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New York
Buffalo Urged to Create Detailed Parking Blueprint Before Allowing More Demolition for Garages
With more than 200 parking lots and ramps or underground garages
already shading almost half of their downtown Buffalo map, young
professionals from the lobbying New Millennium Group, accompanied
by Councilmen David A. Franczyk and Joseph Golombek Jr., held a
news conference on one of the ramp expansion sites, to be the first
to congratulate managers on their apparent goal of turning the
whole downtown area into one big parking lot. Millennium member
Patrick McNichol drove the point deeper, saying, ''If our master
plan is to demolish all of downtown, then we're only halfway there.
If you look very closely, there are still some buildings that are
standing in the way of parking progress.'' Irony aside, writes
Buffalo News reporter Brian Meyer, the New Millennium Group
wants officials to impose a demolition moratorium until they draw
a detailed parking blueprint; tie any new parking construction to
new ''large scale'' downtown investment; require all new parking
structures to allow commercial or residential use, including
''street-front'' retail; and expand other transportation options,
including park-and-ride programs. City Parking Board consultant
Thomas A. Gallagher acknowledged an overall downtown parking
surplus, but noted its shortage in two of the city's busiest
business corridors and pointed out that to compete with suburban
office space, downtown Buffalo needs accessible and inexpensive
parking. Planners also defended the current ramp expansion, saying
a worker waiting list for downtown parking contains about 1,000
names. Speaking for their nonprofit Buffalo Place corporation that
manages the downtown business district, Chairman Keith M. Belanger
and Executive Director Michael T. Schmand stressed that planners
work hard to ensure more parking without new lots or ramps, that
1,400 downtown workers joined a park-and-ride program, and that
efforts to expand on-street parking and public transit use are
under way. -- Buffalo News
7/10/2003
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