Rowhouses combine many of the benefits of both single-family and multi-family housing. They all have first floors at ground level, so everybody gets a front stoop and a backyard, and the houses don’t take up much space, so many families can live within walking distance of schools, shops, and bus stops.
But not all rowhouses are created equal. These, on the corner of Lodi and Gertrude, are all on their own individual lots. Even though they’re connected, each house is a separate building, meaning that each one is an opportunity for someone to become a homeowner. That’s the opportunity to build equity, accrue wealth, achieve stability.
There are more rowhouses the next block down on Lodi. These are really just one big apartment building on a single lot. It’s owned by just one person, so fewer people have the opportunity to secure the many benefits of homeownership.
That’s a big difference, but it’s one that City Hall’s new draft zoning ordinance doesn’t recognize. Here’s all that the draft has to say about rowhouses:
“[Dwelling, Multi-Family] includes both stacked and side-by-side units. The current Syracuse ordinance includes some references to “townhouses” in some districts as distinct from “apartments.” In some communities, we include a use type called “single-family attached”; however, staff prefers not to introduce that term in Syracuse and to use instead a broad definition of “dwelling, multi-family.”
pg 233
So are rowhouses single-family or multi-family? Can somebody buy a single rowhouse, or do they have to buy a whole set at once? Is this different from building multiple single-family houses with party walls on narrow lots as is allowable in zoning district MX-5, but nowhere else? Do the ordinance’s minimum lot dimensions for multi-family housing apply to a single house in the row, or the row in its entirety? Are rowhouses allowed in zoning district R-2 where the ordinance bans ‘multi-family housing’ but allows ‘2-family housing’? There aren’t obvious answers to any of those questions in the ordinance as it’s currently written.
Rowhouses can have an important place in Syracuse’s future. They create more opportunities for people to own a home that’s within easy walking distance of daily needs. Building more of them would bring more of those opportunities into the City’s existing neighborhoods, and they’re a good option for building entirely new neighborhoods at the Inner Harbor and the Almond Street area.
Before that can happen, though, City Hall needs to amend its new zoning ordinance to clarify its rules for rowhouses. It should make it clear that rowhouses are a type of single-family housing, that they’re allowed in all zoning districts, and that they can be bought and sold individually. Simple changes that will make for a better Syracuse.
Bank Alley is different from a lot of the other streets Downtown. It’s not like Salina or Fayette–wide streets that are good for getting across town–and it’s not like Clinton or Adams–one-way racetracks for cars getting to or from the elevated highways. It’s short and narrow and a lot calmer than the rest of the neighborhood.
That difference makes it possible for different people to make different uses of all the buildings with entrances on both Salina and Bank Alley. Retailers on the first floor of those buildings face Salina because that’s where so many potential customers are walking by, but renters living on the top floors enter those buildings from Bank Alley because it’s more private.
A good mix of different kinds of streets and buildings makes for a neighborhood where different kinds of people can make a life. That’s a neighborhood where grocery stores can sit near houses, churches near shops, and community centers near schools. That’s a neighborhood where the variety of people and activities mean that any single person can meet their daily needs easily.
“the best opportunity for reclaiming the geography presently occupied by I-81 as a transformational neighborhood with mixed-income housing, extraordinary schools, and facilities, programs, and services that honor the rich history of the community, reflect priorities of those who live there”
So it’s a good thing that the area around the viaduct already has so many alleys. Landmark, Block, and Grape Alleys (shown in orange) cut through the blocks just west of the viaduct.
Right now those alleys aren’t doing much for anyone because they’re surrounded by empty lots, but that will change once the viaduct comes down. Earlier in November, the AIA predicted that this part of town will see a lot of new construction in the next few years. When that happens, the buildings that go up and the people who use them will benefit from the alleys that are already there.
The I81 project also provides the opportunity to reopen an alley that hasn’t existed since the viaduct went up. People have talked about reconnecting major streets that the viaduct divided, and this smaller street (shown in blue) should be part of that conversation too.
