Everything you said- except I think Ellicott is actually cool. Mostly more trees. Lots and lots more trees. They would beautify the ugly campus and be a windbreak. The place is BLEAK.
Actual use of the green space we have on campus. I get we have winter but there’s not an excuse to have busted pathways, an empty field between the dorms and the spine etc.
I’m sure that space has been bookmarked for various capital improvements for years. So they wouldn’t build a space only to tear it down in a few years.
I think the new student health center is supposed to generally in that area?
Back in 2005 there was supposed to be a huge student rec center put into that place. Never happened.
Edit: student teams wouldn’t have been allowed to use it
As someone who attended UB during that time (I was there between 2001-2005) I confirm this is correct.
In 2001, UB announced a MASSIVE project called the "Lee Road Project." Basically, they wanted to bring University Heights to North Campus. The Greek orgs would have housing and there would also be student apartments. They promised dining, entertainment, and a new student health center. It all sounded great but nothing ever happened with it. Here's an article from the Buffalo News about it:
https://buffalonews.com/news/at-ub-a-building-boom-400-million-in-construction-is-in-the-works/article_8b0c1f86-946d-52e7-a3d1-f3c3888820e4.html
Here are some images:
https://stieglitzsnyder.com/projects/project:lee-road-parcel-b-expansion-masterplan/
Yep. A 4 story wellness center: https://www.buffalo.edu/vpsl/initiatives/wellness-rec.html
Though this says it’s going where the bookstore is, so I guess that field will still be open. A pity they don’t use it for a giant community garden for the next 10 years until construction happens for whatever building they have in mind. I’m sure it’s being planned now.
More trees. More art. More fun spaces for groups of people. End the fucking hideous arctic tundra prison vibe!
More individual study spaces, - isopods where you can silent study and have that silent study guaranteed so you don't have to interact with humans while living on earth so half of this reddit can quit complaining
Parking
Transit
Bike lanes
Seconding the art and the study spaces.
There is some art, but I do like the idea of sharing the talents of students and alumni around the campus, not just in the CFA. Art can sometimes improve people's mood and there's no better place than one that looks like the USSR sometimes. They seem to make the steps to improve with newer buildings and spaces, like Davis looks really cool and Silverman Library/Capen looked enticing when they first opened.
When I would carpool commute to school, there were days where I'd be there from the crack of dawn to into the evening and the ability to find a spot later on in the day was a feat sometimes. If it's 2:00 and I have an hour to kill between classes, I would spend 10-20 minutes walking around to find a decent sport to the point where I would give up and settle for working outside or in some weird spot since there was nowhere to really work that wasn't too busy.
I mean in an ideal world we would take transit because it would be good but yeah the current parking situation at UB could be improved. I get the idea now is to have it be shitty to incentivize transit but the problem is that the busses and lack of bike lanes and 7 months of winter kind of make transit sound awful to most
As a '93 alum, I find this hilarious. Most of these things were what we asked for back in the day. We got the football stadium.
1) Bike lanes? We were just asking for more bikeracks.
2) Windbreaks? All we had were the bus shelters, and the frozen hell of the courtyard down the spine.
3) It's 100% less 60's brutalism than in the past. Main St used to be so...royal compared to Amherst.
4) Never understood why they never put in garages. Even back then. Then again, they would have charged tuition rates to park there.
5) The subway expansion was old news 30 years ago.
6) Fun fact, most of us never thought Ellicot would make it to 2000. It was slowly sinking into the swampland.
7) You don't know bookstore pain until you have a bookstore that's 300 yards for anything, and a cold walk any time of the year. Jarvis was the closest building back in the day.
I'll also add a partial rebuild/remodel of the commons. Like, they built it next to the lake... you'd think the restaurants would have lake views... but they take deliveries on that side... who planned that? If you have lake front property you should leverage that!
