McCarley Gardens is your basic public housing campus. Sitting on about 14 acres, you have 150 units. Or about 10 units per acre. Next to McCarley Gardens you have a parking lot. These two properties create a massive block of land that is
20 acres, bound by Goodell, Michigan, Ellicott and Elm/Virginia. To put that in perspective, the current medical campus sits on about
120 acres.
My understanding is UB wanted to put the medical school and related buildings on these 20 acres as a part of UB 20/20.
I do not see a problem with moving people as the land would be put to better use.
My biggest concern is what the replacement housing looks like.
$60M for 150 units is $400k a unit!
In San Diego, they just completed a project called
1050 B Street. The building is 23 stories with 229 units (1,2 and 3 bedrooms), 124 parking spaces and is 100% affordable.
The total cost for this project was $90M.
That works out to $393,013 per unit or $6k less than the projected cost of the Buffalo project.
THIS is what Buffalo should be building in the Fruit Belt IMO. Not townhouses with lawns but nice (and the building IS NICE..see image) dense development.
The ground floor of the building is all retail and it is so close to public transportation (just like the Fruit Belt) that you do not need a car for everything.
What I fear/know is going to happen, is the Church groups doing the development are going to try and create a suburban style housing project for the residents because having a yard (at the taxpayers expense) is wanted.