I read an article in November 2005 in the Buffalo News about how 2007 would be the year that signified where Buffalo was going. Forward? Or the same as it has always been?

And now that 2007 has come and gone there are mixed signals all around. Clearly this was not the make or break year that the article made it out to be-positive signs are starting to accumulate while many of the root problems still exist.

Look around the east side and hope is hard to find with a continuously deteriorating housing stock, high rate of poverty, church closings, and American Axle shutting down. The west side faces many of the same drug and crime problems that the East Side does-perhaps at a higher but more concentrated rate. The University District continues to fall as students no longer feel safe living around their own city campus and choose Amherst instead. Go downtown and still see the Aud and Donovan buildings sitting idly. Main Street remains windswept and new buildings struggle to obtain 1st floor retail. Politically, the two control boards still remain, Byron Brown has begun to be recognized as simply just the newest cycle of the Buffalo Political Machine, Joel Giambra never met any of his ambitious goals that got him elected and Elliott Spitzer is already labeled as a failure.

But we also see a Bashar Issa that not only is in the process of bringing the Statler back to its deserved-life but is proposing a 40-story skyscraper. The Canal Side project has cleared away all the red-tape (allegedly). The Federal Courthouse finally cleared all of its red-tape as well. A block of abandoned industrial buildings in the Cobblestone District will be completely brought back to life next summer as a mixed-use block. Construction is about to begin on an Embassy Suites and a 5-star Seneca Hotel. A new condo tower is being built on the waterfront. A new art museum is under construction across from the Albright-Knox. Wind turbines are up (and currently not running) in Lackawanna, the Buffalo Lakeside Commerce park is a great example of a successful brownfield remediation project, there are 4.5 Billion USD worth of construction projects in the city, the regions job growth has been its strongest in 7 years and UB has finally begun to establish a downtown campus.

Clearly the picture is not clear for Buffalo yet. Fifty years of constant decline can’t be erased anytime soon and the fundamental issues that hurt the region like taxes, mind-boggling sprawl, political favors, abject poverty and an Albany bureaucracy that can’t be broken-all remain.. But change is starting to occur despite all the obstacles ahead. The economic and social climate is fragile but people are finally fed-up and taking matters into their own hands. The mistakes of the past will probably never be solved but the mistakes of the future can be avoided, and as everyone realizes that-Buffalo can become healthy again and I would say 2007 helped lay the groundwork for that.

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