For once, this region could see real projects in that year, and not just in the penny-a-truckload plans phase. A confluence of projected groundbreakings, completions and construction milestones in 2007 could make it a make-or-break year for Buffalo's dreams. Mark your perpetual calendars.

We're not talking about policy milestones here, we're talking about concrete ones. We're talking about on-the-ground projects that could give Buffalonians solid visual evidence that years of plans and promises are finally bearing fruit. Or not.

"A lot of the seeds that have been planted are starting to take root," said Buffalo Mayor Anthony M. Masiello. "All these things are in the pipeline, and much of it is funded. Even the interim improvements on projects like the Peace Bridge are going to be significant."

Sure, dates slip and plans change. But many of these projects are under way already, others involve private-sector investors who know - unlike government - that time is money, and others already have slipped so often that they are at their own individual make-or-break stages.

"If we're not prepared in 2006, we're going to have a very rocky road in 2007," said Mayor-elect Byron W. Brown. "I'm absolutely going to try to get things going sooner than 2007, including reforming the economic development process so that we are ready for all the projectsthat are coming to a head in 2007."

There is a coming collision of dreams and reality. In all of Buffalo's current major projects, the number 2007 looms large. In some smaller but potentially high-impact projects, real progress in that year also seems important. Together, they give Western New Yorkers a scorecard to determine whether Buffalo is rising from the ashes, or just blowing smoke.

A plethora of projects

Consider these:

• Completion of the long-delayed but now redesigned Erie Canal Harbor project, where construction restarted this summer, is scheduled for late 2007. A new Naval and Servicemen's Museum, part of the project and a key component of the adjoining complex of historic warships and veterans' memorials, is supposed to open in early 2007.

Two years of wrangling and reworking slowed this project, which is supposed to provide the plazas, lots and roadways for private-sector redevelopment along the riverfront at the foot of Main Street. But the delays occurred for a good reason - public demand that involved a lot of people and energized expectations for this project - and they led to a good result.

The new vision incorporates a far deeper respect for local heritage and history. It includes a usable reconstruction of the Commercial Slip, instead of the archaeological remnant originally planned. If - and this is a big if - the current $46.3 million project can find another $3 million to do first-class interpretive elements, Buffalo has a chance to tell the story of its pivotal role in the Great Lakes-Erie Canal connection that was vitally important to the history of this nation.

That possibility makes this inner harbor project the keystone of a cultural/heritage tourism push that is one of two major bets Buffalo is placing on its future. By 2007, the framework for development should be complete - and the opportunities for private investment in this section will open.

• The second major bet is bioinfomatics and the development of medical enterprises around the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. There's no set date for this evolving medical research and care complex, which already is well under way. But there is a pivotal year: 2007.

Most of the $150 million Life Sciences complex in the southern end of the 100-acre midtown campus will be completed next year. Ancillary development along the 800 block of Main Street also has begun. But the year after that - 2007 - should bring the intensified private-sector development that this project envisions, and that's also the target date for a $6 million parkway extension of Allen Street into the site.

More emphasis should shift to the northern end of the site in 2007, with demolitions giving way to new construction and private development. The campus now is creating a world-class research center for the design and analysis of pharmaceuticals; 2007 could be the test of "build it, and they will come."

• OK, there's another project that has been dragging on for long, frustrating years - so long, in fact, it has become a symbol of this region's inability to get things done. It hasn't yet developed a signature bridge, but the Peace Bridge expansion has become a signature project.

Although it's probably optimistic, the start of construction for a new bridge still nominally is targeted in 2007. More likely, 2007 will see selection of an architect to design the new bridge based on parameters set late this year, and the two to three years of construction will start in 2008. Either way, this international project - which set new standards for community involvement in a planning and design process - hits a critical milestone in 2007.

• Bass Pro is the other big fish on the waterfront. Hopes of luring the outdoor sports chain to Buffalo involve the conversion of an unused white elephant, the old Memorial Auditorium immediately adjoining the Erie Canal Harbor project, into a sports mega-store with a built-in hotel.

That project almost died this year, but it found new life when Gov. George E. Pataki named a new Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. to oversee waterfront projects as a subsidiary of the state's development agency, and put it largely in the hands of local leaders, mostly from the private sector, who share this region's sense of urgency.

Bass Pro's projected opening date? You guessed it - 2007.

Look for at least substantial completion by that date, because the actual opening for a project this complex is likely to slip into early 2008. That would follow a detailed contract now being finalized and at least 18 months of building. There's also a bit of county/city funding yet to be nailed down as part of a $66 million public investment in the $123 million project.

That $66 million drew criticism because of city and county financial woes, but it's not just for Bass Pro. The work includes public projects for the entire development zone: a new rail/bus/auto transportation center, parking facilities to serve not just the store but also the Erie Canal Harbor and nearby HSBC Arena, new Thruway access ramps and a free-standing Great Lakes/Erie Canal museum in the harbor development zone. About half the public funding will be used to gut the Aud, so Bass Pro can spend an estimated $57 million of corporate money building the store inside.

• There's also a real gamble on the waterfront - the Seneca Nation's plans for a Buffalo casino. The state's compact with the Senecas set alternate deadlines, for either groundbreaking or the opening of the city casino's doors. The groundbreaking deadline is this December. Odds are you can guess what year is the door-opening deadline.

The Senecas intend to convert the historic Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad terminal on the Buffalo River - next to the arena, and on the opposite side of the Erie Canal Harbor from Bass Pro - into a 120,000-square-foot casino. And they want to connect the casino complex to parking ramps in a long-dormant Cobblestone District that has so far failed to draw significant new development.

