Photo Credit: Courtesy of Hamburg Department of Youth, Recreation and Senior Services
“More Lake Erie access” was the clamoring cry from residents of Buffalo and Western New York in the 1980s as the Rust Belt industry began its slow death rattle. As companies such as Bethlehem Steel along Lake Erie in Hamburg and Lackawanna closed their doors, the outcry became more insistent. Prodded by citizens demanding a reclaim of the beaches long blocked by railroad tracks and other barriers created by the steel industry, state and local officials took action to return the lakefront to its former recreational use.
One Of The Worst
In 1996, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP), assisted by the Trust for Public Land, purchased over 106 acres of woodlands and a one-mile-long natural sandy beach for $6.3 million from Buffalo Crushed Stone to create the Woodlawn Beach State Park within the town of Hamburg. The new public beach is situated about three miles south of Buffalo’s city limits and is heralded as the nearest public beach to the city with a population of about 258,000. The park opened to the public that year and was operated by the state until the recession in 2008 put its fate in jeopardy. Woodlawn was included on a state list as one of the worst of its 180 total parks for generating revenue. When the state closed the beach in 2009 and 2010, the town—with its Hamburg Town Park Beach about one mile down the road—contacted the state regarding the other beach in Hamburg.
“The state was running a large deficit in 2009 and pulled the lifeguards off,” says Hamburg Town Supervisor Steven J. Walters. Published reports at that time, confirmed by state parks, revealed it cost $360,000 annually to operate Woodlawn, and it generated just $50,000 in 2008, mostly from parking fees.