Bruce Fisher at Artvoice recently wrote one of the most concise summaries of why the current redevelopment plans for Buffalo’s Erie Canal Harbor is a bloated hunk of rubbish that spits in the face of our city and region’s real needs and economic realities.

But as it stands today, 30 years worth of that $9 million-a-year settlement is about to get sunk into a retail, restaurant, and hotel complex in one of the most over-retailed, over-restrauranted, over-hoteled places in America. As hotelier David Hart points out, the structure once known as the Statler Hilton Hotel was a functioning hotel until a local investor convinced public officials to give him millions to turn the E. B. Green-designed Genesee Building into a Hyatt, which created more hotel inventory than has ever been needed. And now there’s more “free” money to build even more hotel inventory, despite a shrinking regional population and a flat demand for hotel space. Creating supply, as restaurateur Mark Goldman says, does not create demand.

Yet despite the well documented subsidy calamities and outright failures of the Bass Pro promise in other markets, Buffalo’s hometown newspaper editorializes endlessly in favor of this permanent misallocation of public funds. Instead of letting independent investors decide whether to put up a hot dog stand in Erie Canal harbor, or a condominium developer taking a shot at selling Lake Erie sunsets to suburb-weary empty-nesters, the current plan of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation and of the Empire State Development Corporation that signs off on its work is to invest 30 years’ worth of our money in creating dozens of parking spaces for recreational vehicles, and another couple of thousand subsidized parking spaces for a downtown that has a huge existing supply of both surface and structured parking, and which has an office vacancy rate of well over 20 percent.

The mentality that drives this behavior is a poisonous combination of cynicism, despondency, and greed, all promoted by absentee-owned media that suck revenue out of the region while advancing an anti-government, anti-democratic message that strangely includes loud, repeated demands for public funds, but only for private interests these media endorse. The justification: “There’s nothing happening in Buffalo, so we have to do these big projects.”

The obvious absurdities of the Bass Pro strings aside, I’ve never been much of a fan of Canal Side’s physical plans. The rendered buildings look like half-ass attempts to appear historically-themed while throwing in some sort of lazy contemporary twist. Why not hire an architectural and planning firm that specialized in historic replica buildings and historic district restoration? The reconstruction of Dresden’s historic core (all-but-obliterated in that infamous WWII bombing orgy) is a great example of how replica architecture can actually create a place worth caring about.

If this projected had been carried out by a meritocratic organization untarnished by petty politics and special interests, it would have progressed something like this:

1. Contract a planning firm that specializes in historic district restorations.
2. Develop a rough plan that shows an area best resembling a historic city district.
3. Hire architectural firms that specialize in historic replicas.
4. No hinging the whole project Bass Pro or issuing any other type of “mega” handouts to large retailers.
5. Excavate canals and lay down cobblestone streets roughly corresponding to the historic Canal District street network.
6. Build an international festival marketplace resembling a row of old buildings, a-la Quincy Market in Boston. The market will have an interior “street” that can be covered and climate controlled when necessary due to Buffalo’s waterfront being pretty much inhospitable at least a third of the year. The market will be the Canal Harbor’s main draw, not a novelty-sized bait and tackle shop. This international market will be a regional draw and a successful counterpart to the epic fail known as the Broadway Market. Some of the vendors will be seasonal, many other year-round mainstays.
7. Divide street frontage tracts into developable parcels based on historic building lot dimensions.
8. Build a few “model buildings” that illustrate how these streets should be lined.
9. Sell off tracts to developers.
10. Provide financing schemes that will encourage small businesses to locate in the district.
11. Buy a container ship worth of popcorn and watch this district slowly sprout up out of the ground. If it takes 20 years for the whole damn thing to be built out, then so be it. Re-building the Canal District in a logical, incremental and methodical manner will make a great place that will have much lasting value rather than the project we have now which basically will shoot a giant wad of public cash into erecting yet-another gimmick attraction that will look dated in 10 years.