The Future of Humboldt Parkway & The Kensington 33

By Betty Jean Grant

A Meeting to Discuss the Kensington 33 Expressway & Humboldt Parkway Was Held Tuesday, December 2, 2025, Schiller Park Senior Center, 2057 Genesee St., Buffalo, NY14211.

Betty Jean Grant

This meeting or Listening Tour was convened by the New York State Department of Transportation. Interested residents, including those who live on or near Humboldt Parkway, were invited to attend to give suggestions or to voice concerns on what design or development will make it to the drawing board as the Environ mental Impact Statement, that was ordered by a state supreme court judge is being considered and developed.

According to a spokesperson for the NYSDOT, there will be a series of up to ten meetings in different locations to garner more community engage ment and citizen participation. This move toward public participation is a sentiment I agree with and support. The former and current residents of Humboldt Parkway probably had neither dialogue nor input when the 1950s decision to run that expressway right straight down the middle of a vibrant and thriving community was put in place. The community was thriving because African Americans, from the south, came to Buffalo during the Great Northern Migration, settled down with the local, Black workers and got hired working at factories such as General Motors, Westinghouse, Ford, Bethlehem and Republic Steel. The ‘healthy’ salaries from those good playing jobs allowed the men to move their families out of public housing and to invest in homeownership, eastward of Humboldt Parkway and beyond.

The East Side Parkways Coali tion, the fierce, advocacy group that has led the fight to fully restore Humboldt Parkway and who assisted the 60 residents/ plaintiffs in filing a lawsuit to address a multitude of illnesses and diseases that have purport edly sickened or killed many of the homeowners over the 60-plus years they and others have been forced to breathe the toxic emis sion emanating from the vehicles travelling along the Kensington 33 Expressway that was built, literally, in their front yards.