program.

Chris / Weiner - I am confident that UB has their act together on facilities planning. They typically do not make major moves without careful consideration and alignment with their master plan.

It is good that they are moving more facilities Downtown and reinvesting in the South Campus. It gives me hope for University Heights and the surrounding areas in Kenmore, Tonawanda, and Amherst. UB is a major employer in the region, and these additional jobs are going to help our economy, let's support them in their quest to expand their medical sciences program.

I too am very confident UB will grow and become an even more integral part of our future. They are determined and behind this plan and a 3% or 7% cut are not going to stop them.

If you follow the master planning stuff from the website one of the proposals on the table, and the one most supported by the medical disciplines, does indeed show that all medical schools would move to downtown... eventually.

the south campus would become the graduate school for UB and North or build and reinforce the Undergraduate \ Engineering school base that is is today.

It can all be seen at UB 2020

I have read parts of the UB 2020 plan and I agree that there is alot of thought in it.

There is nothing that I have said that opposes relocating programs from the South Campus downtown.

My only point was that it places a significant opportunity (to which very little is being discussed) about what areas of UB can speed up their growth to fill the space that is being vacated on the South Campus...and nearly all of my ideas involved rapid expansion of UBs Business and Technology programs.

Then belatedly it became obvious to me that with the rapid growth downtown, the light rail extension to amherst becomes even more integral to UB's overall growth. They just cannot built a long term future with 3 campus and a rickety shuttle bus.

I support it....but I dont think that I am the only one that seeks balanced discussion for impacts upon the University District and North Campus as facilities and programs move downtown.

(I dont think the school of medicine is the only one contemplating a move...as I hear the School of Law and the School of Architecture along with some consideration for the various School of Arts (Art, Music, Theater, etc)).

Perhaps I just tend to see a bigger picture...and ask questions about details others havent considered.

I have talked with a couple of the deans of different medical schools and they can't wait to get downtown. It would finally start to give them the teaching \ practice setting that many of UB's rival schools are creating or already have. The VA was supposed to be that but politically it never panned out for some reason.

Law has been vocal about moving downtown... at least the students have been, but it isn't really an option as management, architecture, law and the other schools with graduate programs would become the main tenants of South Campus and grow into filling the void left by the med schools.

Also remember that nothing happens at once. One school here, one building there... and the end product will be a totally new university setting but there will never be enough money or will power to shift everything at once. So there hopefully will never be a large void for very long in any one place.

I do agree totally that the growth of UB downtown creates a situation where it is almost imperative for growth to expand light rail. Even if UB was going to grow only on South and North there is no way to handle the increased traffic and parking problems that a 10% growth scenario would bring.

The numbers show that more than 90% of all people who come to campus, do so in a single occupancy vehicle. Adding another 10k students would with the current proportion of cars to students today + faculty equates to needing approximately a parking lot almost the size of Lake LaSalle on North alone... unacceptable and transit MUST be a part of growth otherwise nothing will work.