NEWS FLASH! Prospect Hill-Columbus Park community is named one of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in the entire US, by The National Trust For Historic Preservation. Read the overview here and learn about all 11 Endangered Sites here.
Please sign the Petition asking our City Leaders to vote NO to ratification of the faulty and incomplete Environmental Impact Statement.
The Prospect Hill-Columbus Park community is located on Buffalo, New York’s West Side, within walking distance of Lake Erie and the Niagara River. The neighborhood is comprised of over a century (1850-1960) of upper and middle class residential architecture, a veritable catalog of American domestic house styles and National Registry Eligible properties. It is a vibrant, desirable neighborhood in close proximity to Buffalo's waterfront.
For more than two decades this community has attempted to peacefully co-exist with a hostile Public Bridge Authority (PBA). We have endured decades of land encroachment by the PBA with little or no protection from political leadership.
Today, the historical integrity of our community is faced with extinction because the PBA has proposed to expand it’s current plaza footprint from 14 acres to 45 acres. Over the years, the PBA has taken historic Olmsted park land which was immediately adjacent to Fort Porter, famous for it’s role in the War of 1812 but no longer in existence. Instead, the Olmsted and Fort Porter park land is now completely used for roads and operations by the Public Bridge Authority.
The expansion plan threatens to “take” by eminent domain 90 homes, 128 households and several businesses, the destruction or elimination of streets, clear cutting of trees, loss or diminution of culturally and historically significant artifacts and the displacement of hundreds of residents (3 to 5 city blocks).
The plaza expansion will destroy or move architecturally important buildings, and permanently change view sheds of residential properties ‘left behind’. The proposed 45-acre plaza will replace homes with toll booths and people with trucks. It will gut the character, history, stability, property values and vibrancy of the neighborhood and forever change the larger adjacent community. (view the impact)
Like many cities, Buffalo learned painful lessons from allowing mid-20th century highway projects to violate its Olmsted park system, his first in the nation. One of our finest parkways was sacrificed for an urban expressway, destroying neighborhoods and property values for blocks around. These incompatible uses of contiguous parcels represent a cost to the community that is unacceptable when other alternatives have not been completely explored and evaluated.
