As a junior editor in Buffalo in the 1960s, I took an interest in the effort to locate the new UB campus in the site of the Niagara Urban Renewal Project. So I took note of comments in your March 24 issue. You quote him as asking whether an urban university setting contributed significantly to the creation of wealth in a marginal neighborhood. I can think of any number of them: Columbia University, New York University, The George Washington University, Georgetown University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, University of Toronto and so forth.
UB did not contribute much to the marginal community bordering the South Campus because that campus was allowed to deteriorate shamefully during the 1990s, and all the university's interests were tied to developing the commercial rim around the North Campus. One may never know whether racial considerations played a role in those decisions, but it is a point worth investigating by today's students and faculty. I think the halting efforts to build up downtown Buffalo's inner harbor sector, and the uneven development of the one-time Niagara Renewal Project, some 38 years after the UB setting controversy, tell their own plaintive story.
I do think the references on March 24 to the late Charles R. Diebold require a second look. Nothing is worse in a university setting than bad history. There was a diligent effort by reporters in 1966-67 to see if there was a link between the then chairman of the State University Construction Fund and the North Campus site, and none was found. The Pearce family held the property, and they needed nobody's handout.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
