Ecovillage Has More Competition Coming

As noted in the Ithaca Times, the eco-conscious folks who developed the Aurora Street Pocket Neighbrohood have a new proposal in the works. The location for this one, however, isn’t as urban – the site is located off of Five Mile Drive, just west of Elmira Road and the southwest area’s suburban big-box land (fun fact – the road starts at an intersection with Elmira Road five miles from the shores of Cayuga Lake, hence the name).  This general area has seen a sizable number of single-family homes built in the past decade, though nothing multi-unit like the proposal.

Speaking of which, the basic stats – ~36 units, “craftsman” style homes 1-2 floors, single or 3-unit properties depending on preference, and a common house/community center. Enough of seems to be up in the air style-wise that New Earth Living is asking interested parties to fill out surveys or email them, so they can flesh out their proposal. Style-wise, we already have a good idea what this might look like by looking at the Aurora Street Pocket Neighborhood, which consists of one renovated home and 4 units in three newly-built properties tucked in from the corner Aurora and Marshall. Green construction, solar panels, LED lighting, food grown on property, but no true farm on the property, and units are clustered but still separate – in some ways, this project seems like a toned-down version of Ecovillage.

Ithaca has a lot of folks that lean far left, and a lot of development going on as of late. This seems like a pretty natural outcome of those two forces. Hopefully, this will be a project the community can get excited about as it moves forward.

Cayuga Heights Wants A Real Community Center

 

 

 

So the folks in Cayuga Heights are getting in on the development game. In this case, local developers are interesting in taking one of the few mixed-use areas of the wealthy bedroom community, and densifying it.

The focus of this proposal is the Community Corners area, the small, mostly commercial parcel next to the awkward intersections of Triphammer, Hanshaw and East Upland Roads. According to the Ithaca Journal, Most of the new construction would be focused on the grassy parcel at lower left, while some of the buildings already exist would be expanded upon with additional floors, such as the Island Fitness in the lower left of the commercial patch. The two parcels, although owned by separate groups (The Ciaschi Family, the same ones for whom the corner of College and Dryden is named, own Community Corners; the grassy parcel by Mark Mecenas). Notably, this building only finished renovation last year; the bank in the lead image and the two-story office building at Triphammer and Upland are only about three years old.

Incorporated into the proposal – more lower-level retail and office space, and about 100 units of housing, up to four floors in height. this would require a zoning variance, as the maximum height for Cayuga Heights is about 30 feet. The design thrown out there is from (Larry) Fabbroni Associates, who tend to be called on much more to discuss the civil engineering aspects of development projects rather than actual designs. I prefer to think of the above designs as more of a scheme than anything concrete.

Oh look, they even threw the vaguely hipster-like musician in there! How quaint!

Mecenas notes in the IJ article that build-out for this project would likely take a few years, and that’s after the village approves the zoning changes. But, a pedestrian-friendly mid-rise core to Cayuga Heights would definitely make it feel more like its own community rather than a wealthy branch of the Ithaca tree.

 

 

Creeping in Collegetown

I have never understood, nor will ever try to understand, the fascination some have with invading the privacy of young college women in their apartments. A recent Cornell Sun article notes a case where a former Cornell student entered two apartments in the 312 College Ave. apartment building invited. These apartments were occupied by female students, who screamed and/or confronted the guy, causing him to flee. Apart from the obvious threat a guy like this poses, I couldn’t help but think that events like these have been going on for a while now.

My first thought was the “Collegetown Creeper”, a story that I already knew from when I was growing up north of Syracuse, because that’s how much of a media sensation it was. The creeper was tied into at least 18 cases, occurring in 2003 and 2004. Most of the earlier ones were cases of peering through windows into the apartments of young females. Then the creep factor was kicked up a notch in early 2004 when he would break in and watch them sleeping. By the end of his reign of terror, he had graduated to full-blown sexual abuse. At least one victim claimed her clothes were cut off and baby oil was poured onto her. As one might imagine, this created quite a stir, and by the fall of 2004, students were protesting outside Common Council meetings, demanding further action be taken on the issue.

