Rochester’s assets – including distinctive, livable neighborhoods; rich arts and cultural offerings; diverse health systems; beautiful parks, and historic architecture – make our city a good place to live. Couple that with progress happening downtown – the Inner Loop project, residential construction, planning for a new Main Street – and there’s even more reason to feel positively.
Yet Rochester will never become the mature, magnetic, and thriving civic center of the region until two essential areas are effectively addressed: 1) the Genesee River Corridor (primarily downtown) and 2) our public transportation system. Creating a first-class river experience and transit system will move Rochester to the top tier of great American cities, midsize or otherwise. These two initiatives can be powerfully transformative for the economic and social fortunes of our city and region.
Too often, local leaders have viewed spending money in these two realms as an expense (and thus not affordable) rather than as an investment toward future economic and civic rewards. If we keep operating in our conservative “business as usual” mode, Rochester will continue to envy cities like Chattanooga, Greenville, Milwaukee, Columbus, Grand Rapids, and St. Paul, which are leaders in their regions. All have made major strategic urban investments that make their cities attractive choices for people and businesses looking to move.
In Chattanooga, a private non-profit organization, the River City Company, was formed in 1986 to invigorate the city’s riverfront in partnership with the public sector. It was so successful that now the River City Company is the catalytic development force for the entire downtown. In the early 90’s, an electric-powered shuttle bus fleet was also developed in Chattanooga, effectively connecting downtown destinations and parking facilities.
St. Paul created a similar non-profit, which has been responsible for dramatically enhancing the river’s edge. More recently, Columbus created a completely new downtown riverfront. Columbus also has a circulator bus system connecting the downtown to the city’s vibrant and historic neighborhoods.
Milwaukee created the RiverWalk, a two-mile pedestrian walkway that seamlessly edges the river downtown, providing room for green space, restaurants, boat docks, and other lively civic amenities. Today Milwaukee also has an extensive circulator trolley bus system.
Guiding the development of all of these initiatives was a physical Vision Plan, a detailed document, citizen based, extremely graphic, that provides the roadmap for planning, implementation, and promotion – and in turn helps excite the community to action and to identify and develop funding sources.
We have great opportunity in Rochester, but we must capitalize on it. Let’s bring together our county, city, RTS, business, and citizen leaders to achieve this vision:
- A beautifully developed, fully accessible river corridor that will draw people to our special attractions and river-enhanced downtown. More people mean more jobs, vitality, and economic opportunity, and these spark pride and community spirit.
- A fully developed public transit system (bus, circulator, street car) that connects residents and visitors conveniently and comfortably to city jobs, venues, services, and amenities in an efficient, frequent, sustainable, and equitable manner.
Because both initiatives address critical issues like jobs and accessibility, they will help greatly to reduce our city’s well-documented poverty.
Commitment to these two endeavors requires our own Vision Plan for the River Corridor and a separate Vision Plan for a Citywide Enhanced Transit System. Fortunately, our City officials have already taken a foundational step with regard to the river, with the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program draft report.
Outside experts agree strongly with turning this vision into reality. Speakers in the Reshaping Rochester Lecture Series, sponsored by the Community Design Center of Rochester, have repeatedly recommended dramatically developing our river and transit systems. How long must we wait to make these investments for our 21st-century future?
Roger Brown is a board member of Community Design Center Rochester.
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2016.
Someone with a plan. YES.
Isn’t Crossroads park and the garage due to be upgraded? Maybe they could make that the gathering place downtown rather than parcel 5.
Crossroads park’s location doesn’t work as a gathering place. It’s not on the way to anything. It’s long and skinny. You don’t really see it from nearby buildings. It has few, and unappealing entrances and exits. Much of it abuts buildings that turn their back on the river and park. The federal buildings are a dead zone. That said, I support improving the park – we just need a viable vision of what could work there.
I’d like to build on the points made here and suggest that the goals of an enhanced river corridor and better public transportation are closely linked. “Active transportation” encompasses people walking, riding bicycles, and using public transportation as an integral part of how they get around. The Genesee River Trail is the crown jewel of our river today, and if extended through downtown, could be the heart of a world class active transportation corridor. This corridor would be a great asset to residential, commercial, and recreational development on our river. Integrating this corridor with enhanced public transportation, ride sharing, car sharing, bike sharing, cycle tracks, bike lanes, bicycle boulevards, and, most importantly, well maintained (and clear of snow) sidewalks, will help make Rochester a great place for people of all incomes and ages to live, work, and play.
As Irene Allen noted, Crossroads Park suffers from effectively being a cul de sac. It needs sprucing up and active programming, but most importantly it needs to have a purpose. I suggest better links to State Street, coordinated development across the river that utilizes the pedestrian bridge, and developing a decent way to get from Crossroads Park to High Falls. It’s infuriating that one can practically throw a ball from the park to High Falls, but that there is no pleasant way to walk there! The railroad and the remnants of the former “loop” make this hard, but it’s what the park needs to become a functioning, healthy, “place”.