City Hall is already laying the groundwork for the right kind of neighborhood with its new zoning ordinance. It’s zoning these blocks MX-5 which means no minimum parking requirements and very few restrictions on how people can use the land. That will make these alleys more useful to the neighborhood.
It’s going to take a lot of work to make these blocks into neighborhood. Alleys can help. They add variety to the kinds of streets in a place, and they make buildings useful in different ways for different people. They can make this part of Syracuse a good place to live, and that’s a good thing for the City.
In 1919, Syracuse’s Planning Commission published a report on the work that it had already done and its plans for the City’s future. That report contained some big ideas for massive public works projects, but most of its pages dealt with the minutiae of subdividing undeveloped plots of land on the City’s outskirts to accommodate future growth. In particular, the Planning Commission focused on the ways that the street grid’s design could maximize the usefulness of land in the City.
Take the area south of James St between Teall Ave and Shotwell Park. The people who developed that land wanted to turn the whole thing into a residential neighborhood, but they had a hard time building streets up Melrose Hill in what is now Sunnycrest Park.
“Hastings, Clifton, etc., were developed and built on up to the base of the hill from the north. The slope being so steep that the streets could not be constructed further as plotted and maintained without unwarranted cost and expense, caused further development to come to a standstill. The lots on top of the hill, shown in the shaded portion, became city property due to default of tax payments.”
The Planning Commission’s solution was to replot the area along curving streets that would make it easier to build on the hill.
The developers took those suggestions and tried something similar, laying out a couple of streets that followed the hill’s topography, shown in this map from 1924.
But they did not make any changes where the hill was steepest (shaded blue on this map), and so this new plan never made it past the drawing board. In 1925 City Hall bought up all of the undeveloped land and turned in into a golf course.
The Planning Commission addressed a similar problem at the border between Westcott and Scottholm. There, two very steep hills made it difficult to build on Cumberland and Westmoreland Aves between Genesee St and Euclid Ave.
“At the present time this section stands by itself undeveloped and yet surrounded on all sides by pretentious homes of prosperous citizens. Westmoreland and Cumberland avenues are only partly accessible from East Genesee street, Allen street, or Euclid avenue, on account of prohibitory grades ranging from 18 per cent to 30 per cent.”
Again, the Planning Commission suggested moving streets to better match the area’s topography. They would have extended Houston Ave along the valley between the two hills to intersect Westmoreland Ave at Harvard Pl, made Cumberland Ave curve and intersect with Westmoreland Ave according to the hills’ topography, and used stairs to provide pedestrian paths between streets where the hills were too steep for cars to travel.
By 1938, they’d begun work on the Houston Ave extension, but not on any of the other changes that the Planning Commission recommended:
That’s where things still stand today. City Hall’s zoning maps show portions of Cumberland Ave that have never been built, and people actually own the residential lots that line it, but there’s no evidence of any of that on the ground. If you bushwacked your way to 209 Cumberland Ave–a 5,362 square foot residential lot assessed at $2,500–you’d be in the middle of a bunch of trees.
In both of these cases, poor street layout meant that potentially valuable land went undeveloped. That cost City Hall property tax revenue, and it limited the number of people who could live in those neighborhoods. The Planning Commission’s recommendations for these neighborhoods were attempts to maximize the usefulness of city land by making it more accessible to more people.
These are still important concerns. Large vacant parcels on the Lakefront, the outskirts of Downtown, and between Hiawatha Blvd and the CSX train tracks are prime candidates for new development. The danger is that City Hall will give those huge lots to single developers who will just build one or two buildings, a huge parking lot, and pretty landscaping (see: Cor’s biotech accelerator and SU’s Center of Excellence). That’d be a waste of land, just like when developers 100 years ago wasted all that land along Cumberland Ave and Hastings Pl. City Hall should instead follow the 1919 Planning Commission’s lead and ensure that the land is used efficiently. That could mean working with private developers to plan those parcels, or it could mean laying new streets and dividing the land into small lots before selling it off. If City Hall takes this more active role, it will put more money in the municipal budget, build better neighborhoods, and make the best use of Syracuse’s land.