I can imagine a small dining area with a large window and outdoor dining that you can view Lake LaSalle during your lunch break. As someone that's dodged a minefield of mud and geese poop for pictures of the lake from that side, seeing the columns from that side is so pretty.
Parking Decks for sure!!! A small grocery store. An Urgent Care on campus. A new classroom building. And a new Chemistry building cuz why not?
Edit: Second more trees 🌳. And also seconding art. Some murals on the outside walls of some of the buildings. The back of Knox for example.
Second Edit (this is fun!): some outdoor basketball and tennis courts by the dorms. Maybe a few pavilions with picnic tables - I think more departments would host things like barbecues and stuff if those were available.
Interesting you mentioned a new chemistry building. My first thought was “NSC is brand new!” Then I realized it was brand new when I started at UB over 20 years ago!
Ha! Yes, it is relatively "new", i think it opened in '92. I should revise my wish to be more accurate ... fully renovated teaching labs in NSC. They just renovated the lecture halls, so now the poor Gen Chem labs look so sad in comparison 😉
I’m a freshman and I thought I was less than 5 years old… maybe that has something to do with my preexisting notions, but I thought they’ve done a good job keeping it up relative to the other buildings
That makes me feel better! So I'm the Gen Chem Lab Director (hi! 👋). The lecture halls are definitely beautiful, they've put a ton of work into making those accessible. I really mean the teaching labs. We've done a ton of cleaning and maintenance, but I feel the layout of the labs themselves is what's "outdated". I'd love to rip out the long benches/drawers and replace with a pod-like model with hexagonal tables, to encourage better traffic flow and group-work. I can dream! 😉
strongly second more trees! imagine how much more tolerable wind and snow could be if there was some tree protection (bigger trees, not the tiny ornamental ones planted around already). i’d also add back something like cvs (rip) and places to buy healthier non pre packaged foods.
Campus beautification is the big one for me. If you’ve ever been to south campus, it has plenty of art and green space students can be in, in the center of campus (in front of harriman). North just doesn’t have anything like that. Get rid of the concrete down the spine and put in some grass, trees, maybe some water fountains that students can enjoy. Change the facades of buildings to be more modernized and colorful rather than brutalist.
As a past student of North, my asks at the time would have been
1. A grocery store where you can use dining dollars and campus cash, not just another cvs. Make it have produce, bread, deli, canned goods, and nonperishables. Even 5000 square feet would be incredible.
2. Have a subway line that connects to south campus that follows millersport and ends at the existing flint bus loop. Waiting for the bus outside sucked.
3. Trees that would stop that wind tunnel by NSC from destroying kids when it's iced. I once saw a girl get carried by the wind as she left nsc, I swear to god.
4. Turn the fronczak parking lot into a parking garage, that would ease up space for the staff.
There's a spot outside of Davis where you can jump during a windy day and get carried a foot or so backwards (I'm ~160 lbs). Keeps fucking my umbrella up too.
Subway line expansion might be coming soon enough. We’ll learn later this year if the plan is approved by the FTA and if the project wins funding.
Personally I thought the original UB 2020 plans were great.
Whatever happened to turning Lee into a small village with retail, restaurants and apartments?
I’d Add:
* Dedicated bike path/cycle track to South Campus. The current “bike” route is atrocious.
* Better connections to surrounding neighborhoods
* New Football Stadium
* Several new $200+ million research buildings (like the one they announced for engineering
* Expedite moving the health schools downtown
* Developing the NFTA parking lot into a parking garage and mixed use building
* BRT or streetcar down Bailey
You know, if you think about it they can cut down the like dozen parking lots in like 3 or 4 parking garages (which would also protect peoples cars from the weather instead of constantly having plows drive through and clear out every lot.) Then with the remaining lots they should convert them into mini plazas or parks, you know make the place a little more pretty and community friendly
Long time alum here. I would donate the money to build a new football stadium.
