$800M Syracuse plan to replace 1930s buildings
Officials say modern, colorful townhomes part of the project
The city of Syracuse is about to embark on a $800 million plan that would replace the public housing projects in the shadow of Interstate 81 with a new neighborhood where lowincome residents live side-byside with people paying market-rate downtown rent.
It will be the end of the state’s oldest public housing — hundreds of institutional brick apartments built in 1938 just south of downtown Syracuse and the hundreds of other gated-off buildings that grew up around it.
City planners are expected to ask the federal government for the first $50 million in a grant application to be revealed Wednesday. Syracuse.com/the Post-standard looked at the plans.
In the poorest ZIP code in Syracuse, depressing blocks of apartment buildings would be replaced by modern, colorful townhomes and multistory buildings with high-end appliances along tree-lined, walkable streets. There would be no more enclosed courtyard parking lots that attract nuisance behavior.
Planners envision parks on every block, a grocery store, community gardens, improved schools and more job opportunities. They hope people who take the bus to minimum-wage jobs in nursing homes and retail stores will live in the same homes as doctors who can walk up the hill to work.
The Black neighborhood everyone still calls the “15th Ward” was torn apart in the 1950s and ’60s when the government built a highway overpass through it. Now, as that highway has aged out of its useful life, government leaders have promised to remake it in a way that gives justice to past mistakes.
A nonprofit called Blueprint 15 has been tasked with reimagining the neighborhood. The nonprofit was formed by the city, the Syracuse Housing Authority and the Allyn Foundation, which is using money from the sale of Welch Allyn to fight poverty.
They are ready to hand a plan to the state and federal government at the same time there is political will to lift a neighborhood suffering from every ill of concentrated poverty. They expect there will be millions of state and federal dollars available as part of the I-81 rebuild and federal spending on infrastructure.
In Syracuse, planners have spent 10 years getting ahead of any orders from the top down.
“This is what the plan is,” said Bill Simmons, director of the housing authority. “We’re not going hat in hand and saying, ‘What are you going to do for me?’”
Syracuse has not seen anything like an $800 million transformation of a whole neighborhood in modern history.
But with this redevelopment comes great uncertainty among the 4,000 people who live there. The housing authority has promised, and is required by the federal government, to offer a new apartment to each person who lives there now.
Some residents welcome the change. Others fear they’re being evicted from homes they love and losing neighbors they rely on.
“I know it will be different, completely different, and I’m sorry about that. I’m sad about it,” said Alice Daigle, who has lived in Pioneer Homes for 40 years.
The residents, the advocates who fight for them and city planners all over the country are watching to make sure the project is done with sensitivity.
Mayor Ben Walsh said he understands why residents doubt the project and the city’s motives.
“Every chance the city of Syracuse has had to undertake a significant development opportunity that involves older, affordable housing, the powers that be have failed the residents,” Walsh said. “So, we have history working against us. And until we prove that we can do it a different way, people are right to be skeptical.”
Policymakers have been talking about a plan to transform the former 15th Ward since at least 2010. Now, officials say that plan has moved closer to reality with step-bystep demolition and construction plans, a partnership with a big-name developer and an application for a $50 million federal grant.
The 10-year plan includes tearing down the state’s oldest public housing project, Pioneer Homes, as well as Mckinney Manor and Central Village. The neighborhood — 118 acres on 27 blocks — is home to more than 4,000 people in more than 1,000 units of public housing.
As early as 2023, the first mixed-income, low-rise apartment building could go up on nearby vacant land owned by the Syracuse Housing Authority, said Pam Askew, senior vice president of Mccormack Baron Salazar, the developer that won a competitive bid to work on the project.
The master planning effort, led by Mccormack Baron Salazar, was $741,000.
The plan is to demolish and develop in three major parts, some of which will overlap with the planned demolition of neighboring I-81.
In the first part, the group would build on vacant land, possibly as early as later this year. Over the next several years and in several phases, they would bulldoze Mckinney Manor and two blocks of Pioneer Homes and replace them with a combination of low-rise apartment buildings, walk-ups and townhouses. More than 600 units ranging from 1-4 bedrooms would replace the 293 units being torn down.
The second part of the redevelopment would see the rest of Pioneer Homes — the ones closest to I-81 — come down, and the third would include demolition of Central Village. The idea is to work with plans for I-81, building along with the new community grid instead of guessing what will fit once the highway comes down.
Developers aren’t planning any demolition for Almus Olver Towers, the senior residence. That building would be remodeled instead.
All that demolition and construction will cost a lot — about $500 million for the housing alone, which doesn’t take into account other promises made as part of the project.
The plan also calls for the creation of a “cradle-to-college education pipeline” by offering early childhood and college readiness programs, workforce development programs, increased career opportunities and programs to attract entrepreneurs and businesses to the neighborhood.
All told, officials expect to spend more than $800 million by the time the project is finished in 2032, making it one of the most expensive projects in the city’s history.
Askew expects the funding will be a mix of public, philanthropic and private dollars. Public money would come from the city, county, state and federal governments, including possibly from the Department of Transportation as part of its plans for I-81.
Officials also plan to target housing-specific philanthropic dollars and private funding from lenders and investors.
The city is in the process of submitting an application for a $50 million Choice Neighborhoods grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to kickstart the project. It would be the first time a city in New York state received one of these coveted federal redevelopment grants.
Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens pointed to Mccormack Baron Salazar’s experience with this exact kind of HUD grant as a reason to be optimistic about the city’s probable success. The company has worked on 16 similar properties across the country using Choice Neighborhoods grants.
But the project still has a long way to go, Walsh said. He, Owens and representatives from Blueprint 15 are meeting with local, state and federal officials to nail down project funding sources, but even the $50 million HUD grant isn’t a sure thing.
The project is in such an early stage, no one even knows what to call it. Gov. Kathy Hochul called it the “New 15th Ward” when she mentioned it briefly in her State of the State address earlier this month. The Syracuse Housing Authority calls it the East Adams redevelopment. Critics refer to it as a land grab or an eviction.
“Everybody has a name,” said Jackie Lasonde, an advocate for South Side tenants. “It’s Blueprint 15 and then it’s the Syracuse Surge.”
Lasonde said advocates like her have had a difficult time participating in meetings and getting details.
“I try to keep my ear to the ground and know what’s going on,” she said. “But it’s becoming increasingly difficult. I can go online, but I am someone who’s always driving or moving.”
Lasonde said she would like to slow down the process and help the people who live there understand where they’re going to end up living. Some residents are seniors. Others are immigrants who need interpreters.
“People, very understandably, are unnerved,” she said. “Will the change be in favor of poor people or people who are financially challenged and, if so, what does it look like?”
In Pioneer Homes, the average income is $13,630. The average rent is $297, according to the housing authority.
As their apartments are torn down, residents will be given the option to move to another public housing unit in the city or use a Section 8 voucher to move into an apartment anywhere in the country.
The biggest concern among residents is where a Section 8 voucher would land them. Government-owned public housing feels like safety. Privately-owned Section 8 housing is uncertain.
“The down underbelly people don’t talk about is will they have to go where they’re accepted and that means places like Tim Green’s Skyline,” she said.