Buffalo Rising Online

Law School should be Downtown with the big firms and court houses.

A rail link to all 3 campus' would go a long way to linking students to downtown.

UB should build a massive southtown campus and link with metro. Private businesses should step up to the plate and pay for both the capus and metro out of their own monies. The unemployed should all be employed. The sky should be red. Why New York State refuses to address this issue is beyond me. We should all be over 6'0 tall; metro should be extended to everyones home, and it should pay us to ride it. The poor should be rich and the rich should be poor. We should all have wings and be able evaporate when we want. The government should pay for all of this...

paragon- That was the plan until the good people of Amherst shot it down. Couldn't have city people (and black) taking that train to their private enclave.

blackrocklifer: was that really the plan? Is there some type of documentation of this? Almost every article on BRO has a comment of how the metro should run to this location or that one. Is any of this feasible? Where exactly would the tracks run? I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really be interested in this. For example: how do we get the trains from UB Main Street to the Amherst Campus? Finally, even without the trains going between all three, I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of buses that do. Do we know the ridership statistics from these buses? Is there demand for the train to begin with?

Is it me, or doesn't it seem the Architecture/Planning should be downtown as well?

This is a real improvement over the current setup. My only concern is that the medical school buildings on south campus would be hard to convert to different uses.

bhorvath, lives in the burbs- The light rail began in 1978 and was completed in 1985. The reason given for not extending to the north campus was declining population/ ridership and cost which was way over budget. No doubt these were a factor but opposition from Amherst was there from the begining and behind the scenes pressure was applied. I had an uncle who was involved in this effort and remember the debate about "city people" taking the train out to commit crimes in Amherst.

livesintheburbs. There are literally millions of trips per month on the UB stampede buses. I forgot the numbers exactly but they alone would support and warrant the needed (not including any commuters) for an extension. The number of people riding between campuses and on campus alone is huge. There can never be enough buses to handle the peak demands of this traffic. No one feels satisfied while using the system. Didn't when my father attended or when I attended, or now with new students.

As for your documentation question. Yes there is on both sides of the route. You can go downtown and review the very original plan for the MetroRail, from downtown to South campus. On the south campus section they have an arrow that points to North Campus.

On all site plans from the construction of buildings on north campus you can see very clearly marked where the NFTA line would enter campus from the west and run along the spine from south campus. One of the whole reasons for building the metrorail was BECAUSE they chose to put the campus in Amherst and NOT downtown. It was how to keep the live and vitality that city needs from leaving.

The exact route to connect the two campuses.. there isn't any. Probably would have just ran on Millersport to North, options to go by the new and growing commercial center around the BLVD Mall but nothing was finalized. One of the main reasons that Metro is considered a train to and from noqhere is because it's actual reason to exist was never fufilled. It was never meant to stop at South.. That would have been bad planning. It needs to go North. The city needs the life that the students can bring and the students need to life the city can offer. That is the only thing to take away the sour bland existence thousands of students think of when they think of Buffalo.

Colin, if you look at the details, many of those buildings would be taken down and replaced with more appropriate structures for the new schools.

wonder if moving the undergrads off of Main will hurt that commercial district? bars in particular.

RonR- "A LARGE part of the reason Amherst didn't want the extension is Amherst did not want their roads jacked up for years" I think you are being generous in buying this "cover story". I followed this story at the time and it was pretty clear why Amherst fought the extension. Even some ugly comments on the local news and in the papers that left no doubt how Amherst residents felt.

I hope UB experiences alot of growth to fill these campus's.

I specifically see a future where there are 4-5 campuses. How? Well Jack Davis gave millions to construct a 4k sqft clean room for nanotechnology. Nanotechnology that Buffalo State is partnering as I have said they should. UB specializing in advanced r&d, engineering while Buffalo State specializes in basic r&d, technology application. Such a combination would make Buffalo State the 4th Campus.

If nanotechnology research gets large enough it could split off as the life sciences did into its own research campus making it the 5th campus....though I doubt that would happen anytime soon....