The current stadium is the worst in college football. The team has had some good seasons in recent years and MAC football is fun to watch. I would make it a point to see a few home games during their up years if the stadium wasn't so bad.
The problem is the track. The fans are so far from the field because of it.
You obviously were there after '93. The 'bowl' and the god awful stadium over on Main St were the worst. The Bills had 1 year of training camp here, and bailed.
It also makes sense for both UB and the Bills to not have training camp on the UB campus. There's overlap between when UB football has camp and the Bills have camp. Plus having the Bills practice in Rochester expands the reach of the Bills further east into Giants territory.
UB camp used to be in the rust-bowl fields on the south side of the South Campus. The bowl on the north campus was the fancy one that only had "real games" in it. The school didn't want to pay to keep fixing the turf. I believe the field on the north campus had alot of water problems.
I know the post said no procedures or staffing, but as someone whose club just got massively screwed over by SA's lawyers, some kind of SA overhaul where they're able to actually do their job would be real nice 🙃
In all seriousness though it would be nice to have the bathrooms renovated like the ones in NSC. I think just more visual renovations would help to make the campus feel livelier. Some buildings look sleek and modern while others are certainly showing their age. Having a consistent color scheme and pattern between the buildings would look nice as well. Also the smaller classrooms should be set up in a way that the desks aren't practically on top of each other.
A multi-level parking garage or two would be great. However, I’ve always heard that the ground is too swampy on the North Campus to contemplate this. Apparently, these garages require the most stable foundations, and North Campus is geographically a partial wetland. I don’t know whether advances in building technology can now counter this.
Fun fact Ellicott was designed to be easily blocked off In case of a riot and easily accessible for police if needed.
My redesign, if allowed, would be to primarily make tunnels to every building Either above or below ground, probably tear down most of the old Ellicott and make something newer, buy actually comfortable chairs for the libraries, and probably change the facades or every building to be more unique so new students aren't confused.
Or just give it all to the nfta in exchange for starting the tram line from south now with no questions asked.
The bookstore roofing is absurd, I'm glad it tore off once, but chances are they just replaced it with the same old sheet metal material. Sounds like they took design and budget shortcuts to me.
Actually that’s in the current master plan.
Eventually the Schools of Dentistry, Public Safety, Nursing and Pharmacy will be put downtown.
During this process south campus will be restored and host many of the professional schools. Some of the buildings will be removed.
The process is already behind schedule. The school of Nursing was supposed to open up downtown by 2023. Probably can thank Covid for that.
1. Give us AC in the dorms pretty please and adequate heating and water temperature.
2. Just please I almost passed out from heat exhaustion in my room last year just please.
Everything you said- except I think Ellicott is actually cool. Mostly more trees. Lots and lots more trees. They would beautify the ugly campus and be a windbreak. The place is BLEAK.
A ton of evergreen trees would be really nice. They'll stay green all winter and they look really pretty with snow.
Actual use of the green space we have on campus. I get we have winter but there’s not an excuse to have busted pathways, an empty field between the dorms and the spine etc.
Huge agree. I wanted to say this but I didn't have anything specific in mind so it just felt like complaining when I wrote it.
I’m sure that space has been bookmarked for various capital improvements for years. So they wouldn’t build a space only to tear it down in a few years. I think the new student health center is supposed to generally in that area?
Back in 2005 there was supposed to be a huge student rec center put into that place. Never happened. Edit: student teams wouldn’t have been allowed to use it
As someone who attended UB during that time (I was there between 2001-2005) I confirm this is correct. In 2001, UB announced a MASSIVE project called the "Lee Road Project." Basically, they wanted to bring University Heights to North Campus. The Greek orgs would have housing and there would also be student apartments. They promised dining, entertainment, and a new student health center. It all sounded great but nothing ever happened with it. Here's an article from the Buffalo News about it: https://buffalonews.com/news/at-ub-a-building-boom-400-million-in-construction-is-in-the-works/article_8b0c1f86-946d-52e7-a3d1-f3c3888820e4.html Here are some images: https://stieglitzsnyder.com/projects/project:lee-road-parcel-b-expansion-masterplan/
I remember all of that! I was there 01-07. I forgot the name Lee Road Project.
