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Robert Moses Parkway North and South Reconfiguration
Niagara Falls, New York
USA Niagara Development Corporation’s Board of Directors has approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the City of Niagara Falls, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), for planning and design work to reconfigure the Robert Moses Parkway’s (RMP) North and South segments that feed into the city.
The goal of the MOU is to advance two future RMP projects – the North & South initiatives – into formal planning and design. The RMP South project was included as the “signature” project in USA Niagara’s 2005 Downtown Niagara Falls Multi-Modal Access Program, to re-connect downtown Niagara Falls to the upper Niagara River. The concept calls for the removal of the elevated embankment that blocks views of the river and replace it with a traffic circle at the John B. Daly Blvd entrance into the city, creating improved pedestrian access to the waterfront.
Because the proposal for RMP South project has been advanced through a public planning process, the MOU calls for it to be advanced to preliminary and final design. The project will open up over 40 acres of property to more direct access to the River’s edge, making it more valuable for rehabilitation and infill development.
The RMP North project involves undertaking the required formal public planning process to develop and assess detailed alternatives for reconfiguring the Parkway corridor, generally extending from downtown Niagara Falls to Lewiston, including concepts outlined in the City’s 2004 Strategic Master Plan and other prior proposals. This process would result in identifying locally viable alternatives, which will be included in a project scoping document, the required first step toward obtaining state/federal funding and realizing a future reconfiguration project. Efforts will focus on techniques to maximize the cultural and economic benefits of a RMP North reconfiguration, which would open about 200 acres of land for improved gorge access within the City of Niagara Falls alone.
The total cost for the planning and design work is budgeted at $2 million. Eighty percent of the costs ($1.6 million) would be funded through federal transportation funds once the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council places the project on the local Transportation Improvement Program, the regional plan for federally funded transportation projects. Use of these funds requires a 20 percent non-federal match, which would be distributed among the MOU agencies. The city will contribute $70,000 in matching funds, with state agencies providing the balance of $330,000.
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