BUFFALO, N.Y. — The new Ralph Wilson Park is taking shape in Buffalo with the installation of the new pedestrian bridge over the 190 scheduled for later this year.
2 On Your Side went inside the construction zone Thursday afternoon to give you an inside look at the changes happening right now at the new Ralph Wilson Park, and we got an update on the new bridge that's being built in Italy.
"We're looking at the foundation of the new signature pedestrian bridge, which will better connect the Lower West Side to Ralph Wilson Park," said Katie Campos, the Ralph Wilson Park Conservancy executive director.
The bridge will go across the 190 and offer stunning views of the new park and Lake Erie at an angle. It's being built in Europe and arrives this summer in four parts.
"It's going to be barged across the Atlantic Ocean, make its way into New York, come up through, we're not, the path isn't defined yet, but it will end at the, coming into Lake Ontario, through the Welland Canal, be delivered to the foot of the park, and that's anticipated for July, August timeline," Campos said.
Obviously, in order to install it in the late fall, and take down the old bridge, they'll have to shut down the 190 — likely for a few hours overnight — and you'll get plenty of notice.
We also got a look at the improved shoreline Thursday afternoon. Crews are transforming the old cement seawall into a natural sloping shoreline.
"The purpose for that is some flood mitigation that the sloped shoreline will absorb a lot of the wave energy. Right now, it ricochets back into the water, floods the park, and will also create a natural habitat, so it's been really hard for fish and wildlife to create a habitat against that hard cement seawall, and we're already seeing some of that emerge," Campos said.
The construction equipment there right now is no joke.
"The biggest Caterpillar machine in the world is on-site, and it's moving boulders that are about two tons right now, called armor stones, into place and this is an incredibly complex project," Campos said.
"The shoreline work alone requires quite a bit of work that happened below water and now we're starting to see it above water, and they're placing these two to three ton boulders into place in very specific spots so that they lock, and the purpose of that is that this is some of the most intense wave energy in the Great Lakes, so when waves come, that shoreline needs to absorb all that wave energy, and those rocks cannot move."
They anticipate that the first phase of the park will open in late 2025 or early 2026.
The Ralph Wilson Park Conservancy will be having another community meeting to update everyone on the construction some time later this spring.