Centro is looking at running a Bus Rapid Transit line between Syracuse University and the Regional Transportation Center. To the south, that line’s last stop will be in the middle of a neighborhood with lots of jobs, lots of people, and little parking. That all makes University Hill a place that where good bus service will work. To the north, the line will end in the middle of a bunch of parking lots and vacant land. That’s the kind of place where bus service will fail.
City Hall knows this, and it intended to fix the problem. The Land Use & Development Plan, written in 2012, says:
“Once major transportation corridors, to be served by bus rapid transit or some other regional public transportation mode, and fixed stations are identified… [City Hall should] designate the area immediately surrounding these stations as appropriate for pedestrian-friendly, high-density, mixed-use development”
LUP pg 31
The Plan doubles down on that when it designates the area as an “Industrial Legacy” and then says:
“New development and infill construction should be tightly focused within and around Neighborhood Centers (neighborhood business districts), Urban Core, Industrial Legacy, and Adapted Mansion character areas… Any new residential development in these areas will increase their density, support the economic base of these neighborhood centers, promote walkable development patterns, and support public transit service.” Pg 38 of LUP
And the Plan gets very specific about what needs to happen in the area when it says:
“the area surrounding the Central New York Regional Market, Alliance Bank Stadium, and the Regional Transportation Center includes large areas of surface parking and vacant or underutilized property. When the Regional Transportation Center is connected to the Empire Corridor High Speed Rail this area will present a will-situated opportunity for high-density, transit-oriented development (TOD)… Zoning amendments should be made now to encourage TOD and prevent inappropriate industrial infill that might discourage this kind of development” LUP pg 53
The Land Use & Development Plan talks over and over about how the area around the RTC has the potential to be a neighborhood where people don’t need to own a car, but that can only happen if enough people move to the area to support things like good bus service and small business. That’s why the Land Use & Development Plan recommended rezoning the area around the RTC to allow a lot more housing.
When City Hall put out its first draft of the new zoning map in February 2017, it followed the Land Use & Development Plan’s recommendation and made that area MX-3. Land zoned MX-3 can be used for all kinds of things including 1- and 2-family houses, apartment buildings, boarding houses, bars, microbreweries, restaurants, and office space. When City Hall released its second draft map in June 2017, though, it had made that area Light Industrial, and when the most recent map came out in March 2018, that area was just zoned Industrial.
February 2017
June 2017
March 2018
An Industrial property can have a lot of the same commercial uses as a property zoned MX-3–it can have bars and microbreweries and restaurants and office space–but Industrial land cannot have any residences at all–no apartment buildings, no 1- or 2-family houses, nothing. It’s pretty clear, then, that if this area is zoned for Industry, then it cannot be the sort of “mixed-use” or “transit oriented” neighborhood that City Hall’s own Land Use & Development Plan says it needs to be.
It doesn’t have to be that way. City Hall should implement its own recommendations and rezone the area around the RTC to allow for both commercial and residential buildings. That will allow for the kind of neighborhood where Centro’s new BRT service will be most useful, the kind of neighborhood where there are lots of jobs and lots of people, the kind of neighborhood that will make this corner of Syracuse a good place to live.
On September 19, City Hall announced it’s new pilot program for removing snow from 20.1 miles of city sidewalks this coming winter. Mayor Ben Walsh had promised to do something about snow-covered sidewalks in his 2017 campaign, and this plan is a good first step to keeping that promise.
There’s a lot to like about the pilot program. City Hall put it together after getting lots of input from the community, it’s based on hard data on which streets pedestrians use most, it came out quickly, and it’s something DPW can expand in the future.
City Hall is going to clear snow from the sidewalks along Park Street on the Northside. In the February 2017 draft of City Hall’s new zoning map, the land around the northern end of Park Street was colored blue. That meant that you could have apartment buildings on that land. In the most recent draft of the zoning map (from March 2018), a lot of that land is now yellow. That means that City Hall only intends for a maximum of two families to live on any of those lots, so fewer people will be able to live within walking distance of Park Street.
