Development Good

I know that people like Free Buffalo’s Jim Ostrowski find the medical campus, which is partly funded by public money (including the center for bioinformatics) to be nothing more than an improper interference by government into the private arena, and also to be nothing more than corporate welfare, but:

This is the point. Maybe places like the bioinformatics center bring a small number of jobs. Maybe, at first glance, the payoff isn’t great. Or maybe we have to wait a very long time for the payoff.

But when developers eye the surrounding area for new construction, renovation, and rejuvenation. You have what we call a domino effect. A slippery slope, if you will. And this slope leads to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or whatever other happy metaphor you’d like to repeat here.

Developers, following in the path of scientists, are starting to gravitate toward the 100-acre campus north of downtown, which is grooming itself for a spurt of new construction.

The development trend – if it turns into one – would help fulfill the campus’s vision as a mix of medical services, businesses and researchers, while injecting new life into surrounding neighborhoods.

“There’s a lot of momentum – we’re maybe 5-10 percent of the way to what our mission is,” said Matthew K. Enstice, executive director of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The organization is a site planning group that includes major campus employers like Kaleida Health.

Some of the sites where plans are focusing:

• A vacant apartment tower at 23 High St. was bought in March by a partnership headed by developer Michael L. Joseph. He plans to turn the site into a new, $6 million home for AIDS Community Services in 2006. The AIDS outpatient service, with 1,000 clients, is outgrowing its West Side home and wants to partner with medical campus researchers for drug trials.

“We’ll either tear it down and rebuild, or renovate and add to it,” Joseph said, depending on the success of fund-raising efforts. The building cost $410,000.