Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A fresh new perspective is coming for the potential future of the Kensington Expressway, and even the Scajaquada Expressway.
The East Side Parkways Coalition (ESP) has commissioned a Chicago-based economics and planning firm, Neightiv, to produce a 100-year economic benefits study comparing the previously proposed tunnel over the Kensington, versus a boulevard, versus the full restoration of Humboldt Parkway from Martin Luther King Jr. Park along Best Street all the way to Delaware Park by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
"We're hoping to eliminate the Kensington Expressway. It's not needed traffic-wise, and it's been causing tremendous environmental problems, health problems on the East Side. And also we have an Olmsted Park system to restore," said Brad Wales, co-founder of the East Side Parkawys Coalition. "The Olmsted Park system here is the first-ever citywide park and parkway system in the history of the United States, by the most famous landscape architect of all time. So we should be seriously considering a full restoration."
Neightiv is a strategy firm that combines market, spatial, and economic intelligence with deep community insight, leaning on ethnography as a core data collection method, and translates data and lived experience into actionable strategies that strengthen communities, inform investment, and shape more valuable, resilient places.
Wales feels Neightiv is the firm that can help them come up with a viable plan for the future of Humboldt Parkway in Buffalo.
"Neightiv has a 'to the street', personable, resident-first approach," Wales said with WBEN. "They also offered to take a very in-depth analysis, rather than just kind of superficial metrics. They're really going to dig in."
Wales is hoping for some preliminary information from the study by late October, with the final report being released this coming January.
Neightiv will conduct its study across eight metrics to calculate economic benefits:
- Calculate increases in residential and commercial property values.
- Project-out an increase in commerce for businesses based on increased AADTs on Kensington Avenue, as well as the historic radials - Genesee, Sycamore, Broadway, Clinton, and William. This study will also consider increased commerce on the North-South industrial/commercial/residential streets - Bailey, William L. Gaiter, Grider, Fillmore, Jefferson, and Michigan.
- Calculate subsequent long-term jobs created as a result of an increase in commerce and subsequent re-infusion of dollars into the local economy.
- Project new-build and renovation development on the East Side, including commercial and mixed-use development on the radials, as well as South of Best Street. Also model residential development on Humboldt Parkway and South of Best Street.
- Calculate subsequent construction jobs created via new-build and renovation development, Including overall potential economic benefits of those jobs.
- Calculate Increases in cultural tourism, including the impact of visitation increases on local business sales using case studies to show potential quantitative increases and overall benefits.
- Model Property Tax increases over 100 years, including timeline data.
- Model timeline assumptions and account for inflation.