That means that this new municipal service–something as basic and necessary as clear sidewalks–will be available to fewer people. It’s the same with parks, buses, and schools. When you’ve got a cash-strapped city offering place-based services, restrictive zoning rules reduce the number of people who can benefit from those services. That’s why zoning matters.
When a big developer comes to Syracuse and asks for a break on paying their property taxes, that’s an opportunity. City Hall can use the promise of a tax break to negotiate for that developer to do something good for Syracuse.
City Hall used to miss these opportunities all the time. Anybody willing to build in the City could get a tax break without promising to do anything to benefit the community. In the past couple of years, though, City Hall has started asking for more. Recent projects have traded tax breaks for new rent-controlled apartments and promises to hire city residents for construction jobs.
That change is good. It means that Syracuse is becoming more valuable, and that City Hall is using its leverage over the people who want to exploit that value. It also means that City Hall can get more creative about how it uses tax breaks to benefit the community.
Here’s one idea: use tax breaks to concentrate new building in areas with good bus service.
People who get around by riding the bus do not have equal access to opportunity in Syracuse. A lot of employers are beyond Centro’s reach, and that keeps a lot of willing and able people from getting and holding a job. A lot of new quality housing has the same problem.
It’s in the community’s interest to fix this situation–to make more jobs and more housing accessible to bus riders–and that’s going to mean more building in places that support quality bus service.
So the next time some developer comes looking for a tax break to build a new apartment or office in Syracuse, City Hall can use that opportunity to get that project built in a place that bus riders can get to. It’s a new use for an existing policy tool, and it will give more people equal access to opportunity in Syracuse.
Syracuse’s draft zoning ordinance requires properties used for different kinds of things to have different numbers of parking spaces. 1-family houses must have 1 parking space, grocery stores must have 1 parking space for every 300 square feet of floor space, golf courses must have 2 parking spaces for every hole, and so on.
The draft ordinance also includes mechanisms that can reduce those requirements in certain situations. Properties located in certain zoning districts and properties located on bus lines can reduce the total number of required parking spaces by anywhere from 15% to 50%, properties located nearby public parking lots and properties with street parking can count those spaces towards their total requirement, and so on.
A single property can qualify for more than one of these parking requirement reductions. If a barber shop would normally need 4 parking spaces, but it qualifies for a 50% reduction because of it’s zoning district, and there are 2 on-street spaces along its property line, then those two reductions combine to reduce the barber shop’s parking requirement to 0 spaces.
At least, that’s how it would have been before City Hall capped the total cumulative reduction for any property at 75% in the March 2018 revision of the draft ordinance. Now, as a result of this new cap, that barber shop would still need to find space on its lot for at least 1 off-street parking space.
This cap will have a huge effect on the housing market in Syracuse’s inner neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are mostly zoned R-2 or higher, meaning that they’re full of 2 and 3-family houses. Residential properties like those must have 1 parking space per dwelling unit (a 2-family home needs 2 spaces, a 3-family home needs 3 spaces, and so on). In previous drafts of the zoning ordinance, these homes could meet their parking requirements with on-street spaces. As of March 2018, however, because of this new 75% cap, the draft ordinance requires that every residential structure that can house at least 2 families have at least 1 off-street parking space.
This cap won’t affect any of Syracuse’s outer neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are zoned almost entirely R-1, so they are made up of 1-family houses, each of which is only required to have 1 parking space. Once you account for the street-parking space out front of each of those houses and apply the new 75% cap, then each house is required to have .25 parking spaces. The draft ordinance rounds that down to 0.
The result is that in areas zoned R-1, all new residential development will be exempt from parking requirements, while in areas zoned R-2 or higher, a lot of residential development will not be exempt from parking requirements (Downtown is also exempt from all parking requirements).
