The proposed 21st Century Park on the Outer Harbor would be a public park for Buffalo, N.Y. at the edge of Lake Erie, a park Olmsted proposed for the waterfront in 1888, but that was never realized.

Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux began designing parks and parkways for Buffalo, N.Y. in 1868. One plan was for a large central park connected by parkways. As the city grew, Olmsted expanding his plan in 1888 to include a second park, South Park, at the southern boundary of the city where it met Lake Erie. The South Park plan, which included canals, water access, public spaces, athletic fields and tracks, was never approved; instead, two smaller parks were built, but without access to the waterfront.

Today, over 6, 400 feet of shoreline and 120-acres of the 240 acres Olmsted originally proposed for 21st Century Park lie unused. The nonprofit 21st Century Park on the Outer Harbor organization (21st Century) advocates resurrecting Olmsted's proposal for South Park and connecting the city to the waterfront. While Olmsted pictured a canal connecting the waterfront to downtown Buffalo, with a flurry of boating activity and islands for birds and wildlife, the 21st Century vision is a modern park on over 100 acres of Lake Erie waterfront land for public use and recreation for the people of Western New York.

21st Century deems Buffalo underserved in parkland, with 8.1 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. St. Paul, Minn., a city of similar density, has 14.1 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. Buffalo spends only $34 per resident on parks; St. Paul spends approximately $200.

The first challenge is cleaning up outer harbor brownfield acreage just outside of Erie Canal Harbor on the banks of Lake Erie. The area's factories used to produce cement, copper and steel. The brownfield mitigation is under the authority of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp.

The landscape architecture firm that designed Brooklyn Bridge Park, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates of Brooklyn, has already unveiled a conceptual rendering for the outer harbor park. The design, intended to stimulate public comment, was funded by the Margaret Wendt Foundation. A promenade, an amphitheater and dining are among the amenities envisioned in the conceptual rendering by the landscape architects. Commercial development away from the water, is also anticipated.

The park locus is between Wilkeson Pointe and the recently sold Terminals A & B. A 20-acre park is already completed on the northern portion of the outer harbor. 21st Century Park would be the southern anchor of the Niagara River Greenway, which comprises a system of parks and conservation areas linking 50 miles of bike trails, paths and waterways along the Niagara River, from Lake Ontario in the north to Lake Erie in the south.