The creeper was eventually arrested in late October 2004. The suspect was identified as Abraham Shorey, who at 23, a married father of six, and sporting Rastafarian-style dreads, seemed as unlikely a sexual criminal as any. Shorey was familiar with the Collegetown area and its crowds, as he worked as a cook over at The Nines. Before his arraignment on charges of burglary and sexual abuse, Shorey posted bail and fled the area. He managed to avoid arrest on two occasions  by producing fake IDs throughout his time as a fugitive. He was arrested a year later in San Diego, where he plead guilty to assault with intent to rape a San Diego County woman in May 2005. DNA evidence collected at the scene of the San Diego incident linked the perpetrator to the events in Ithaca from the previous two years. His sentence in California is seven years and four months, but the charges against him in New York were dropped for a number of reasons (time elapsed, difficulty locating witnesses, etc.)

Unfortunately, much worse has also occurred. Although technically not Collegetown, a 25-year old graduate student was raped and murdered near North Campus in May 1981, her body then dumped into the gorge. Her killer would graduate and go on to seven more murders in downstate NY and CT before being arrested.

Ignoring all the insensitive jokes students make about “forcible touching” here, but female students at Cornell have every reason to be concerned for their safety, in the past, now, and for the foreseeable future.

Motivation for New Construction: 2012 Census Estimates

With over 2,500 housing units planned within the  county, and only so many increasingly spendthrift college students to exploit, local developers kinda need further justification to launch into such a building boom. The census is certainly supportive of their plans.

Following the new April 2012 census estimates (file here), from April 2010 to July 2012, Tompkins County has likely added another 990 residents, bringing the local population to 102,554. Interestingly enough, Tompkins and the bordering counties serve as a little growth pocket in otherwise declining upstate New York – Broome County, home to Binghamton, lost the most residents of any county, with about 2,540 shipping out, a drop of 1.3%. The largest increases upstate came in from Jefferson County (home to the growing Fort Drum), and Saratoga County (home to the very large and very new computer chip plant), with Tompkins in third with 1.0% growth. Given the 4.5% growth of the last decade, Tompkins is on par with its growth rate in the 2000s.

I should issue the token disclaimer that there are estimates, and the actual numbers can be a surprise when they come out in 2020. For instance, it was thought in the 2000s that Onondaga County/Syracuse lost 4,000 people over the decade – they gained 9,000. And I’m not sure how much I believe the rapidly suburbanizing Dutchess County, which hasn’t lost population since the 1890s, is believed to have lost people over the two year span. For Tompkins County in 2010, the original estimates were too high by a little over 200 (an error of about 4%).  Also, perhaps this comes as no surprise, the New York portion of the New York metro added about 160,00o people, cementing their belief that they are the center of the world and the rest of us just live in it.

Two of the numbers I like to throw around for a housing unit is that Tompkins averages 2.4 occupants for non-college housing, 2.0 for college housing. If we use that 990 figure, it can be broken down to 413 traditional units or 495 college student units – and that’s additional units required in two years, in a county already experiencing a housing shortage.  I’d say builders have all the justification they need for development in the near-term.

 

News Tidbits 3/6/13: Another Project, Another Closed Door

A superstitious part of me can’t help but feel like I jinxed something when I wrote about cancelled projects in the Ithaca metro not long back. The latest victim is particularly unfortunate – Collegetown Crossing, the six-story mixed-use project proposed for the 300 block of College Avenue, in an area sorely in need of redevelopment.

In this case, the fault was not the developer’s. The Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) thought the project was asking for too much with its parking variance (there were lot size variances as well, but those are not the issue here). As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not surprised, as the variance was for 95% less parking than required, which is a steep order to ask for, even with the community benefits and the proposed mitigation. Granted, I tend to be a bit cynical when I think about details such as the head of the zoning board being a stakeholder in a competing developer, but the primary drivers of the rejected variance were permanent residents who felt that students would try and smuggle their cars and park on their streets several blocks away (and this I can’t argue with – I personally feel that there are many Cornell students that walk around with a sense of entitlement, and would think that they’re being “clever” and “beating the system” by bringing their cars and trying to be discreet about it). The phrase “dead in the water” is fairly appropriate, because the project cannot move forward unless the parking is added (unlikely) or the city amends its parking requirements (slightly more likely, but this would take a support of the Common Council, and a stretch of time to be approved and implemented).

