Advice or Counseling Request

[Canerican]

Massena area, and I loved it there. BTW Obama won St. Lawrence county, it is fairly Liberal.

[Coraggio]

Originally Posted by ahat31

Thank you for sharing your recent experience with me. It sounds like your family just went through the same experiences mine will soon. It is annoying that the media only focuses on the negative. I have to say, I was shocked, I mean SHOCKED to see how high the taxes are in the state. We traveled through an area of Buffalo that was by the water, not sure the exact area, and was shocked to see how unclean it was.

Possibly Black Rock/Riverside? It has never failed to amaze me that in most other cities, waterfront property goes for a premium, whereas here, the neighborhood so close to the river is in such bad shape. Probably because some genius decided the river section of the Thruway should separate the homes from the water...

[Checkered24]

Originally Posted by Coraggio

Possibly Black Rock/Riverside? It has never failed to amaze me that in most other cities, waterfront property goes for a premium, whereas here, the neighborhood so close to the river is in such bad shape. Probably because some genius decided the river section of the Thruway should separate the homes from the water...

That is a big problem. There technically is no waterfront property. It's all thruway, and people do not tend to pay big money for property overlooking a thruway.

About 20 years ago, there was a plan to move the 190 inland, along a railway right of way, to free up a good chunk of the waterfront. It got shot down as too pricey.

Then again, our outer harbor has been an empty brownfield for 50 years, and there is no thruway to use as an excuse.

[mycrows]

Originally Posted by Checkered24

About 20 years ago, there was a plan to move the 190 inland, along a railway right of way, to free up a good chunk of the waterfront. It got shot down as too pricey.

I don't remember the discussion from 20 years ago but this was talked about again recently in the context of the Ambassador bridge proposal (which was to be at the IRR). You can easily see the railroad ROW that Checkered24 is referring to on Google's satellite map. It runs north from roughly the interchange of 190 and the Scajaquada. Unfortunately, while this plan would reunite Riverside and Black Rock with the river, the more densely populated west side to the south would remain cut off from the riverfront. I'd be for doing this, of course, but I seriously doubt it will ever happen.

Here in Buffalo we know all too well how hard it is to get rid of a highway once we have it no matter how debilitating and ugly it is (cough Skyway cough). I was reading recently on the Syracuse forum that they might eliminate a portion of I-81 in downtown (a major highway that bisects the city from north to south). I wish them the best of the luck with that, it's an elevated highway that runs right through the central business district: it could be an even bigger eye sore than the 190. The advantage that they have is that the elevated portion of that highway is disintegrating, it's going to have to come down one way or another, and the cheapest way to deal with the problem would be to replace it with a boulevard. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with a similar scenario that happened in San Francisco. A highway was damaged by an earthquake and had to be removed, creating room for a new and highly successful development zone. Unfortunately, while the 190 is not in the best of shape, it doesn't seem to be literally falling apart, so I guess we're stuck with it for now.