UB urban planners to help turn Buffalo's languishing post-COVID downtown into residential hub

In 2020, downtown Buffalo was riding the wave of an historic comeback when the COVID pandemic hit and remote work cut off a key ingredient to the success of city centers: a critical mass of pedestrian activity.

Today, with hybrid work here to stay, our downtown is decidedly subdued. Workers make about one-third fewer trips downtown compared to 2020, reducing demand for office space – particularly older Class C offices, where vacancy rates jumped from 15 percent in 2022 to more than 27 percent in 2024. Fewer workers affect everything from Metro Rail ridership to shop and restaurant patronage, deteriorating street-life, ground-floor retail and perceptions of public safety.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the value of downtown property – by far the region’s largest producer of local and state tax revenue per acre – has fallen nearly one-quarter since 2020-21.

Buffalo is not the only mid-sized city reeling from the lingering effects of COVID. Post-pandemic downtowns across the United States and Canada have been hollowed out by hybrid work arrangements and reduced commerce.

Yet instead of wringing their hands in worry, Buffalo leaders have rolled up their sleeves and turned to the plan that laid the foundation for the city’s renaissance just over 20 years ago – the Queen City Hub.

“What we see is really threatening for the entire regional tax base. As downtown goes, so goes the city,” says Robert G. Shibley, SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning, who led the City of Buffalo’s engagement of more than 7,000 citizens in the early 2000s to shape that plan.

“The original vision of the plan remains. We are just taking it to a new level and building out its next dimension,” added the urban planner and architect who now directs UB’s Rudy Bruner Center for Urban Excellence. The national planning research center is part of a broad coalition driving what could become the most significant reshaping of downtown in decades.

The “Queen City Hub Revisited” initiative builds on downtown's clusters of strengths and its new opportunities – first and foremost the conversion of excess Class C office space into the footprint of a vibrant downtown residential neighborhood. New public investments in the public realm would stitch together pockets of vitality with streetscape improvements, small parks, street-level art, and diversified retail, services and events.

Taking a page from the Queen City Hub playbook, the effort doesn’t lack for ambition. Recasting the city’s Central Business District as a “Central Social District,” the action plan would turn empty Class C office space into new housing units offering market-rate rents for middle-income residents. In addition, Class B and even Class A conversions could help spur over $1 billion in new development, including mixed-use projects, public realm improvements, and hotels.

City leaders envision a downtown neighborhood that becomes a destination of choice, not necessity. The proposal builds on the city’s progress since the original plan’s release in 2003, which saw the development of 3,000 housing units – largely through adaptive reuse of historic buildings – and a 20 percent boost in the downtown residential population.

Over the past two decades, more than $3 billion in public and private investments and $250 million in infrastructure projects has helped revive five strategic corridors, from Canalside to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, and generate a dynamic, pedestrian-scale sense of place. Broad civic engagement and the elevation of design laid the groundwork for plans for Buffalo’s waterfront and Frederick Law Olmsted Park system, the Richardson Olmsted Complex and, more recently, the rewriting of city zoning law into the “Green Code,” the state’s Buffalo Billion catalyst, East Side investment strategies, and region-wide economic development plans.

For the current proposal to work, however, a new toolkit with more precise funding mechanisms is required, largely due to stubborn market-rate financials that leave an approximately 15-percent gap for middle-income rental units. A coalition of city, regional and state leaders is now meeting with private and public funders to lobby for the assets to make it happen.  Currently, the coalition estimates that a $175 million commitment over five years could realize the community’s vision for the city center and leverage over $1 billion in private funding.

Modeled after the New York State Department of State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, the action plan would involve community input and a planning process overseen by a city-appointed steering committee with collaboration from NYSDOS. Developers could be eligible for subsidies of up to $75 per square foot for residential conversion and new construction projects, as well as gap financing capital for redevelopment projects, all strategically allocated around existing clusters of vitality to create nodes of critical mass.

The City of Buffalo would build the base, contributing $100 million for public realm improvements, including completing the Cars Sharing Main Street effort, creating infrastructural connections to the waterfront, implementing a “smart mobility” pilot project, activating ground-floor spaces and businesses, and increasing public safety.