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On a slightly more optimistic note, the IJ notes that $250 million in private development is underway in 71 large projects and a number of smaller works through FY 2015. Notably, following the breakdown, the vast majority of these are apartment and hotel projects, with another chunk under the vague title of “mixed-use” – proof that tourism and education are big drivers locally. Of these, 30 are in Ithaca City and 18 are in the town; I can guarantee at least half are discussed on this blog, most with renderings. Lansing reports another 18 projects, most of which could be broken down into three categories: apartments and retail near 13, housing developments (of which I’m aware of about 5 off the top of my head), and projects tied into Lansing Town Center. The article never defines what constitutes a major project, and this could be responsible for some of the discrepancy in the number of projects.

Off the cuff, I don’t write about single-family housing developments for three reasons – suburbia tends to look fairly homogenous, I’m not a fan of sprawl, and they take years to build out anyway. The article notes 516 residential lots in some phase of execution.  Give me a Kentlands-style proposal and I’ll get the keyboard a-tapping.

Of further interest, 27 are purely apartment projects, with about 2,100 units. This doubles the number I estimated a couple months back. Some of this is because I only counted Ithaca proper, which was Ithaca city and town, Cayuga Heights, and Lansing village. Adding the 72 units in Dryden’s Poet’s Landing, the 75 units proposed with the Boiceville Cottage expansion in Caroline, and the few hundred units in Lansing town’s Town Center definitely bring the two figures two closer. The project in Danby I think is a factory consolidation.

Of the 4 hotels and 450 rooms – offhand, there’s the 106-room Fairfield Inn, the Holiday Inn addition (13 new rooms in gross or 195 newly built rooms, depending on your perspective), the Hotel Ithaca and its 160 rooms, and maybe the Hampton Inn proposal for 92 rooms, but the combined room total is off, so I dunno what’s being counted.

It’s a boom by most standards, and certainly welcome from the perspective of this blog. I just hope to avoid seeing more projects end up “dead in the water”.

Can a Polluted Past Have A Future?

Image Property of Welch Construction Inc.

Real estate in Ithaca is a fairly warm as markets go (I refuse to call it hot). But there are still some gaping issues in the metro market.  One of the biggest examples is one that can be seen from just about any southward vantage point above the lake lowlands – Emerson Power Transmission.

The property started as Morse Chain, which dates back to 1880 and began the manufacture of automobile chains in 1906.  Morse Chain was acquired by locally prominent BorgWarner in 1929, and the facility continued industrial production until BorgWarner built a new facility near the airport in 1983, selling the factory to Emerson Power Transmission. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, several chemicals were used for “cutting oils”, removing oils from the manufactured automotive gears, shafts and chains at the tail end of the process. One of those was trichloroethylene, or TCE. TCE is a known carcinogen, and I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Unfortunately, the era of traditional manufacturing was fading in the Ithaca area. Emerson Power Transmission moved about 40 of its corporate senior staff to a suburban Cincinnati facility in 2007 (and I remember reading about it while a student at Cornell). The death knell came in August 2009, when Emerson announced it was closing up shop in Ithaca, putting 228 people out of work (the factory had over 500 people on site as recently as the mid-2000s, and had received tax incentives not long before closure). The closure was recent enough that this blog was already going, and the original entry is here.

At first glance, the property would appear to be potentially salable. It’s a large property in a well-populated and growing area with a substantial uptick in the real estate market. However, there’s one very, very big issue – the TCE contamination.

Although TCE use stopped by the late 1970s, the damage was done, and unknown quanities of it leaked into the groundwater and sewers. The site was declared contaminated by the state in 1988.

