Put mall downtown

[Unregistered]

If the Pyramid deal to build the megamall in Syracuse is all but dead why not sneak in the back door and bring it to downtown Buffalo? With the megamall, Bass Pro Shops (if we can get them to come) and the casino, we would have something the city hasn't seen in a while: jobs, people and, of course, "a real parking problem." We could have the best of all three worlds.
I could see it now, only if we had the right people to pull something like this off. What a wonderful thing it would be for downtown.

CHRIS KOCISKI
Blasdell


www.buffalo.com

[sethtriggs]

We have a mall downtown. Why don't they fix that up or something. Where would they put this "megamall" anyway? I don't see a parcel large enough except for the wilds of Times Beach off of Fuhrmann Blvd.

I'm certain the Main Place Mall could be expanded (vertically) and rehabilitated. Goodness knows there's plenty of empty shops. If they want a megamall, there's a solid building that's already a mall.

Ooooh! Idea! Why not bring this mega mall into the old A, M&A's building and put another department store there and some sort of office complex? There's buildings being reused for their stated purpose.

Of course, A, M&A's is not a historic landmark, so they could tear it down (along with the dilapidated warehouses behind it on Eagle Street.) Boom! More space to expand the mall, and on top of that you can tie it in with the light rail!

-Seth

[Allyssa]

That's a good point Seth, the amount of people coming into the downtown by the rapid transit, other than a sporting event would be great.

I remember when going "downtown" was a big shopping excursion, what happened? It seems like in a blink of the eye, the Main Place Mall has became a ghost town in itself.

Why can't things be the way they were? :)

[sethtriggs]

Originally posted by Allyssa
That's a good point Seth, the amount of people coming into the downtown by the rapid transit, other than a sporting event would be great.

I remember when going "downtown" was a big shopping excursion, what happened? It seems like in a blink of the eye, the Main Place Mall has became a ghost town in itself.

Why can't things be the way they were? :)

One word: Automobiles.

This is why retail is always going to be a dead issue. The Buffalo Place pedestrian mall is an easy scapegoat for what has happened, but it's something that has gone on in nearly every North American city. For some examples, Hamilton, ON does not possess a pedestrian mall as such and it lost downtown department stores. In fact, many cities like Utica, Syracuse and others have lost them. And the list goes on and on.

Essentially, once the suburban shopping mall was invented, and suburbs became popular, it was the end of downtown as a retail location. Americans hate public transit (i.e. streetcars and such) because they find them to be slow and associated with 'undesirables.' Now that settlement patterns have changed to something where you absolutely MUST need a car to get around (which is terrible in my opinion, as having a car should have to be a choice, not a requirement), you will never have large shopping areas in downtown Buffalo.

There just isn't the carrying capacity to support fields and fields of cars. Demolishing block after block to put up ramps isn't the answer, because then you decrease the number of destinations. At some point you're going to end up with more parking than destinations, but not enough to make downtown attractive. (There's a way to elaborate on this, I think... but it's rather hard to do.)

This doesn't mean that downtown has to disappear, just because it is finished as a retail center. Downtowns can always function as a cultural center, as the Taste of Buffalo, Thursday at the Square, and other events prove. Developments like Ansonia Center and City Center Condos prove that downtown can be a residential center, under the guise of New Urbanism. (What also needs to be done is that stores and services for these residents need to be encouraged.) Downtown is the government center, because access to government services should ideally be centralized in a location everyone can reach equally. And of course, it's an entertainment center, as we can see with the Chippewa district.

Buffalo has a lot of treasures. What we need to do is to preserve and market them. There is a lot of history in Buffalo , and as places like Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Niagara-on-the-lake and Mystic, CT prove, people will pay to see it!

-Seth

[Curmudgeon]

kudos to Seth for correctly seeing reality for what it is and coming up with ways to deal with the problem in constructive and innovative ways. Trying to make the city center compete with the Galleria is a fools errand and doomed to failure.The city should evolve into something that suburbs Can't Be, rather than be like them. Suburbs are a fact of life and have a lot of things going for them.
It sure is more constructive than moping around lamanting "Why can't things be the way they were?"

[Allyssa]

Why can't things be the way they were? was just a general question not so much an excuse to mope , but more of an inquiry as to how things like this happened.

Why can't things be the way they were? perhaps was thinking out loud in a remeberence status and not so much as an excuse to mope.

just a tip:
a :) indicates smile
and :( indicates sadness

[sethtriggs]

Originally posted by Allyssa
Why can't things be the way they were? was just a general question not so much an excuse to mope , but more of an inquiry as to how things like this happened.

Why can't things be the way they were? perhaps was thinking out loud in a remeberence status and not so much as an excuse to mope.

just a tip:
a :) indicates smile
and :( indicates sadness

I gotcha, I just wanted to use that opportunity to expound on some reasons for urban decay.

-Seth

[Grumpy]

<<There just isn't the carrying capacity to support fields and fields of cars. Demolishing block after block to put up ramps isn't the answer, because then you decrease the number of destinations. At some point you're going to end up with more parking than destinations, but not enough to make downtown attractive. >>

Based on the map published in the News the other week, most of downtown is surface parking lots. What might be a better way to go is to take some of the blocks that contains more empty lots than buildings and tear down the buildings to put up huge parking ramps. Then encourage building on the empty lots on the blocks with more buildings than lots.

The last time I was in Baltimore (and I hate that city, it is a bigger wreck than Buffalo), they had nothing but large parking ramps down near the inner harbor. I don't recall a single surface lot. And the large ramps sort of blended in with the large buildings surrounding it. At least the skyline appeared full.

[Allyssa]

A lot of major (thriving) cities utilize below-ground parking as well.