But if Buffalo State continues to intelligently partner with UB, then the potential for growth at Buffalo State along Grant, Niagara, Tonawanda and Amherst is extremely significant....perhaps significant enough to consider reactivating the Belt Line.

Considering Buffalo's economy I think everyone would like to see Buffalo State have another 5-10,000 students and UB another 10-20,000 students.

RonR- As I said in my previous post, My uncle (from Amherst) was involved in the effort to stop the extension. He was involved in Amherst politics for many years and our family events were always the scene of political debate about the issues of the day. I also spent a lot of time in Amherst and know what is said about the city and minorities. I think the reason Amherst "looks like the devil" is because they have a record of aggressively pirating business from Buffalo with their IDA. Also their arrogance claiming their success was "self made" when in reality it was the North Campus and the huge infusion of tax dollars that made this town into what it is today.

bhrovath- You misunderstood, I was responding to you and livesintheburbsworksinthecity. Not saying you live in the burbs.

"Also their arrogance claiming their success was "self made" when in reality it was the North Campus and the huge infusion of tax dollars that made this town into what it is today."

i would beg to differ. even if the campus was never build i would think amherst would turn out the way it is right now. after all how would you explain the successes of other suburbs, such as Lancaster, east Aurora and Clarence?

I have no idea why we can't just a build a giant job factory which would employ everyone for life. We could build it in Lackawana, make it green, no emissions, Leeds certified, and run a a super deluxe levitating high speed rail system underground which could pick everyone up, say at 10am every morning. It is so simple why can't we all just see the possibilities.

buff- Clarence is pretty small, East aurora tiny, Lancaster maybe half the population of Amherst.

Blackrocklifer - Another typical anti-suburb comment from you, surprise, surprise.

allfit- thanks for being polite in your sarcasm, heather called me a "racist hypocrite". The burbs haven't exactly played nice with Buffalo and I see no reason to pretend they do.

There is a lot to say about North Campus being in Amherst compared to the rest of the region. What is the richest, most affluent town in all of WNY, Amherst... Hands down. What is one of the biggest employers and influx of capital, people, ideas, innovation in the region.... UB.. Its main campus has been in Amherst for the same time that Amherst has exploded. Sure they would probably be well off, like Aurora, or OP today but they would not be anything close to what they are without UB North.

And that is ok. But to think it is somehow self made is to ignore history. UB is the reason highways go there and the infrastructure has been upgraded over the years. Do you think Millersport highway would have gotten that huge redo a couple years back without UB north. Probably not considered at least 50% of the traffic volume on that road is UB related. Think about it for a second how HUGE UB is. 28k students, 10+ well paid faculty and staff.... most of which live, shop and pay taxes in Amherst cause they want to be near work. That is about the same population as the entire town and Village of Orchard Park.

Take that population, money and innovation away and amherst would have never developed the way it did.

Let's be truthful about the situation then... Buffalo didn't want UB in Buffalo when they had the chance to expand it in Buffalo. The residents, in their myopic wisdom, thought it would be better to contain the unpredictable student population in a swamp in Amherst instead of unleashing them on the residential neighborhoods in Buffalo. Little did the people of Buffalo know that UB would have such a tremendous economic impact to Amherst and the surrounding communities while the City of Buffalo falls deeper and deeper into decline. You sound bitter like an ex-wife who divorced right before her husband became successful. You talk trash about his new wife, about what an asshole he is and how he won't share more of his money with you now that he has some to share.

Bitter, Bitter, Bitter, spiteful, negative, contemptuous, and otherwise hateful Buffalonians. You think it hurts Amherst when you bash them? They have everything you want and you have everything they don't want. I agree with Blackrocklifer that maybe there is a massive conspiracy and plot to keep the poor and the minorities in the City so the property values and quality of education remain high.

Buffalo made decisions without thinking about the ramifications of their decisions, sounds like typical Buffalo.

What's this about UB coming to City? Let me choose my words carefully: over my dead body...

whynot- It was the conservative business community that didn't embrace the idea of a downtown UB campus. Many citizens and small business owners were very supportive. I agree the political leadership failed to understand just how lucrative this campus could have been for the city. But I strongly disagree with the idea that "they (Amherst) have everthing you want" . Many of us choose to live in Buffalo because we value the quality of life that a city can provide. We only ask for a fair and level playing field. Carrying the regions burden of the poor and disenfranchised is too heavy a load for Buffalo alone.