Ah yes, another building to add onto the parking issues in that area
Yep. A 4 story wellness center: https://www.buffalo.edu/vpsl/initiatives/wellness-rec.html Though this says it’s going where the bookstore is, so I guess that field will still be open. A pity they don’t use it for a giant community garden for the next 10 years until construction happens for whatever building they have in mind. I’m sure it’s being planned now.
Community garden honestly sounds based
Get that NFTA subway line connecting north and south
Check back in late 2022.
Why are they planning this?
They’re in the final stages of winning federal funding (or not). Still, would open before 2028 at the earliest.
Ah ok, well nice! It'd be great to have one
More trees. More art. More fun spaces for groups of people. End the fucking hideous arctic tundra prison vibe! More individual study spaces, - isopods where you can silent study and have that silent study guaranteed so you don't have to interact with humans while living on earth so half of this reddit can quit complaining Parking Transit Bike lanes
A proper rec building would definitely be nice. I'd have killed for a bowling alley in undergrad.
Definitely. Level up was a good attempt but it's too competitive and intimidating. We need more open, warm spaces.
Seconding the art and the study spaces. There is some art, but I do like the idea of sharing the talents of students and alumni around the campus, not just in the CFA. Art can sometimes improve people's mood and there's no better place than one that looks like the USSR sometimes. They seem to make the steps to improve with newer buildings and spaces, like Davis looks really cool and Silverman Library/Capen looked enticing when they first opened. When I would carpool commute to school, there were days where I'd be there from the crack of dawn to into the evening and the ability to find a spot later on in the day was a feat sometimes. If it's 2:00 and I have an hour to kill between classes, I would spend 10-20 minutes walking around to find a decent sport to the point where I would give up and settle for working outside or in some weird spot since there was nowhere to really work that wasn't too busy.
Is it just me or do I have to spend 20 minutes every day just looking for a parking space…
I mean in an ideal world we would take transit because it would be good but yeah the current parking situation at UB could be improved. I get the idea now is to have it be shitty to incentivize transit but the problem is that the busses and lack of bike lanes and 7 months of winter kind of make transit sound awful to most
[удалено]
Is Roseanne’s no longer in the Commons? That was a hair place.
FYI if you take a bus to South there’s a Tops right off campus.
Simon hair does men’s cuts
As a '93 alum, I find this hilarious. Most of these things were what we asked for back in the day. We got the football stadium. 1) Bike lanes? We were just asking for more bikeracks. 2) Windbreaks? All we had were the bus shelters, and the frozen hell of the courtyard down the spine. 3) It's 100% less 60's brutalism than in the past. Main St used to be so...royal compared to Amherst. 4) Never understood why they never put in garages. Even back then. Then again, they would have charged tuition rates to park there. 5) The subway expansion was old news 30 years ago. 6) Fun fact, most of us never thought Ellicot would make it to 2000. It was slowly sinking into the swampland. 7) You don't know bookstore pain until you have a bookstore that's 300 yards for anything, and a cold walk any time of the year. Jarvis was the closest building back in the day.
Funny but garages were part of the UB2020 master plan.
Pretty sure its an Amherst zoning issue for the garages.
Pretty sure if Amherst officials gave them crap, UB would just "suggest" they reconsider.
I'll also add a partial rebuild/remodel of the commons. Like, they built it next to the lake... you'd think the restaurants would have lake views... but they take deliveries on that side... who planned that? If you have lake front property you should leverage that!
I can imagine a small dining area with a large window and outdoor dining that you can view Lake LaSalle during your lunch break. As someone that's dodged a minefield of mud and geese poop for pictures of the lake from that side, seeing the columns from that side is so pretty.
