Rebuilding Lakeview House at Front Park, which was demolished in the 1890s.

It was an unexcelled panorama that made the 35-acre Front, as Frederick Law Olmsted originally named what is now Front Park, Buffalo’s most popular recreational destination after it was completed in the early 1870s.

If the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy’s $428 million “Plan for the 21st Century” is carried out, the long-lost Lakeview House, designed by Olmsted’s partner Calvert Vaux, will soon reappear.

So will dozens of other structures, gardens, pathways, ponds and lakes that time and neglect erased from Olmsted’s monumental 19th century plan for the nation’s first network of interconnected urban parks, parkways and circles.

Shaped over the past three years by community members, architects and the University at Buffalo Urban Design Project, the 20-year master plan is nothing if not ambitious — and expensive.

Its architects make no apology for thinking big about the future of what Thomas Herrera-Mishler, conservancy chief executive officer, calls “an under-performing asset” that should be among Buffalo’s best selling points. The cost may be steep, but it is “not beyond this community’s capacity,” the planners assert.

The price for restoring the parks over two decades is an estimated $252.5 million in 2008 dollars — a huge challenge in itself. But the conservancy and the public “are asking for more” — to enhance the system by connecting it to greenways and to undertake projects outside the parks, they add. Those measures add up to an additional $175.5 million.

“Why aim low?” Herrera-Mishler said. “If you have low expectations, that’s what you get. Buffalo deserves much better.”

About 75 percent of the five-year plan, which will be folded into the City of Buffalo’s comprehensive plan, is expected to be underwritten by various levels of government, and the rest through private donations, the authors calculate.

In a city that spends less than $10 a year per capita on its parks — the national average is $80 — plenty of help from both public and private partners will be needed to implement the “Plan for the 21st Century,” Herrera-Mishler emphasized.

The overhaul will begin with a relatively modest $28.7 million, five-year plan to build on existing parks improvements, using “current funding opportunities” and future contributions. It proposes, among other objectives, to restore Olmsted parks and historic facilities to their “periods of significance” from the late 1800s through the early 1900s; to eliminate where possible additions like roadways and structures that blight Olmsted’s plan; and to link the system to the Niagara River Greenway.

Some of the more dramatic steps in the 188-page document, outlined Wednesday at a Common Council hearing:

• Converting Scajaquada Expressway through Delaware Park to a lower-speed, landscaped parkway. The long-discussed project has moved onto the state’s near-term to-do list, with completion scheduled by 2014.
• Over time, freeing up Delaware, Cazenovia and South parks for a variety of activities by downsizing or moving the golf courses that dominate the meadows. The conservancy will seek to establish new public courses on industrial brownfields. “We will only remove recreational resources if better alternatives can be found,” Herrera-Mishler said. “It could take years. This is a long-range plan.”
• Changing the Fillmore Avenue commercial corridor north of Martin Luther King Park into a landscaped parkway connecting the park with Delaware Park, largely to atone for the destruction of Humboldt Parkway to make way for the Kensington Expressway in the 1960s. The loss of the parkway, an important strand in Olmsted’s “emerald necklace” of pastoral spaces, remains a source of “deep sorrow” among East Side residents and park lovers, Herrera-Mishler said.
• Restoring the original bank of Cazenovia Creek next to the Cazenovia Park casino, and with it the long-vanished lake behind the park casino. The casino will go back to being a boathouse.
• Rebuilding South Park’s Arboretum, the largest Olmsted ever designed, to complement the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens — one of just three Lord and Burnham conservatories still in existence.

What is in store for Front Park illustrates the conservancy’s determination to stick to Olmsted’s design as the massive systemwide rehabilitation moves forward.

Twenty-five projects for “the Front” are outlined, with top priority assigned to restoration of the Terrace, a broad plaza on the bluff overlooking the water, and the rebuilding of Lakeview House.

“As with Delaware Park, Olmsted himself chose the location, but with a different vision in mind,” recalls the restoration plan, edited by UB’s Robert G. Shibley and Lynda H. Schneekloth. “While Delaware Park was to conjure up the sights and sounds of nature, [the Front] was to emphasize the natural elements that were unique to Buffalo.”

The spectacular view of the canal, lake and river “would be peculiar to Buffalo and would have a character of magnificence,” the great landscape architect wrote after taking in the vista in the late 1860s.

Regal and more formal than other Olmsted landscapes, “the Front was designed for ‘stately ceremonies,’ ‘civic display’ and other public events,” the plan’s authors recall.

But Lakeview House, the wood frame community building with broad, deep verandas on both floors, was demolished in the 1890s, starting a century-long trend that resulted in the loss of most of the Front’s distinguishing features.

The pattern was repeated throughout the system, effectively unstringing the emerald necklace Olmsted meant to ring the city.

Though the Niagara Thruway and Peace Bridge plaza severed the Front’s connection to the water, and the park was effectively abandoned, “the basic building blocks of this truly magnificent emblem of Buffalo remain,” the Olmsted plan emphasizes.

The Terrace will be repaved with cobblestones, formal gardens at its edge will be restored and cannons that once stood guard will be brought back. After the Terrace and Lakeview House are finished, the park’s playground, hippodrome and picnic shelter will reappear. The ice rink will be removed and the tennis courts and children’s playground relocated.

Restoring the view is clearly one of the toughest challenges facing Olmsted planners because that goal clashes with the proposed redesign of the Peace Bridge plaza.

The conservancy, which started as a friends-of-the-parks group 30 years ago and grew into a full-fledged nonprofit that manages the Olmsted system under a three-way agreement with Erie County and the City of Buffalo, raised $13 million over the last 10 years to begin the long restoration process, Herrera-Mishler said.

Herrera-Mishler, who joined the conservancy in March after heading the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, said the organization is ready to tackle the mission.

“We’re on the verge of a renaissance,” he told board members during the conservancy’s recent annual meeting. “You’ve done so much with so little. I want to see what you can do with adequate resources instead of ‘just enough.’ ”

Mayor Byron W. Brown, who received the 188-page document Wednesday, said he’s impressed with the comprehensive project-by-project approach the conservancy has taken.

“I look forward to reviewing it in detail and potentially incorporating it into the city’s master plan,” Brown said.

Several Common Council members said they support more city funding for the Olmsted system. “They built these parks because city life can be grim,” said Council President David A. Franczyk, a frequent park user. “People need a place to replenish their spirits — their souls.”