Nkosi Alleyne
Danielle Anderson
Andrew Battaglia
Jocelyne BelloMartinez
Vincent Bianco
Juliette Brown
Meghan Edwards
Alexander Eisenhauer
Jake Gunning
Lyndsey Hook
Janhavi Jogleker
Christopher Kimmerly
Megan Koury
Nicole Little
Natasha Mendis
Nicholas Miller
Sean Oliver
Matthew Pearson
John Quigley
Gerardo Rivera
Evan Roorand
Brennon Thompson
Louis Tomassi
Alexandrea Volungus
Kristopher Walton
Nina Zesky

Hiroaki Hata
Eric Recoon
Ernest Sternberg

URP 581
ARC 607
END 593
Fall 2019

MUP
March
MSRED

A team of graduate students generated a potential plan for ECMC to develop a 17-acre Kensington Heights site recently added to the existing campus. Twentyseven graduate students lead by three faculty members in Architecture, Real Estate Development, and Urban Planning endeavored to meet the community needs identified in Building Together, a report generated by ECMC and the UB Regional Institute. The primary goals were to incorporate retail, grocery, affordable housing, and recreation, and health to encourage placemaking and community economic development.

The team explored national trends in a changing healthcare environment and were inspired by the hospital’s one-time garden-focused campus. The plan aims to serve patients, ECMC employees, and the neighborhood. Although the studio was originally asked for proposals for the newly added site, through research and design explorations, they identified the potential for a new plan that encompasses the entire campus. 

In order to better integrate the new 17- acre site with the rest of the campus, the studio proposes re-envisioning the ECMC campus as three interrelated sectors: West Campus, comprising the new Kensington Heights site; Mid-Campus, the area between the new site and the hospital’s main north-south axis; and East Campus, extending from that axis to Grider Street. The goal in signage, streets, and pedestrian walkways, as well as landscape, is to be one campus with three sectors.

Proposals for West Campus:

- A Senior Affordable Housing Complex, including an Assisted Living Facility and/or Skilled Nursing Facility.

- A Wellness Center including gyms, therapeutic pools, food pharmacy, and educational and therapeutic activities that confront the social-determinants of illhealth.

- A cooperative Industrial Laundry will provide bulk laundry services to hospitals and other institutions and provide jobs. Additional Proposals For Mid-Campus:

- A Palliative Care Facility

- A Transitional Housing facility will provide supervised shelter for post-discharge patients

- A Storage Facility to compensate for presently inadequate facilities

- A Public Health and Administrative Building Additional Proposals for East Campus:

- Gardens and Greenways to improve the public presence of the campus and improve circulation.

- A Professional Practice Office Building at the campus northeast corner.

- A parking structure

- Increased campus activity, the new image, and accessibility should spur public and private investment leading to

- Mixed-Use Infill on Grider Street.

The key to this campus-wide plan is a grid-patterned street network on the West Campus, with a primary corridor (the Spine) extending from Fillmore Avenue to the Mid-Campus. Upon future demolition and rearrangement of Mid-Campus activities, the Spine could extend to Grider Street. The east-west Spine opens traffic access, creates a desirable eastwest promenade, and sets up a logical arrangement of future development sites.

The studio also proposes a new heart for the campus right at the intersection of the Spine and the East Campus. Easily accessible from any part of the campus, it will be a new quad visible from Grider Street and the Mid Campus. The heart of the campus should be open to diverse campus populations, including senior residents, patients, kids, and families headed to the Wellness Center, and medical staff. 

From the outset, the studio put the highest stress on the need for a grocery and related retail. However, after consulting with industry experts, considering precedents, and studying financial feasibility, they concluded it would most likely meet with success off-campus or on the East Campus with Grider Street access. If a grocery type of use could be made to work, it would likely coexist with the concept of a wellness center and food pharmacy.

The studio reimagined ECMC as a healthcare campus that will continue to grow in vibrancy and active use, even as patterns of healthcare delivery evolve.