Since then, it’s been a series of long and contentious debates about who to hold responsible for what degree of clean-up. The city, the state DEC, and BorgWarner and Emerson had volleyed back and forth on who pays for what. 35 years after the chemical usage is stopped, yet nearby sewers have had to be replaced, soil tested constantly and excavated if contaminated, and groundwater / vapor testing in nearby properties. Essentially, a major environmental headache.

Although the brunt of the burden has fallen on government and Emerson to clean up (BorgWarner gets blame but seems to carry little if any of the cleanup cost), the site has been marketed for sale – $3.9 million for 94 acres plus structures (note that just the groundwater is contaminated, not the structures themselves – this isn’t Ithaca Gun). It was no surprise that with the remediation and continual testing, the site has been a tough sell.

All the more interesting, then, that the local chamber of commerce announced at a recent luncheon that someone is agreeing to purchase the property. Emerson’s in the final steps of reviewing the offer.  The property could be host to a variety of activities – the IJ article mentions a possible small business incubator like the one at the South Hill Business Campus (itself a former factory). Given the location, any number of industrial or commercial applications are possible, maybe even partial/total tear-down and redevelopment. The biggest obstacle apart from the lingering environmental concerns might be the fact that the property is split along the city and town of Ithaca, so both would have to accept any proposed redevelopment.  But still, any progress on the looming, decaying facility would be one of the surest signs of a “reinvention” of the area.

Klarman Hall

Image Property of Cornell University

The Humanities Building has a name – Klarman Hall. The building is named for Seth Klarman ’79, a prominent hedge fund manager and large-scale investor in pro-Israel organizations. Considering the construction cost  is at least $61 million, Klarman probably put up at least half of that amount.

A part of me wonders if there’s any cruel humor to be had in an investment banker with strongly pro-Israel views funding a humanities building where most of the students who will walk through those doors will hold an adopted dislike of him (due to his strongly capitalist tendencies, and Israel being an easy target for disdain given the conflict with Palestine). For what it’s worth, Mr. Klarman does keep a very low profile, and is considered fairly conservative as investors go.

Klarman Hall, which I have previously shrugged off as a token glass box, is set for a construction launch this summer, with completion in 2015. The building is planned to be LEED Platinum with low-energy everything and living roofs, and is designed by Koetter, Kim and Associates, a Boston firm founded by Cornell alumni.

In a twist any cynic would enjoy, it was discovered a few years ago that Goldwin Smith, the professor and namesake of the hall Klarman will be contiguous with, was a virulent anti-Semite.

News Tidbits 2/8/13: Even Small Projects Deserve A Blurb

I held off on posting anything last week (opting instead to post early), because of a hectic work schedule. It seems wrong at first glance that a meteorologist should have a day off during what will be by most accounts a powerful snowstorm; but I work weekends and I already hit my OT limit for the week. So seeing as how most of my “weekend” plans are cancelled, here’s a smattering of news tidbits.

- 70 new units of eco-friendly housing are planned for West Hill. The complex would be a mixed-income development of townhomes and apartments, clustered for pedestrian ease. Notably in the article, a town councilman asserts that the land was intended for industrial development under the comprehensive plan, not residential, and “it’s not clear to me at this point how it (the proposed housing development) fits in with our overall concept of development in that area”.

Fine and all, except the town put the parcel out to bid six months ago with the goal of residential development of an eco-friendly, mixed-income nature. With a starting bid of $500,000. I guess someone ponied up. I also guess there would be a very costly lawsuit if the town tried to change the rules now. But then, this councilman has always been a notable opponent of West Hill development, so we’ll see how this plays out with the planning board.

- Funds are in place to purchase property for the construction of Ithaca’s first mosque; the Sun article suggests a small parcel near the mall. Kudos, Ithaca, and best of luck to the future house of prayer. I have every faith in Ithaca’s residents and culture to avoid another Murfreesboro from happening.