Areas where all residential development is exempt from parking requirements
Syracuse’s inner neighborhoods are some of the best places to live in the entire County if you’re trying to make a life without a car. Neighborhoods like Hawley-Green and the Near Westside have relatively good bus service, a mix of businesses within walking distance, and easy access to the jobs Downtown and on University Hill. That’s why the people living in those neighborhoods are much more likely to go without a car than the people living in Syracuse’s outer neighborhoods like Strathmore and Meadowbrook.
Percentage of carless households by census tract
When you combine these two maps, it becomes clear just how insane the draft ordinance’s minimum parking requirements are. They require off-street parking for the people least likely to own cars, but they don’t make similar demands of the people most likely to own cars.
City Hall needs to amend the draft zoning ordinance to fix this problem. They could remove the 75% cap on parking minimum reductions. If a property is on a bus line and nearby a public parking lot, it makes sense to give the property owner credit for having set up in a spot where off-street parking isn’t necessary. The arbitrary 75% cap is just a way of saying that people in Syracuse shouldn’t try to make the best use of shared resources, and that’s not a message worth sending in a city that doesn’t have enough resources as it is.
City Hall could also amend the draft zoning ordinance to say “When measurements of the number of required spaces result in a fractional number, the fraction shall be rounded down to the nearest whole number.” For example, a project requiring 2.25 spaces would only actually have to build 2 spaces, and a project requiring 2.75 spaces would also only actually have to build 2 spaces. Even with the 75% cap, this would make 1-family, 2-family, and 3-family houses eligible for exemption from any parking requirements.
City Hall could also count on-street parking spaces in front of a property towards the total required number of spaces for any property after applying the 75% cap on parking minimum reductions. Allowing on-street parking to substitute for off-street parking in this way would allow 1-family houses and small scale apartments to meet their parking requirements without having to build off-street parking.
Those small changes would do a lot to make the zoning ordinance better, but it’d really be best to just trashparkingrequirementsentirely. They’re awful, ham-fisted solutions to a problem best solved by individuals. If a developer builds an apartment without off-street parking, they’ll get tenants who don’t own cars or who don’t mind finding on-street parking. Other people who value off-street parking will pay a little extra to rent or buy some other housing that includes a place to store a car. There’s no reason for parking lots to line James and Salina Streets when so many of the people living there don’t drive, and there’s no way that eliminating parking requirements will get people living in Meadowbrook to give up their driveways and garages.
That might be too much to ask in a town as car obsessed as this one. Whatever–any of those more technical fixes would be good enough. All that matters is that this new zoning ordinance not make it even harder to make a life in this City without a car.
On City Hall’s new color-coded zoning map, strictly residential neighborhoods are shades of yellow while neighborhoods with housing, businesses, and other institutions are different shades of blue. So far, City Hall has published threenewdrafts of this map, and each one has less blue and more yellow.
The change has been driven by community concerns about corner stores. In an interview with WAER, Assistant Zoning Director Heather Lamendola said “a lot of concerns stemmed around what has been dubbed a ‘corner store,’ and the adverse effects that the activity there might have on the adjacent residential neighborhoods.” In an interview with the Post-Standard, Mayor Walsh specifically mentioned “a corner store going in down the street from you” as something that concerns him.
People living in many of Syracuse’s neighborhoods have good reason to be wary of corner stores, and it’s good that people in power are listening to those concerns, but City Hall’s particular response goes too far, and it threatens to limit housing opportunity in Syracuse’s neighborhoods.
That particular response has been to take a lot of properties that were originally zoned as part of the light blue MX-1 district, and to switch them to the yellow R-2 district. City Hall has made this switch in several neighborhoods.