Spearheaded by the Mayor’s Office of Strategic Planning, the QCHR effort builds off an enthusiastic and dedicated coalition of downtown advocates – many of whom have been involved since the 1990s, when the city’s core was first envisioned as a viable neighborhood. In addition to the School of Architecture and Planning’s Rudy Bruner Center, they are Buffalo Place, the NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association, the Buffalo Urban Development Corporation, the Urban Land Institute, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Coalition, Downtown 2030 and Invest Buffalo Niagara.

Similar to QCH, the latest strategy is based on extensive civic engagement. More than 1,500 downtown residents, visitors, employees, property owners, realtors, and nonprofit leaders were surveyed, while UB’s team, along with the coalition noted above, mined real estate market data, event attendance, public space usage, pedestrian activity, crime statistics, transit and parking data and even office card swipe systems. The coalition organized dozens of focus groups with each stakeholder group to learn more about their needs in a post-pandemic downtown.

“Nobody is questioning the problem and how big it is. We’re at an inflection point and have to do something about it,” says Daniel Leonard, associate principal of Wendel Companies, a significant provider of design services to the downtown community. A leading member of the coalition, Leonard serves as president of NAIOP and co-founder of the Downtown 2030 business coalition.

“There’s an optimistic side though,” he continued. “We have changed the way we function and work in the city. In addition to more room for residents, there’s increased flexibility in office design with a shift toward smaller spaces with higher quality amenities. There are also opportunities to use infrastructure and transportation differently. We’ve been strangled by highways for decades.”

“But we have to get numbers to work,” he says. “That will take resources.”

“Developers and business owners have all said we need more tools to solve this.,” says Matthew Roland, assistant dean of real estate development at UB and a fellow with the RBC. “There is a lot of uncertainty in the market right now,” he added, noting leadership changes at the local and national level and lagging office occupancy rates due to five- and 10-year commercial lease terms. “But the overall climate remains one of optimism.”

According to Conrad Kickert, UB associate professor of urban planning and Director of Programs for the RBC, who inventoried ground-floor activity across downtown for the project, activation of the street is key to restoring downtown vitality: "As the pulse of a downtown is fed by its buildings, its life and uniqueness is experienced on the street at eye level,” he said, adding that the team’s research revealed several clusters that can serve as steppingstones for the revitalization of downtown.

Residents of downtown are similarly positive in their review of urban core living, according to Camden Miller, UB clinical assistant professor of urban planning and director of operations for the RBC, who managed the coalition’s survey effort. “Residents in downtown Buffalo remain hopeful, still wanting the same principles that the original Queen City Hub focused on—creating a vibrant, safe, and accessible downtown to live, work, play, and visit. The results from the survey and focus groups will help us begin working towards the needs of each group to create a downtown that serves all users.”

Capturing the unflagging commitment of Shibley and city leaders to downtown vitality, a recent op-ed in the Buffalo News, whose former publisher Stanford Lipsey fought for decades for the restoration of the Richardson Olmsted Complex, reflects on the effort’s balance of the “letter and spirit” of urban development.

“How is success measured? By bricks and mortar, yes, but also by the principles and tenets that hold ‘then and now’ together: interconnectivity and inclusion, from the waterfront to the Medical Campus. As the QCH plan states, ‘This is not just about starting something. In addition, it is about taking something that is already there and strengthening it, giving it greater vitality and preparing it to flourish into the future.’”

Best practices in urban planning and the coherence of Buffalo’s world-class urban design and historic architecture, eloquently organized by the Joseph Ellicott radial street plan, the Frederick Law Olmsted Park and Parkway System, the Lake Erie waterfront, and a commitment to preservation, climate resilience and equity – for the city and region – remain the context for decision making, according to project leaders.

Michael Schmand, executive director of Buffalo Place, a downtown advocacy group that has supported public space investments such as Cars Sharing Main Street, annual public events like the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop, and public safety and marketing since its founding in 1982, perhaps says it best. Schmand himself has worked with Shibley and his teams for decades.

“A good plan gives people hope. The Queen City Hub gave people a vision and got people to buy in. That plan has never gone away and has supported planning innovation for decades.”

“Our downtown is very resilient. It’s also important to the psyche of Western New York. There’s only one downtown. We are ready to create the neighborhood that we’ve always talked about and wanted. But we need to make sure everyone is behind the ask. It all has to work together.”