Review: Buffalo’s Waterfront Renaissance: Citizen Activists, NGOs, and the Canalside Project

It highlights the multi-year political and legal battles that culminated in the renaissance of the Buffalo, NY waterfront on Lake Erie, with its Inner Harbor and Outer Harbor, and the Buffalo River. It describes the NGOs founded by concerned citizens for environmental and architectural preservation and the communities that developed out of these organizations. The book emphasizes that local and state officials and entities, agencies, and private sector developers and consultants, might discover that benefits, including economic benefits, derive from paying attention, early on, to the views of people who live there.

I had the privilege of teaching in the Master of Regional Planning program of the Department of Geography and Planning at the State University of New York, Albany (SUNY Albany), alongside Gene Bunnell, who had the office next door. He is a masterful storyteller, historically driven, detail-oriented, and completely engaged with the human aspects of planning and citizen action.

Gene Bunnell graduated from Wesleyan University, earned a Master of City Planning degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and worked as an urban planner in the public sector for 15 years, first for the Massachusetts Department of Community Affairs Office of Local Assistance and then as Director of Planning and Development for the City of Northampton MA. He earned his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1993 and launched a career teaching planning in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Department of Geography and Planning at SUNY Albany.

Drawing on his experience as a public sector planner, in Making Places Special: Stories of Real Places Made Better by Planning (Planners Press 2002), Bunnell looked in depth at Chattanooga TN, Providence RI, Charleston SC, Duluth MN, and San Diego CA, with side trips to Madison WI, Westminster CO, Wichita KA, and Burlington MA, and a final chapter of lessons learned.

Bunnell returned to Providence, RI, to write Transforming Providence: Rebirth of a Post-Industrial City (Troy Bookmakers 2017). In 2018, he began a book on the transformation of another post-industrial city. Buffalo’s Waterfront Renaissance builds on the depth of his knowledge of Buffalo, NY, where he was born and raised, and his credibility there. It is based on his analysis of documents, plans, environmental impact statements, correspondence, and related newspaper articles; discussions with leaders of advocacy groups, such as the Friends of the Buffalo River and Our Outer Harbor; and robust conversations with Robert F. Shibley, Dean of the University of Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning.

The book begins with the history of Buffalo as a transportation and commercial hub, initially for grain and flour, resulting from the 19th-century construction of the Erie Canal, followed by railroads and industrialization, such as steel plants. However, by the mid-20th century, construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway eliminated Buffalo’s role as a major port on the Great Lakes. This decline was compounded by urban renewal, financial problems with public housing, the adverse consequences of highway construction, and later de-industrialization due to the global economy. In addition, toxic waste from industry adversely impacted water quality and the natural environment. Fortunately, citizen awareness and action, starting in small increments and proceeding with patience and persistence, created change.

The chapters that set out the planning and revitalization of the Inner Harbor, the Buffalo River, and the Outer Harbor provide a wealth of fascinating detail, plan by plan, applications, public records, and ultimately court cases, attributable to the author’s insight and patience as a planner and historian. There are annotated photographs, maps, and specially-produced GIS. Articles from the regional newspaper, The Buffalo News, are supplemented by two local online news outlets, Buffalo Rising, founded in 2003, and Investigative Post, founded in 2012.

At its core, the book stresses the importance of planning based on what the people who live in the community think is necessary and appropriate, and the adverse consequences when that isn’t done. The political aspects of Buffalo’s waterfront revitalization are insightful: for example, when and why a mayor shelved a plan or a governor espoused a particular project.

In a declining economy with a shrinking tax base, the availability of state and federal money must have seemed irresistible, even if the specific requirements of certain funding might be contrary to the development being proposed. Often, state and federal money was used to hire outside consultants from distant places whose proposals did not take local concerns into account; when, for whatever reason, the project lapsed, the plan was shelved, but the preparatory funding had been spent.

The Buffalo zoning code, adopted in 1953, was updated only in 2016 as the Green Code. Once it was adopted, most of the Outer Harbor was designated for green space, but one Common Council member was unwilling to prohibit the development of housing on the one remaining 20-acre parcel. The owner proposed a multi-story glass-walled apartment tower on the Outer Harbor, where sunami-like storm surges on the lake, combined with blizzard conditions that would close the Skyway and access roads, could imperil the residents’ lives and leave them stranded. In 2020, the proposal was abandoned, and the property is for sale.

What was the role of citizens and NGOs during this period? Each chapter includes descriptions of patient, persistent, and, one might say, heroic efforts to articulate concerns and follow through to initiate, negotiate, and preserve open space for the use and benefit of all Buffalo citizens in the face of being ignored by Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ECHDC), the state agency charged with managing redevelopment. For example, to protect the Outer Harbor, a number of NGOs and stakeholder groups formed Our Outer Harbor (OOH), a coalition that included environmental groups, sportsmen’s clubs, environmental justice organizations, and the League of Women Voters. Outer Harbor planning became more participatory, including three public hearings by ECHDC where members of the public prioritized maintaining usable green space and creating more and better public access to the water.

The final chapter contains the following lessons learned:

• Big Projects Failed to Revive Lower Main Street and the Inner Harbor.
• The State Agency Was Officially Empowered, but Citizens Were not Powerless.
• Not All Preservationists in Agreement.
• Buffalo’s Local Newspaper Helps Hold the State Agency Accountable.
• How Waterfront Planning Should be Conducted, identified by Dean Robert F. Shibley
  • “A well-conducted planning process should expand the range of ideas and options being considered, increase peoples’ imaginations regarding what might be possible, and make it possible to compare and evaluate possible outcomes from different points of view.” (February 22, 2021, in Bunnell, Buffalo’s Waterfront Renaissance, at 206).
  • Have people with different interests and backgrounds participate in the process.
  • Encourage the expression of divergent views and don’t attempt to dictate the outcome.
  • Don’t allow any one segment of the community to dominate the process.
  • Incorporate and be attuned to local values and allegiances.
  • Make good use of expert knowledge and professional expertise.
  • The consultants conducting the planning process need to be prepared to “speak truth to power” and tell those paying them things they don’t want to hear.
• Give the State Agency Some Credit.
  • The state government became heavily invested in having Buffalo’s waterfront successfully redeveloped.
  • Citizen advocates and NGOs provided inspiration and imagination, but state agencies or the federal government provided much of the money needed to accomplish this.
• Underappreciated Ways to Achieve Economic Development:
  • Improving Environmental Quality: “[get] elected leaders to rethink what makes a good community and place greater value on strengthening environmental quality and quality of life, as opposed to placing the greatest importance on the immediate economic returns of development.” (Jedlicka, interview, February 13, 2019, in Bunnell, Buffalo’s Waterfront Renaissance, at 210).
  • Historic Preservation
• The Job is Never Done: The Impact of Climate Change.

In conclusion [notwithstanding the demolition of buildings important to the city’s industrial heritage], “preservationists and NGOs can take solace in knowing that a remarkably broad public consensus has developed in Buffalo concerning the importance of preserving the city’s historically and architecturally significant sites and buildings. That public consensus may well turn out to be one of the most consequential and enduring outcomes produced by Buffalo’s waterfront renaissance.” (Bunnell, Buffalo’s Waterfront Renaissance, at 218).

Erica Levine Powers is a mediator and a land use regulatory and transactional lawyer in Albany, NY. She is an affiliated scholar in the Department of Geography & Planning at SUNY Albany.