The idea of turning the Kensington Expressway into a half-mile-long tunnel and creating a new city park on top of the covered portion is intriguing. But enthusiasm, in this case, needs tempering with a strong dose of reality.
The biggest such dose is the likely price tag: $40 million to cover the expressway from East Ferry to Best streets. For a cash-strapped and already state-dependent city, this is not a proposal that forces its way to the top of the to-do list.
Masten Council Member Antoine M. Thompson is sponsoring a resolution calling on state and city officials to study the feasibility of covering part of the state highway, still called the Kensington although it's been designated officially as the Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway. The key question such a study should consider is how such a major project could be funded.
State Sen. Byron W. Brown, D-Buffalo and former Masten Council member, wants the state and federal governments to invest heavily in the tunnel-and-park project. He should ensure the bulk of the funding comes from those sources - and that such funding simply doesn't divert state and federal aid from other projects. Locally, this area has other priorities that cannot be ignored.
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As noted by Vincent LoVallo, the mayor's chief of staff, it's a laudable project but it's not the most pressing target on the radar screen. We have other school, housing, parks and quality-of-life issues that are higher in priority, with very few dollars to translate needs into action.
Undoubtedly, the old Humboldt Parkway area is a neighborhood that was torn apart in the 1960s when the expressway was built, unfortunately disconnecting the city's historic and now-treasured Olmsted parks system. This kind of desecration of urban areas occurred throughout the nation, which has recently awakened to the scars of "modernization."
Sometimes timing is everything, and this project would certainly fall in line with a "beautification" project that's in the planning stages for the stretch of the Kensington that runs between Fillmore Avenue and Goodell Street.
The idea has strong appeal as an effort to rectify past planning errors in an East Side neighborhood, restore part of the greenway connections that once graced the city and perhaps add another positive element to the quality of life in the city. That's why the idea merits study.
But it also demands careful and realistic planning, perhaps involving a section-by-section approach that starts with a small section of expressway decking that would allow expansion of the Museum of Science, and then adding more incremental sections as money allows and public demand dictates. That would require long-term planning commitments, but it could prove less of a funding hurdle.
