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Convention center belongs on Lehigh Valley Yards by Tim Tielman - May 1999 From an urban design and preservation perspective, there is no better place for a downtown Buffalo convention center than the old Lehigh Valley Railroad Yards between Scott and Perry Streets, running from the Marine Midland Atrium building to Michigan Avenue. A cost perspective would favor the Lehigh Yards site over so-called Mohawk Ramp site (Main to Blossom Alley, Huron to Broadway) because additional or replacement parking would not be necessary (saving at least $18 million), the land necessary for the first phase is publicly owned (saving at least $11 million in estate taxes), and a massive and disruptive rebuilding of streets and utilities would not be necessary. (The Marine Midland Arena mandated rebuilt roads, sewers, waterlines, utility rerouting, and traffic management systems.) Further, from a marketing perspective, it would be hard to top the “power center” of meeting space that could be offered on a scenic waterfront: the Arena, a Lehigh Yards convention center, and possibly a recycled Memorial auditorium. Throw in the proposed Cobblestone Loop of Metro Rail which would run directly in front of the Lehigh Valley site, a vintage trolley with direct connections to Chippewa Street, and a $27 million public expenditure a block away on the inner harbor, and you have the most attractive, least expensive, and smallest negative impact convention center possible.
Convention centers lose money. Lots of it. Construction costs are never recouped, and many have operating deficits year in and year out (as will the one under question). Yet, convention center groups are a powerful, if intermittent, part of American civic life. They’re hometown heavies. These groups are very effective in securing funding: they set up the classic political winning hand: concentrated benefit (to themselves) versus diffuse harm (cost to taxpayers, spread over millions of people across the county and state). So, funding is a lock (absent a public referendum). However, Our point here is to advocate that an inevitable expenditure be kept as low as possible and that the benefit to the city as a whole be as large as possible. We suggest this be done by not obliterating a core area which has all the elements of a successful turnaround neighborhood, and instead build the huge structure where it can be best accommodated: the Lehigh Valley Yards. Few people may remember the Lehigh Valley Yards, whose tall concrete walls lined the perimeter of the site until 1989. Many people remember the neo-classical Lehigh Valley Passenger Station, which was demolished in 1964 to make way for a miserable polyp of a building, the General Donovan State Office Building. The railroad was the dominant shaper of this area, consolidating the right-of-way of the Main and Hamburg Canal and many industrial sites to form a passenger and freight complex. In the 1950s the Thruway Authority acquired most of the Lehigh property in the vicinity. The reason the road was elevated in this area was to not disrupt the operations of the four railroads whose tracks formed a belt of steel three blocks wide south of Carroll and Exchange Streets, the web of rail lines. The unneeded remainder of the Lehigh Valley Yards eventually ended up with the Buffalo News and Erie County. The long and thin News parking lot on Scott Street occupies the site of the old freight house, while the Marine Atrium and the parking lots stretching almost to Michigan Avenue are owned by the Erie County Industrial Development Agency. This frustrated the mayor of Buffalo at the time, Frank Sedita, who in the early 1970s proposed the city obtain the ECIDA site for a convention center to augment Memorial Auditorium. This site is referred to as the Lehigh Yards to distinguish it from the “Marine Atrium” site in the Feasibility Study and Site Selection Study. Those documents include the Atrium itself, turning it into a hotel, or attaching it to the center. That is economically inefficient and, besides, downtown cannot now support a new full-sized upper end hotel. In addition to the advantages mentioned above, a Lehigh Yards center would also provide upwards of $1 million in additional parking revenues annually for Buffalo Sabres, who operate almost 2,000 parking spaces across the street. This is vital in insuring the shaky financing of the Arena (where $80 million in public money is at stake) and the Sabres. It should also be noted that the area, from the time of the great rail stations to the Aud, Arena, and Metro Rail, has been built to process large crowds of people and vehicles. Further, construction, operations, and the existence of the building itself would not have a negative impact on day-to-day activity downtown. In terms of operating a meeting hall, the Lehigh Valley site offers roll-in, roll-out truck access to the main convention floor and superb visibility from the Thruway and Skyway. It is a 100% clear, flat site with no roads to be closed, crossed, or tunneled and has ample, clear, flat adjacent space for expansion. Lastly, it could generate an architecture consistent with its neighborhood. Our concept recalls the Herculean New York Central train shed of the Exchange Street station, just across the Thruway, and also Buffalo’s armories, where consumer shows were often held. Related Links:
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Will
a new convention center help the area’s economy, much less meet the kinds of rosy
forecasts in a suspect feasibility study? Probably not. Will a new convention center be
built anyway? Probably.