Wow…. this isn’t even close to addressing the problems. The problems with the city are education and poverty. You can fix up the river, which already has some nice parts near UR, and you can build more housing downtown and a hotel for the Museum of Play, but that doesn’t help anyone living in a slum. All that does is create even more separation from the rich and well off and the typical Rochester person.
Also the transit issues aren’t as bad as people think. The new bus station is beauty, if not kind of pointless without seating. They need to make the city’s bus line schedules clearer, but they already have late night service, weekend and holiday service which is more than even Boston can claim. Yet very little has been done to address biking issues in the city. The main one isn’t that it’s not safe, New Yorkers can’t drive, nothing will change that, it’s that once you reach where you want there are very few bike racks.
If you don’t help with education people remain poor, poor people will sell drugs, drugs equal crime. You can throw some paint on the river and add useless street cars to make the city look pretty, but it will just be an illusion.
Crossroads Park is a park with a parking garage below it. Eliminating the surface lot serving the Federal Building and incorporating it with the garage will allow you to almost double its size and width. As I stated earlier, the garage is slatted for a rehab, so hopefully the big picture is being looked at.
And further, north of Andrews st is a ton of vacant land along the river.
@David4 I would submit that education, poverty and urban design are all compatible and interdependent. When kids go to school in a city or neighborhood that doesn’t reflect who they are, or does not bring joy, then where is the motivation to learn and give back to the community? When we watch protests on TV and people are ransacking their own neighborhoods. we ask why. that is because they do not feel that it belongs to them. The design of Rochester currently caters to heavily to people passing through by car, either to work or shop, or dine. So, investing in a riverfront will provide a destination for city residents and a hub around which local pride will grow.
The city has also started making great strides in bicycle infrastructure (for an American city anyway). Check out Lake Ave, Crittenden Place, Chestnut St, Court Street, and the new bike parking and corrals that have begun to pop up around the city. It is a good start, and it can only improve.
As for transit, I definitely agree that the route layout needs optimizing. More crosstown options and higher frequencies need to be available. Investment in transit (including streetcars and circulators) will help residents and visitors from different walks of get a better Rochester experience. Deadly roads like Lake Ave are prime to become a transit corridor; imagine a streetcar that takes you from downtown out to the lakeshore and back, with plenty of stops in between.
We can’t just throw money at schools and ignore the environment around them. By making the city more pleasant and safe through the built environment, I think people will be all the more inspired to invest in education and give back to challenged communities,
@Nick R – “imagine a streetcar that takes you from downtown out to the lakeshore and back, with plenty of stops in between.” – We already have that, it’s called the “1/1X – Lake”.
Please forgive me but I don’t understand the obsession with transit. People with disposable income (i.e., the people who spend money on restaurants, retail, arts, etc.) 9 times out of 10 will choose their personal vehicle. Rochester (currently) doesn’t have the population, job, or “attraction” density to make transit very appealing or to justify many crosstown, circulator, or “street car” routes (if any). The demand simply isn’t there.
As for capitalizing on the river… ABSOLUTELY. Crossroads “Park” is an embarrassment. The city should implement the recent study recommendations ASAP.
There are pockets of activity which are encouraging (Inner Loop project will provide a significant boost), but what downtown desperately needs is more JOBS and MARKET-RATE housing… Kudos to those companies CHOOSING downtown over the ‘burbs (CGI, Nothnagle, D&C, ESL, et al.) – THIS is what will transform Rochester!
@Nick R
I’m sorry but that is silly and already proven to be incorrect. As J said, there is already a bus to the lake, the 1. $3 gets you a day pass. Also if need be having a bus you can change the routes. A street car on a track is expensive and pointless as no one will use it and you can’t change the route to meet demand like a bus. Plus once again the bus station is a work of art.
Also parks won’t make things magically better. A town near my home town spent $80 milline dollars on new bridges and parks and bike trails…. and they have been spray painted and aren’t upkeep. But it’s good they spent $2 million for the green and $800,000 on a clock when firing dozen of teachers. To prove that parks and a nice outside doesn’t matter just look at the high falls bridge. That area is a work of natural art that no other city has in it’s downtown and there is NOTHING around it, at all, besides the beer company. That’s pathetic and just further proof that even if you have a nice park and a place for people to go doesn’t mean people will go.
We already have things, and no one goes to them. So wishing “If we build even more things for people to not go to or use then maybe Rochester will become awesome!” is a fantasy. Just keep throwing money away with new parks and a useless road car, it won’t change a thing, because it hasn’t yet.
I believe our metropolitan community could be enhanced by these and other physical or economic projects, but unless our city sincerely (and with intention to disrupt and transform) addresses the status quo which includes unhealthy degrees of racism. poverty, segregation/exclusion, privilege/cronyism and corruption – all of the rest is moot. We will be on a regressive trajectory.