Draft #1 (February 2017)
Draft #2 (June 2017)
Draft #3 (March 2018)
Draft #1 (February 2017)
Draft #2 (June 2017)
Draft #3 (March 2018)
Draft #1 (February 2017)
Draft #2 (June 2017)
Draft #3 (March 2018)
Changing all of those properties from MX-1 to R-2 will keep out corner stores, but it will also restricts a lot of other activity. Here’s the table of allowable uses for those two zoning districts:
MX-1
R-2
Residential Uses
1 Family
Allowed
Allowed
2 Family
Allowed
Allowed
Multi-Family
Allowed with permit
Live/Work
Allowed
Boarding House
Allowed with permit
Public Uses
Assembly Hall
Allowed
Allowed
Civic Building
Allowed
Cultural Institution
Allowed
Public Safety Facility
Allowed
Allowed
School
Allowed
Allowed
Park
Allowed
Allowed
Community Garden
Allowed
Allowed
Commercial Uses
Private Club
Allowed with permit
Beverage Cafe
Allowed
Restaurant
Allowed
Bed and Breakfast
Allowed
Allowed with permit
Office
Allowed
Retail
Allowed
Of all the differences between MX-1 and R-2, the most important have to do with housing. On MX-1 properties, you can have single family homes, two family homes, three- four- and five- family homes, apartment buildings, live/work homes, and boarding houses. R-2 properties on the other hand, only allow for one and two family homes. The switch from MX-1 to R-2 limits the variety of housing types in these neighborhoods, and that makes it harder for a variety of people to find a place to live.
Fortunately, there’s a simple way for City Hall to keep out corner stores without limiting people’s housing options. Here’s that same table of allowable uses with the R-4 and R-5 Districts included:
MX-1
R-2
R-4
R-5
Residential Uses
1 Family
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
2 Family
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Multi-Family
Allowed with permit
Allowed
Allowed
Live/Work
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Boarding House
Allowed with permit
Allowed
Public Uses
Assembly Hall
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Civic Building
Allowed
Allowed
Cultural Institution
Allowed
Public Safety Facility
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
School
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Park
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Community Garden
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Allowed
Commercial Uses
Private Club
Allowed with permit
Allowed with permit
Allowed with permit
Beverage Cafe
Allowed
Restaurant
Allowed
Bed and Breakfast
Allowed
Allowed with permit
Allowed with permit
Allowed with permit
Office
Allowed
Allowed with permit
Retail
Allowed
Like R-2, zoning districts R-4 and R-5 do not allow corner stores. Like MX-1, zoning districts R-4 and R-5 allow multi-family housing, and district R-5 allows boarding houses. If City Hall is really committed to keeping corner stores out of the neighborhood by banning retail, it could at least let people provide themselves with all of the different kinds of housing allowable in the MX-1 district by zoning these lots as R-4 or R-5. It’s done just that in Hawley Green, where several blocks of Green and Gertrude Streets have been changed from MX-1 to R-4 as City Hall has revised its zoning maps:
Draft #1 (February 2017)
Draft #2 (June 2017)
Draft #3 (March 2018)
Corner stores will not be able to move into these parts of the neighborhood, but at the same time, people will still have many different opportunities to find a place to live.
The zoning ordinance should allow for growth and flexibility. A landlord should be able to turn a two-family home into a three-family home if there’s enough people looking for housing to justify the cost of making that change. When individual people can make small adjustments like those, Syracuse will be able to respond to inevitable and unpredictable changes in population, income, demographics, and community needs in the coming decades. That’s what will make Syracuse a welcoming and resilient community.
In April 2017, City Hall published a draft of the new zoning ordinance that allowed for buildings near to “any type of bus stop, regardless of service level” to build 30% fewer parking spaces than buildings without easy access to transit. That’s was a good idea because it costs money to provide off-street parking, and that’s an unnecessary expense when the people using a building don’t travel by car. When City Hall imposes that expense on a property owner by requiring that a building have more parking than is necessary, that amounts to a tax on pedestrians, cyclists, and bus riders.
In March of 2018, the City Hall backed away from that good idea. Instead of reducing parking minimums for buildings within a quarter mile of “stations served by transit,” the new draft ordinance published that month talks about buildings within a quarter mile of “transportation terminals.” It’s not obvious what a transportation terminal would be in Syracuse (the Centro Hub, the RTC, the terminal stop for each bus line?), but it’s clear from the explanatory footnote that a transportation terminal is not a bus stop:
It’s as if City Hall didn’t know that Centro is a viable transportation option in just about every neighborhood in the City, and now they’re trying to limit the benefits that bus service can provide.
