热点大瓜

“A gem that has yet to be truly discovered.”

 “Opportunity knocking.”

 “Nothing but potential.”

The Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park (formerly LaSalle Park) is a beautiful stretch of green running alongside Lake Erie on Buffalo’s Lower West Side. But people, even its most ardent fans, agree it could be so much more.

Now, thanks to a $50 million grant from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, it is being transformed.

The initiative—a partnership involving the city of Buffalo, the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, the University at Buffalo Regional Institute (UBRI), the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation and community members—is called “Imagine LaSalle,” because that’s exactly what it has asked people to do: imagine what a park made by the people and for the people would look like.

A public engagement process managed by UBRI (a center of UB’s School of Architecture and Planning) with input from several thousand residents and park-goers—including children—explored the park’s history and current context, determined how people use it now, and documented what people like and what they want to change. A focus group of 22 community members representing a cross section of the city even visited signature parks in Chicago, Cincinnati and New York to get ideas for LaSalle’s future offerings.

UBRI summarized the findings in a Community Vision Report, which then became a guidebook for the world-renowned landscape architecture firm brought in to design the park.

“We have not had a project like this before,” said Paul Seck, a partner of the firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, or MVVA. “So much incredible groundwork was done. It was almost like, here’s the CliffsNotes, now you can go from there.”

A series of community workshops, in which MVVA and the public explored design concepts together, led to initial drawings, including features such as an elevated “Great Lawn” (which would double as a sledding hill in winter), new running and cycling paths, a kayak launch, and a vast playground unlike any seen in Western New York. Schematic design of the park is scheduled to wrap up this year, followed by design development and a hoped-for groundbreaking in 2022.

The project will even put Buffalo on the global stage, as it is slated for inclusion in the “Time Space Existence” exhibit of the European Cultural Center in conjunction with the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale, held in Italy every two years to showcase innovative developments in architecture from around the world.

Meanwhile, an additional $18 million in funding from New York State, the city of Buffalo and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation announced last October allowed for the hiring of an engineering firm to begin work on a new pedestrian bridge—a direct response to the community’s appeal for an “accessible, beautiful and safe” connection between the park and surrounding neighborhoods, said UB School of Architecture and Planning Dean Robert G. Shibley.

UBRI continues to organize community design workshops while coordinating the involvement of other stakeholders and regulatory agencies to address community concerns on issues such as shoreline resiliency and sustainability.