Ridge Lea served as ‘interim’ campus while UB grew

Editor's note: This story is part of "UB Then," an occasional feature highlighting people, events and other interesting elements of UB history pulled from the University Archives.

For eager area shoppers, 4230 Ridge Lea Road in Amherst will soon be known as the region’s first Costco, as work has been underway for a much-anticipated opening by next year.

But for UB Then, the property will always be remembered as the university’s old Ridge Lea Campus.

Tucked away at North Bailey Avenue and Ridge Lea Road next to the Youngmann Expressway, the Ridge Lea Campus was comprised of more than a dozen nondescript, single-story buildings first leased by the university in the mid-1960s to serve as an “interim” campus.

Back then, UB was growing rapidly. It had just merged with SUNY and the Baby Boom generation was pouring onto campus.  

But UB was also running out of room. The Main Street Campus had used all the space the state would allow for construction and the university was still waiting for building to begin at its new campus in Amherst.

So, on May 17, 1966, UB signed what was originally a five-year lease deal with a Pittsburgh firm developing the Ridge Lea property.

“The university is growing,” William F. Doemland, then-director of planning and development, said when plans were announced.

“This year, we added 100 faculty, 120 graduate students and 350 staff people,” he said. “It is imperative that we have adequate space to accommodate them and the others we will be adding each year.”

By the fall of 1967, UB had moved into 10 buildings on Ridge Lea that housed the departments of anthropology, art, biophysics, computer science, mathematics, medical technology, philosophy, political science, statistics, theoretical biology and the computing center.

The campus included classrooms, labs, offices, a library, food service, lounge and recreational space, and plenty of parking. A few more buildings would be added later and, at its peak, UB occupied the entire complex. Buses departed Diefendorf Loop on Main Street at regular intervals to shuttle students and faculty to and from Ridge Lea.

There was, however, a sense of isolation for many on the Ridge Lea Campus, a feeling that only grew by the mid-1970s, as UB downsized its presence there and relocated departments three miles away to the new North Campus.

The late Robert H. Stern, a former political science professor, once recalled his department’s move to the Ridge Lea Campus in 1967.

“I remember that, at that time, we were to have been there for a year or two. Instead, we moved from there to Ellicott around 1976,” Stern told UB editor Ann Whitcher in 1991.

“We had, as I recall, one opportunity as a department to move to the new campus, where, I believe, the only building at the time was the law school,” Stern said. “Most of our department thought it better to stay put rather than move to the great lonely expanse of the North Campus.”

Eventually, the recreational spaces at Ridge Lea were closed, the library was relocated to Main Street and campus food services moved into the Department of Geology’s mailroom, according to reports in the UB Archives. As UB moved out, the developer upgraded the buildings for new tenants moving in.

While facing pressure from the state to vacate Ridge Lea as early as 1977, delays in construction meant UB was still leasing eight buildings on the Ridge Lea Campus as of March 1984, according to the UB Archives.

Archival records show it wouldn’t be until the early 1990s when UB fully vacated the interim campus after the move to the North Campus by the Department of Geology. In fact, geology, now the Department of Earth Sciences, is one of the few places at UB where the Ridge Lea name still lives on.

The department has had a long, whimsical tradition of hosting an annual Groundhog Day cookout with predictions of a long winter or early spring forecasted by a taxidermied groundhog called Ridge Lea Larry.

Last year, the department restarted the yearly tradition by debuting a new groundhog, a stuffed toy named — you guessed it — Ridge Lea Larry II.