Give Me CityGate

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published May 21, 2013 and can be found here.

   No, seriously - give CityGate to ME, because I want to redesign it. The current plan is not worthy of the name. I may be the only person in western NY who didn't crap themselves when they learned     Costco was coming

to town. I mean, Costco? Really? We need another one of these discount warehouses? Ok fine, I'll let you have your Costco. No complaints from me. On one condition: Re-do this idiotic site plan! Look at this...

   The current plan looks like Henrietta has swallowed up the entire town of Brighton and is invading the City of Rochester. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Ok, enough joking around. Look at the illustration above. All the new development is in Blue. Red is all the new parking. And I'm not even counting all of the new roadways needed to connect all this. Now, if we remove everything else, CityGate looks like this...

   The amount of space provided to put our vehicles is greater than the entire new development by some 20-25%.*

*The proposed multi-level parking garage is not even included here.

"Ok, so what, dude... why you gettin all bent out of shape for man?"

-- forehead slap --

I'll show you why I'm all bent out of shape...

   See this? If we take ALL of the buildings (in blue) and use them to line the existing streets and a few along the canal, NOW we'd have a REAL urban development.

Sidewalks and buildings that are close together make it easy for people to walk to and stroll from one building to the next. We'd have easy access for transit (i.e. quick stops along     East Henrietta Rd. & Westfall Rd.

). And I even included a     reasonable    amount of parking.

I've kept ALL of the buildings from the original plan - just moved them around. And LOOK at what we have now. A more attractive development that's less expensive to build and maintain. THIS is a destination I would get revved up about. A destination worthy of the name, "CityGate."

Or do we just accept anything that comes our way because we're desperate? I don't know, maybe that's how we do things around here.

* * *

UPDATE 1:    A meeting has been scheduled for AJ Costello & Sons to present their CityGate plans to the public...

• The meeting will start 6PM, Tuesday June 4, at St. Anne Church Social Hall,      1600 Mt. Hope Avenue

.

• Representatives from the City of Rochester will be on hand along with the neighborhood and business associations to answer questions.
• Daniel J. Hurley, President, Upper Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association, encourages you to send questions, concerns or suggestions to       [email protected]     . He will forward those on to the developer such that answers can be provided at the meeting. Information on public hearings and schedule will also be presented.

UPDATE 2:    A petition has been created which asks for changes in the CityGate plans, including preservation of the historic buildings, and a more walkable layout.     Sign on at Change.org    .