Walked by Clinton Brown’s office on Main Street today and saw a poster of a project they are working on…whether or not the developer has the means to make this project happen (or even who the developer is) remains to be seen but according to what they are working on…

This warehouse on Chicago Street, right off Ohio will be converted into lofts called “The Cooperage”

Its pretty close to the arena but its a pretty isolated location since there is no life around it and a decent amount of open space. City living only in name.

Which brings up an issue. All these lofts that have been going up downtown-its great-but they don’t flow together to create a downtown neighborhood. Outside of the theatre district area there really is no feeling of a community being created as these projects are so isolated from each other, preventing businesses from wanting to take a risk in making small retail establishments to serve downtown residents.

But I digress…as these scattered about abandoned buildings get developed, it makes it more likely that the vast open spaces between them might as well…finally creating genuine city living.

Stumbled across a link to the official website of the Buffalo City Tower over on the skyscraperpage.com forums.

Fantastic website. Especially for something that in all likely-hood will not get built.

Looking at new images, they spruced up the design of the building and added a big pole to the top for accent. It looks great. The descriptions of the inside suggest it would be quite the classy experience whether you lived, worked, or visited in that building.

I do believe there is a legitimate market for this tower but after seeing how the Statler Renovation has unfolded in regards to the pace of work and the severe union issues-I would be genuinely shocked if this actually got built.

The building design won an honorable mention for best designed buildings not built. Lolz.

As a general concept, having a LLRT line going from downtown to the airport makes sense.

When your airport increases passenger volume every year since its inception and is about 10 years ahead of schedule in regards to passenger volume-it makes more sense to look seriously and quickly into making a downtown-airport LLRT line.

When there isn’t even one available parking spot in the entire airport-newly availible surrounding lots included-and the NFTA is telling you to get a ride to the airport…there really is no excuse to not be planning and pushing for a downtown-airport LLRT line.

Out of nowhere Elliot Spitzer’s reign as governor has come to an apparent ending-perhaps tonight even.

He seemed to survive the ‘drivers license for illegals’ situation as his poll numbers were increasing as of late but his creative financing schemes like privatizing the state lottery and making everything applicable to user-fees in lieu of raising taxes was pretty bizarre.

He’s been criticized frequently but I saw him as a pretty solid improvement over Pataki in regards to his interest and dedication to Buffalo. His interest in Canal Side and the Peace Bridge seemed true at heart. He (at least claimed to) made sure Uniland got the funding it needed quickly to help get the Dulski renovation get underway. His interest in the UB2020 plan and guaranteeing 7,000 new students at a UB downtown campus seemed legit.

Spitzer always came off as a little awkward to me. Maybe it was the overly-brash personality mixed in with some huge ears. Can’t say I saw this coming, but can’t say it isn’t easy to visualize. Usually those who seem to be the loudest about fighting for what is right seem to live the wrong way in secret.

I voted for Spitzer but I wished all along that Tom Suozzi got the D’s nomination. Perhaps next time.

*Photo courtesy NYtimes