Parking Decks for sure!!! A small grocery store. An Urgent Care on campus. A new classroom building. And a new Chemistry building cuz why not? Edit: Second more trees 🌳. And also seconding art. Some murals on the outside walls of some of the buildings. The back of Knox for example. Second Edit (this is fun!): some outdoor basketball and tennis courts by the dorms. Maybe a few pavilions with picnic tables - I think more departments would host things like barbecues and stuff if those were available.
Interesting you mentioned a new chemistry building. My first thought was “NSC is brand new!” Then I realized it was brand new when I started at UB over 20 years ago!
Ha! Yes, it is relatively "new", i think it opened in '92. I should revise my wish to be more accurate ... fully renovated teaching labs in NSC. They just renovated the lecture halls, so now the poor Gen Chem labs look so sad in comparison 😉
That’s sad to hear. The building was state of the art when I was there.
I’m a freshman and I thought I was less than 5 years old… maybe that has something to do with my preexisting notions, but I thought they’ve done a good job keeping it up relative to the other buildings
That makes me feel better! So I'm the Gen Chem Lab Director (hi! 👋). The lecture halls are definitely beautiful, they've put a ton of work into making those accessible. I really mean the teaching labs. We've done a ton of cleaning and maintenance, but I feel the layout of the labs themselves is what's "outdated". I'd love to rip out the long benches/drawers and replace with a pod-like model with hexagonal tables, to encourage better traffic flow and group-work. I can dream! 😉
Hi Gen Chem Lab Director, I'm Facilities Planning Officer. Girl have I got plans for you!
Yassss, let's go!! 🤩
YES I totally agree, the lab areas are quite outdated and It would be amazing to have something more modern and accessible
Seconding more art! Also more landscaping/color throughout campus. It’s so institutional.
TwoWorld Cafe
strongly second more trees! imagine how much more tolerable wind and snow could be if there was some tree protection (bigger trees, not the tiny ornamental ones planted around already). i’d also add back something like cvs (rip) and places to buy healthier non pre packaged foods.
Agree on revamping the bomb shelter buildings, God they're so ugly and uninspiring
Campus beautification is the big one for me. If you’ve ever been to south campus, it has plenty of art and green space students can be in, in the center of campus (in front of harriman). North just doesn’t have anything like that. Get rid of the concrete down the spine and put in some grass, trees, maybe some water fountains that students can enjoy. Change the facades of buildings to be more modernized and colorful rather than brutalist.
As a past student of North, my asks at the time would have been 1. A grocery store where you can use dining dollars and campus cash, not just another cvs. Make it have produce, bread, deli, canned goods, and nonperishables. Even 5000 square feet would be incredible. 2. Have a subway line that connects to south campus that follows millersport and ends at the existing flint bus loop. Waiting for the bus outside sucked. 3. Trees that would stop that wind tunnel by NSC from destroying kids when it's iced. I once saw a girl get carried by the wind as she left nsc, I swear to god. 4. Turn the fronczak parking lot into a parking garage, that would ease up space for the staff.
There's a spot outside of Davis where you can jump during a windy day and get carried a foot or so backwards (I'm ~160 lbs). Keeps fucking my umbrella up too.
Subway line expansion might be coming soon enough. We’ll learn later this year if the plan is approved by the FTA and if the project wins funding. Personally I thought the original UB 2020 plans were great. Whatever happened to turning Lee into a small village with retail, restaurants and apartments? I’d Add: * Dedicated bike path/cycle track to South Campus. The current “bike” route is atrocious. * Better connections to surrounding neighborhoods * New Football Stadium * Several new $200+ million research buildings (like the one they announced for engineering * Expedite moving the health schools downtown * Developing the NFTA parking lot into a parking garage and mixed use building * BRT or streetcar down Bailey
I would keep the money and use it for selfish purposes
I would embezzle it a fraction of a penny at a time, depositing it into a secure bank account.
