About Restore The Parkway

Frederick Law Olmsted’s Park and Parkway system is a pillar of Buffalo’s uniquely rich architectural and cultural heritage. It’s decapitation by the violent intrusion of an urban expressway through stable residential neighborhoods demands remedy, not reinforcement. Restoring Olmsted’s Parkway from Agassiz Circle to the Museum of Science, extending it from Agassiz Circle to the AKG and from Best Street to the Elm-Oak Arterial is the wise, practical, sustainable solution to an environmental/social nightmare. Restoration and extension of the parkway, related infrastructure improvements, a robust community benefit agreement, infill on hundreds of vacant lots, economic development, health, and substantial environmental benefit, along with positive employment, small business, and household income improvements can be delivered within the same budget and time frame of the proposed project to reconstruct a small portion of the Kensington Expressway that has been the favored solution offered by the New York State Department of Transportation.

 

Leading experts on transportation, urban planning, health, history, culture, poverty, pollution, law, etc. have decried the insanity of continuing the assault on the urban fabric of this city that is the antiquated ill-planned expressway ripping through its gut. This must stop. The citizens of this city should demand an intelligent, humane, holistic way forward here, or suffer a self-inflicted environmental/social disaster for decades to come. We should fully recognize the tremendous importance of the issues involved and organize ourselves in such a way as to have a positive effect on the outcome. We must work together to build a better city for ourselves and future generations. We must begin now, here.

Over the next days, weeks, and months we will study, analyze, and post the information relevant to our struggle to restore Olmsted’s parkway from Agassiz Circle to the Buffalo Museum of Science. We will organize and engage to promote a vision of a better Buffalo and Western New York region. We propose a wide parkway, forested with a canopy of mature trees, with two-lane “smart” boulevards - east and west - and physical barriers to protect bike/multi-modal lanes that run the length of the parkway.  Electric trolleys, the length of the smart parkway, could provide ADA accessible transportation to residents, visitors, tourists, and students.

We will restore and reconnect the heart of our city to every neighborhood and revitalize the radial arteries that made our home “the best designed city in the world”. Your first step is to join with our group, and then to actively engage in the struggle to make our city the finest place to live in America. We need your knowledge, desire, passion, intelligence, expertise, and craft to undertake an effort that will be transformative within our lifetimes to cure an environmental injustice and provide for a better quality of life for every citizen of our beloved city.

Let’s go Buffalo!

 

Articles in the Media

To help provide context, and clarify details regarding this important rejuvenation project for the city of Buffalo, we have compiled numerous articles that discuss the specifications of this process. We will continue to update this area as more articles become available in the future.  If you have suggestions, please email article links to: info@restoretheparkway.com

Historic Photos

Renderings

Pete Buttigieg - Press Conference in Buffalo

From March 2023.  
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Congressman Brian Higgins, Mayor Byron Brown, and Hamlin Park Taxpayers Association President Stephanie Barber Jeter discuss the Humboldt Parkway restoration project.  

Video courtesy of WGRZ.