In fact, Centro’s pervasive service is a good reason to take the opposite tack and allow greater density at the corner properties on each intersection where a bus stops. Elevating the properties at each bus stop by one zoning district (from R-2 to R-3, say, or from MX-1 to MX-2) would increase the City’s capacity to house people who do not own cars, and that’s right in line with the City’s Land Use & Development Plan:
“This capacity should be preserved by maintaining zoning for density levels in line with the existing built environment, so that over the long-term the City may market its ability to cost-effectively absorb regional population growth—based on existing infrastructure and an urban land-use pattern that lends itself to walkable neighborhoods, local commercial and business services, and efficient transit service.” Land Use & Development Plan, pg 12
Luckily, the City Hall is hosting three information sessions about the new zoning ordinance this week. The first will be on Monday at 6:30 at Nottingham High School, the second will be on Tuesday at 6:30 at Corcoran High School, and the third will be on Wednesday at 6:30 at Henninger High School. Check these info sessions out, learn more about the new ordinance, and ask why City Hall wants make it harder for people without cars to find an affordable apartment in the City.
On January 11, syracuse.com published a letter from State Senator John DeFrancisco. In it, Senator DeFrancisco again pushed what he calls the “hybrid option” as a compromise between those who want to get rid of the “unsightly viaducts” and those who want to maintain “efficient movement of interstate traffic.” According to him, that compromise means “tearing down the viaducts and creating a community grid” and then adding “a short tunnel to keep interstate traffic flowing efficiently through the city.”
The Senator has been banging this drum for more than a year, but this is the first time he’s written to the Post-Standard since WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff released its independent report on the feasibility of building a tunnel under Downtown Syracuse. That report was supposed to show exactly how a tunnel+grid design could compromise between the interests of businesses located along I-81’s current path, city resident groups, suburban politicians, and University Hill all while meeting NYSDOT’s standards for the project. That’s a pretty tall order, and this report didn’t fill it.
For city resident groups, the point of removing the viaduct is to encourage property development and raise property tax revenues on the east side of Downtown. The viaduct discourages development there because it covers up some land and makes adjacent land unattractive. This is a problem along the viaduct’s entire length, but it’s worst where the viaduct’s curving interchange’s ramps cover multiple full city blocks near the intersection of Almond and Fayette Streets.
All four of the recommended tunnel designs include off-on ramps for a new I-690 exit at Almond Street that recreate this exact problem:
“Providing a direct local-to-interstate connection would be critical to maintaining acceptable levels of service in downtown Syracuse. To provide this connection from the north end of Almond Street, on- and off-ramps would begin and end in a wide center median at the intersection of Almond Street with Fayette Street, and ascend north and west toward over Washington Street, Water Street, and Erie Street, ultimately tying in to I-690 EB and WB. This would necessitate the closure of Washington Street and Water Street due to vertical clearance requirements.”
The report claims that the switch from a highway interchange to highway off ramps “would provide a substantial amount of residual state-owned land for potential disposal north of Fayette Street between McBride Street and Almond Street,” but it’s hard to believe that any developers would be willing to buy that land since the 2nd and 3rd stories of any building built on it would be just yards away from heavy traffic travelling at forty miles an hour.
It’s strange, really, that WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff would include these ramps in all of its designs when NYSDOT didn’t think an exit from I-690 at Almond Street was necessary “to maintain acceptable levels of service in downtown Syracuse.” NYSDOT’s Community Grid plan instead included new exits at Irving and Crouse Avenues, and it kept the on-off ramps parallel to I-690 to leave as much land open for development as possible. The result is more land that’s more attractive for development and more likely to yield more property taxes to fund city services.
Senator DeFrancisco can keep trying to say that he wants a compromise, but he’s going to need to start actually respecting what people would want out of a compromise. It’s not enough to just say the words “hybrid option” and “community grid.” He’s got to actually advocate for a design that benefits the City in the way that NYSDOT’s community grid design can.