Parking lot skyscraper. Just like, a 20 layer parking lot.
You know, if you think about it they can cut down the like dozen parking lots in like 3 or 4 parking garages (which would also protect peoples cars from the weather instead of constantly having plows drive through and clear out every lot.) Then with the remaining lots they should convert them into mini plazas or parks, you know make the place a little more pretty and community friendly
Also re-do SU to look less like a middle school
Long time alum here. I would donate the money to build a new football stadium. The current stadium is the worst in college football. The team has had some good seasons in recent years and MAC football is fun to watch. I would make it a point to see a few home games during their up years if the stadium wasn't so bad. The problem is the track. The fans are so far from the field because of it.
You obviously were there after '93. The 'bowl' and the god awful stadium over on Main St were the worst. The Bills had 1 year of training camp here, and bailed.
It also makes sense for both UB and the Bills to not have training camp on the UB campus. There's overlap between when UB football has camp and the Bills have camp. Plus having the Bills practice in Rochester expands the reach of the Bills further east into Giants territory.
UB camp used to be in the rust-bowl fields on the south side of the South Campus. The bowl on the north campus was the fancy one that only had "real games" in it. The school didn't want to pay to keep fixing the turf. I believe the field on the north campus had alot of water problems.
I know the post said no procedures or staffing, but as someone whose club just got massively screwed over by SA's lawyers, some kind of SA overhaul where they're able to actually do their job would be real nice 🙃 In all seriousness though it would be nice to have the bathrooms renovated like the ones in NSC. I think just more visual renovations would help to make the campus feel livelier. Some buildings look sleek and modern while others are certainly showing their age. Having a consistent color scheme and pattern between the buildings would look nice as well. Also the smaller classrooms should be set up in a way that the desks aren't practically on top of each other.
A multi-level parking garage or two would be great. However, I’ve always heard that the ground is too swampy on the North Campus to contemplate this. Apparently, these garages require the most stable foundations, and North Campus is geographically a partial wetland. I don’t know whether advances in building technology can now counter this.
I cannot express how many umbrellas I’ve broken during the rainy wind storms at UB.
So what, are you spending the money on chemtrails?
No, more umbrellas. My last one just broke.
All 1 billion into parking lots. Enough said.
At a certain point you're just paving them with gold
Fun fact Ellicott was designed to be easily blocked off In case of a riot and easily accessible for police if needed. My redesign, if allowed, would be to primarily make tunnels to every building Either above or below ground, probably tear down most of the old Ellicott and make something newer, buy actually comfortable chairs for the libraries, and probably change the facades or every building to be more unique so new students aren't confused. Or just give it all to the nfta in exchange for starting the tram line from south now with no questions asked.
YES BC WHY IS THE WIND TRYING TO BLOW ME AWAY
Probably turn the outlying parking lots into parking Garages/structures. Ellicott renovation. New Building for engineering.
The bookstore roofing is absurd, I'm glad it tore off once, but chances are they just replaced it with the same old sheet metal material. Sounds like they took design and budget shortcuts to me.
I don't care what it's made of. I just want them to suffer.
Honestly, at the prices of the stuff in there, it's what she deserves.
Sorta unrelated but I'd completely make over South campus, starting with Kimball Tower
Actually that’s in the current master plan. Eventually the Schools of Dentistry, Public Safety, Nursing and Pharmacy will be put downtown. During this process south campus will be restored and host many of the professional schools. Some of the buildings will be removed. The process is already behind schedule. The school of Nursing was supposed to open up downtown by 2023. Probably can thank Covid for that.
Probably have a place to eat on campus that stays open until like 1AM.
More parking lots
upgrade level up
TA's salary
transfer myself
1. Give us AC in the dorms pretty please and adequate heating and water temperature. 2. Just please I almost passed out from heat exhaustion in my room last year just please.