I’d probably have about 35 cents.

On December 15, 2004, then-owner of the Outer Harbor NFTA revealed three competing visions for that brownfield.

1. WestEnd (Ciminelli/Jerde)

I actually liked this one. It was nicely designed and not at all a pie-in-the-sky type project. They dubbed it a “lakefront creative community”.

2. Norstar Outer Harbor Redevelopment Plan

It was almost all parkland. We have a very nice waterfront park that very few people use. Parks don’t pay taxes. No more parks.

You have staked out a position in direct opposition to that of Rep. Brian Higgins. I think it’s safe to say that few politicians have done more to advance the cause of the waterfront - especially Buffalo’s outer harbor - than he.

You use rhetoric that is either hyperbolic or patently false. Route 5 is a road - not a wall. I have been told that the reason why it was bermed in that location has to do with continuous wintertime snowdrifts due to the unimpeded wind off the lake. The at-grade section further south has the former Bethlehem Steel plant land as a buffer. Did you know that?

You constantly bring up the Skyway even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with this particular project. The Southtowns Connector project has one aim and one aim only - to reconfigure Fuhrmann Boulevard to a 4-lane boulevard, and to improve access to and from it off of Route 5. As you well know from your press conference this morning, it is extraordinarily difficult to navigate around the outer harbor. All you’re doing, whether you know it or not (and whether you care or not), is hindering and delaying the improvement of that access.

 Every once in a while, I poke my head in over at BRO to see what’s going on.

Today, I stopped by to check out what their take was on the Outer Harbor project. I had just finished recording a podcast with Rep. Higgins on the issue and went over there to see what “the other half” thought about the issue. I was completely unsurprised to see someone immediately invoke the idea of what “the community wants“.

Higgins should do the right thing for the community, and tell the DOT to hold up the process, give the community the opportunity to bring in one of America’s great boulevard designers (there are at least two prominent boulevard designers in California*), limit the time for a new design to be decided on by the community and the DOT in a joint effort, and I believe the community can get what it wants - an attractive boulevard