Nation leaders say they want to have a casino up and running as soon as possible, but their projected completion date for the entire facility is 2007.

All this should be really hard to miss: Completion of the Erie Canal Harbor infrastructure and public places, the opening of Bass Pro and the completion of a casino, all with expanded transportation and parking facilities and access to the sports and performance venue of the arena, all in the same place and at roughly the same time.

If it's still dead at the foot of Main Street in 2007, so are Buffalo's dreams.

A flock of cranes

• There's an even more ambitious development project under way, and it's open to measurement by 2007 as well. The final project approval deadline for the local-national Lakeshore Group's $750 million redevelopment of a 120-acre Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority parcel on the outer harbor is March 31, 2007.

By then, there should already be a flock of cranes on the lakefront. Once road improvements are nailed down, construction is set to start next year on the project's phase one. The first step: a fast-tracked new 360-boat public marina at the northern end of the parcel, where the Pier restaurant now stands.

Full phase-one construction, involving $350 million in private investment, will continue through 2015, with the construction of canals, a thousand residences, public spaces and a retail center. A future public amenity zone at the southern end, now the old Port of Buffalo terminal, will require future decisions and public investment before its scheduled start in 2010; several proposals already have been submitted.

• Those road improvements? That would be the Southtowns Connector, scaled back five years ago from a grandiose and hugely expensive expressway to a simpler parkway and commuter link. Phase one of that project, part of an overall project estimated to cost $138 million to $152 million, depending on which of three alternatives is selected in 2006, would start in 2007.

That first phase is a $32 million reconfiguration of the existing maze of one-way and two-way service roads along the lakefront, absolutely vital to opening the waterfront to the public - and triggering the start of private investment in the NFTA development zone.

That's not the only significant roadwork for our target year. Beyond the Allen Street medical campus entryway and the harbor roads, 2007 is supposed to mark the start of the return of automobile traffic to Main Street.

• Twice delayed but repeatedly promised, the new $100 million federal courthouse planned as the first major construction in decades on the city's central square also faces a 2007 milestone.

Originally, completion of the dramatic elliptical tower was scheduled for mid-2007. Now, funding for the project is promised for the 2007 federal budget and construction could start soon after. The design concept won national awards, and detailed design work is funded and under way. The wild card here is federal spending, in the wake of not only war costs but hurricane relief.

• HealthNow New York, parent of BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, is constructing the largest private downtown office building since the Key Towers went up in the early 1980s. The health insurance firm's new $86.3 million headquarters near the waterfront will change the skyline and bring 1,300 jobs downtown. The planned occupancy date? August 2007.

• There's no 2007 deadline for the much-anticipated restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo masterwork, the Darwin Martin House. But it could be a milestone year for efforts to turn the architectural treasure into a major architectural tourism draw.

Reconstruction of missing buildings in the complex will finish in mid-2006, and the Martin House Restoration Corp. will turn its attention to rising young architect Toshiko Mori's stunning Garden Pavilion visitor center, a structure already described by architectural critics as one of the most important designs of this era. If the organization can raise the rest of a needed $7 million, that project could be under way in 2007 - along with a greater marketing push for the Wright legacy in Buffalo.

• Speaking of cultural attractions, care to guess the expected opening date of the $14.5 million Tropical Rain Forest that will be the centerpiece of the Buffalo Zoo rebuilding project? That's right, 2007. And that's also the target year for a $1.8 million carriage house reconstruction that will expand the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site.

• One major project linked to the 2007 Niagara Power Project relicensing also could get under way in that pivotal year. A proposed Niagara River Greenway seeks to emulate the much-admired Canadian side of the river and line the entire American shoreline, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, with parks, paths and bikeways.

The hope is to turn the current balkanized system of existing parks and interrupted paths into a smoothly integrated public access system. Funding would come from the power project licensing agreement. The Niagara River Greenway Commission is supposed to come up with a plan by 2007.

• On the housing front, 2007 also is supposed to see a new $30 million residential development that will complete the Waterfront Village near Erie Basin Marina, and completion of the conversion of a downtown printing plant into artist lofts.

Wish-list items

Three other potentially large and locally advocated projects could be under way in 2007 as well, although right now they're still just wish-list items.

Planned but unfunded is a $95 million expansion of Erie Community College's downtown City Campus. The same goes for a continuation of this year's $1 million start on efforts to convert a downtown block of Michigan Avenue, centered on the historic Underground Railroad-era Michigan Street Baptist Church and the Jesse Nash House, linked to the founding of the NAACP, into the nationally important African-American cultural and historic park it deserves to be. Funded but unplanned is the $100 million stabilization and start of reuse for another key early American architectural masterpiece, H.H. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital complex.

As patterns go, this one's pretty impressive. The confluence of deadlines and milestones in 2007 wasn't planned. It just happened. But it does parallel a recent growth in development energy that already has converted a number of downtown commercial buildings into new upscale residences, turned once-seedy sections of the city into vibrant entertainment districts and sown the beginnings of public access and public amenity improvements on the waterfront.

Right after the looming year of cranes and shovels, which will mark the 175th anniversary of the incorporation of the city in 1832, this region faces another milestone year. 2008 is the 250th anniversary of the first settlement in what now is Buffalo. In 1758, Chabert Joncaire established a Fort Niagara provisioning farm along what the French knew as the River of the Horses - 21 years before the Senecas settled along Buffalo Creek and 27 years before the first Yankees arrived.

Joncaire's vision didn't take. It quickly fell victim to the French and Indian War. A quarter of a millennium later, another vision comes to the test. As Buffalo turns 250, it should have a pretty good idea whether its dreams will soar - or splat.