Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - It was last week when the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) announced it was hitting the reset button on the Kensington Expressway project.
NYSDOT has launched its Queen City Forward initiative, which is geared to grow the project from the ground up. This starts with an outreach and listening tour with the community for the future of the project, which will likely begin this October.
Also in the works for such an initiative with the project includes a nationwide search for a new project director, with the goal of finding someone who has driven innovative projects with innovative design, and delivery and knowledge of major project delivery requirements.
In addition, NYSDOT will be conducting a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Kensington Expressway, likely looking into multiple possibilities for the project.
All of this could take up to three years to complete before any sort of decision is made on what's next on Buffalo's East Side.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has championed this initiative since her early days in office after taking over for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Aug. 2021.
"I first proposed a major, major initiative to try and repair a community that was severed by this massive infrastructure, the Kensington, the 33. My first budget, January of 2022, I proposed $1 billion to accomplish something that had been talked about in the community for decades, but no money behind it, no support behind it. Of course, that engendered a lot of opinions on it, and I knew we had a finite amount of money to work with," Hochul said during a visit to Western New York on Monday.
Hochul was a bit frustrated on Monday when discussing the project, feeling oftentimes, almost too frequent in Western New York, people with a different opinion decide to go to court stop projects looking to make significant progress for communities on the East Side of Buffalo.
"We stepped back and said, 'Well, the court said no, because these advocates have asked to, basically, shut down the project until it's more in line with what they want.' But now we are at a place of a reset," Hochul noted. "I had our commissioner of DOT, Marie Therese Dominguez, come out and talk about that. The community engagement starts again. It is a longer, longer, longer process. It is a more expensive process just to do the background reviews to get to a point then where we are right now."
Hochul is advising residents in the community to be aware of the fact the state is probably a few years down the road to get to where it would be right now, if the project did not get halted.
"Be patient, because these environmental review processes are lengthy," she said. "And then the question will be at the end of all this, what is the price tag? What is the price tag of if everybody wants something that's a much larger scale than we knew we could accomplish, that's going to have a bigger price tag to it. I guarantee it.
"It is a longer path, and will ultimately be a more expensive path than where I thought we could be at this point, which was actually driving some real results for the community."
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Meanwhile, State Sen. Sean Ryan, who is the likely frontrunner to win the election for Buffalo Mayor this November as a Democrat, feels it's important for New York State and the city to look the Kensington Expressway, as well as the Scajaquada Corridor in this process, especially since both roadways pour into one another.
"The good thing is there will be a reset on this, and every option will be run down to figure out what works and what doesn't. But the disappointing thing on all these big projects that have been stalled are they're going to take a long time to get back going again," said Ryan on Monday during an appearance with Susan Rose on WBEN. "But under my leadership in City Hall, the city will have the head of the table seat for trying to figure these projects out. For far too long, City Hall did not play a leadership role in these major projects, be it the 33, the Skyway, the 198. And as a result of it, the projects never got off the ground."
Ryan is confident that despite Gov. Hochul's frustrations over the project's holdup, the money that has been allocated and committed to the Kensington will remain in place, as well as the $100 million that's there for the Scajaquada.
"She's not going to punitively take those away from Buffalo, but we've got to come together and do rational, logical planning. But I'm going to be the mayor that gets things done," Ryan said. "I've built up political capital throughout the race, but I intend to use it to improve the city. Part of the solution is we'll work closely with all our levels of government, but we can't be in the back seat. We've got to be in the driver's seat on these things."
Ryan is set to run against Republican candidate James Gardner, as well as Independent candidate Michael Gainer on the ballot for Buffalo Mayor on Tuesday, Nov. 4.