^^ I agree, the victim mentality is apparent in almost every comment.

I often see criticism of PaulBuffalo and Steel and others for not living in Buffalo. heathersmiles (of Amherst) and Allfit (of Clarence) seem quite comfortable giving us their armchair view of what is wrong with our city. I guess as someone who lives here and knows a little about the problems we have it makes me think of Sarah Palin and her comment about understanding foreign policy because "she could see Russia from Alaska".

Just glad to hear the School of Architecture and Planning are staying in Crosby Hall.

blackrock- "Clarence is pretty small, East aurora tiny, Lancaster maybe half the population of Amherst"

this is only because of their geographic boundries. if we look at it on an even playing field, by population per square mile, Lancaster and East aurora have actually larger numbers than Amherst. the suburbs in general grew, not just amherst. and its not because of the university, its because people wanted to get the heck out of the city.

Personally, I hated the South Campus. Oh I loved the old buildings and some of the new medical buildings were cool but the difference between the South Campus and the North Campus are like Summer and Winter.

UB Amherst is nearly completely connected along a spine on the first and second floors which is wonderful in the winter. I loved being all warm and toasty looking out the window in the cold weather.

The South Campus is really nice in the summer if your taking a summer course but the fall, winter and spring..those quadrangles and multiple long outdoor walks every day were just horrible. The only thing to look forward to was when buildings were close together.

I really think all this talk about UB Amherst is just wasted time. Look we have 4 state campuses here in WNY. 3 UB Campus's and 1 Buffalo State Campus.

Why does UB get so much cr*p for Amherst while Buffalo State never gets any criticism for Forest, Grant, Tonawanda or Amherst. God knows Buffalo State needs dormatories, a stadium, small business incubators just for its current student population...and its refusing 10,000 students a year and refusing to increase enrollment.

With the economy going down the pooper, this is an excellent time to bring up things like UB, Buffalo State, Light Rail, Lift Bridges, Central Terminal Rail/Bus/ParkNRide, etc...

UB has a plan....good....now how much, how soon, and whats next because our local economy is in real danger...and local education, healthcare and infrastructure industries are needed more than ever.

Same deal, regarding the subway/metro in DC. Georgetown, protested back in the day, 1970s, against putting the metro down M street. Concerns about blacks/poor people/undesireables coming into a rich persons neighborhood. Today, the merchants and people in G'Town, regret this decision, financially.

aside from the current conversation, the implementation and growth of UB would be a huge asset for all of WNY. Whether you live the City of Clarence. UB is one of the keys to our future, as it has been one of the stabilzation forces through 30 years of otherwise economic collapse around here.

This is a plan that everyone should get behind and support, for us and our children's future. The world is quickly starting to replace the US as a center for academic excellence. We need to reinvest into our education system NOW. Before the next great ideas and their economic spin offs come from somewhere else.

History is history, it is worthy to know and understand but this plan is about how to move forward. I think it does an amazing balancing act to provide a win win for everyone involved.

Blackrocklifer - Are you saying that only people within the boundaries of Buffalo proper have the right to talk about what happens in Buffalo? Does this mean that you, being a city resident, have no right to comment about the happenings in the suburbs?

One more thing blackrocklifer - you may want to go back to research the news articles and public opinion pieces surrounding the expansion of UB in Buffalo. You will find that mostly the residents objected to the move, especially those who were afraid that radical protests and riots would break out in their quiet neighborhoods.

whynot- Does anything ever happen in the suburbs? could you give me an example.

Rocker:

One example would be UB North

carl- you got me, good point, should have seen that coming.

Blackrocklifer - If you are too blind to see for yourself, than there is no way for me to show you all the things that are happening in the suburbs. I am not about city vs. suburbs, but that seems to be your topic of choice.

blackrocklifer needs a life...

RonR,

Exactly what has David Steele Said about Amherst that you take issue with?