Revised Strategic Plan for
Downtown Buffalo (April 2002)

Introduction

This update is the product of more than 10,000 people who have engaged some aspect of review and implementation of the Strategic Plan for Downtown Buffalo that was issued by Mayor Anthony M. Masiello in September 1999. It encompasses more than fifty project and planning efforts focused on revitalizing Downtown Buffalo. It reflects more than two years of work implementing and completing what will be fifteen demonstration projects by the end of 2002. These projects, which represent the work of more than eighteen organizations, emerged from the high priority issue areas selected by the many people throughout the region who reviewed the 1999 plan. The update also includes a strong vision and a strategic action program for the next several years.

The update is not a comprehensive plan. It is a strategic plan. As such it tends to concentrate on the short and intermediate range work we can accomplish with the resources we have now, or will have in the foreseeable future. Even so, the alternative development scenarios in the strategic plan also offer some work it might take twenty- five years to realize. The strategy is part of the City of Buffalo Comprehensive Plan effort scheduled to be concluded this summer. It is being reviewed by all sectors of our community in collaboration with the work of the Good Neighbor’s Planning Alliance and the ongoing work of the implementation campaign we call Downtown Buffalo 2002! The results of these reviews will be incorporated in a revised document that will become the basis for the additional work needed to give the plan the force of law in zoning ordinances and design review procedures. For the plan to be effective it must be able to tell us both what to do, and what not to do, to advance Downtown as a regional center and as the neighborhood of neighborhoods for our city.

Meanwhile, what were eleven projects implementing the plan in the year 2000, became fifteen projects in 2001, and are becoming twenty projects in 2002. More than eighteen agencies are working to implement the plan. They are putting shovels in the ground even as they work to improve their contributions to the overall plan and vision. They do so with confidence that the review of the 1999 Strategic Plan for Downtown Buffalo gave a clear indication of priorities on living, working, and accessing Downtown. The Strategic Plan Update also responds to a number of criticisms of the 1999 plan. While the plan offered a solid basis for action on several projects, reviewers felt it did not offer a strong vision, and it lacked detail in the areas of housing strategy and business development strategy in Downtown. There was only a modest reference to historic preservation and the adaptive reuse of the existing stock of buildings. Perhaps even more important, the initial plan did not address the structure of implementation or the redirection of regional resources needed to fully realize Downtown Buffalo’s full potential. Vision, structure, and resources will all be critical to success.

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