- An ensemble of small projects form some minor blips on the radar. Two duplexes to built in the Eastern Heights neighborhood. The Palms’s water pipes burst, furthering the building’s inexorable move towards demolition, probably when Novarr-Mackesey’s time frees up with the completion of Collegetown Terrace in 2014. Lansing’s new fire station is near completion, and in a total failure on my part, I had no clue what it was when I took a photo of it in trying to find the senior housing that was supposed to be built with the new BJ’s.

When Things Don’t Work Out

Frequent readers of this blog are aware that I cover two things – Cornell (its history and physical plant) and new projects and real estate development in the Ithaca area. Now, I’m not going to say I’m beating a dead horse with the former, but I would be lying if I didn’t say it hasn’t been easy coming up with new topics to write about, that aren’t widely available already (ex. the Willard Straight Takeover of 1969), or previous written in this blog.

Fortunately, Ithaca has been undergoing a veritable boom in construction. Just today, I checked the town of Ithaca planning board notes to find yet another multi-unit housing project proposed – “Hawk’s Nest at Springwood”, a 3-story, 50-unit building to be built at the Springwood Townhomes area just east of the intersection of 96B and King Road. The project will be marketed to the 55+ crowd.

This area has seen a cluster of (mostly suburban-style) development in the past few years, with the Holly Creek Townhomes, College Crossings, the Namgyal Monestery, The Country Inn and Suites, The College Circle Apartments (IC) expansion, and a number of private homes. Which, counting that all of the top of my head, gives 184 more beds at IC, and 74+ other housing units. Quite the little burst of activity south of IC.

So, considering the question in a previous entry about historical construction trends, this latest development pushes the private residential units number from 2011-2016 over the 1,000 mark, nothing to sneeze at when the total number of units in the entire metro is just under 42,000. In considering the planned developments north of Ithaca, and single-family homes, the number of units planned in those five years could very well be in the 2000+ range, a proportion highly unusual for upstate New York, and probably only comparable to the Albany metro, where a massive computer chip factory has been underway.

Now, time for the Debbie Downer – I have no expectation all these projects will come to fruition.

In the past, several projects have been downsized, modified, or cancelled. Take Ithaca Gun, a project constantly being re-evaluated due to rapidly increasing costs associated with the site cleanup. The project started off with 160 units, but neighbors complained. It was decreased to 80, then 33, than upped to 45. The final result seems to be a shot in the dark. Because of the uncertainty, I did not include it in the unit count.

Other projects, both current and old, were modified in the planning. The Trebloc Building downtown was originally supposed to be two floors (and I will personally donate a very nice bottle of Finger Lake wine to any developer who proposes to knock that abomination down and replace it with something more fitting). Cayuga Green, covered previously, has been redesigned four times. Collegetown Terrace has undergone at least one major revision and a couple minor ones.

Some projects never see the light of day. The McGraw House, an assisted living facility downtown, considered an expansion in 2009/2010. Then they shelved it. A 400-unit development was planned for West Hill (Carrowmoor), but this also appears to have gone stale.  Cornell’s West Campus was slated to be bedecked in Collegiate Gothic – killed by the Great Depression (among other Cornell proposals and plans that can be found using the search bar). Wal-Mart was once slated for Lansing. The most outlandish serious proposal goes toward a city-sponsored urban renewal plan proposed for Collegetown in 1968. The project would have tore down the heart of Collegetown, and in its place put up an eleven story office building, and 6 to 8 high-rise apartment towers (total 375 units), the tallest being 18 to 21 stories. It also would have included a 600-space parking garage and retail venues.

It’s sort of like “survival of the fittest”. The projects with the most stable funding, and the strongest proposals, tend to win out. Some projects are clearly underway, some go through revisions, some will remain pie-in-the-sky. I do, however, look forward to as many of these projects coming to fruition as possible.

More Than Just Cherries On Top: The Purity Redevelopment Plan

Now, a part of me was tempted to write something up about a Cornell fraternity that just was thrown off campus for “sexually humiliating” hazing…but then, I realized I’m too far out to care for the stupid crap of the current crop of students. No matter how absolutely, unfathomably asinine it is. Stay classy TEP, it’s a miracle your trashed house didn’t collapse first.

So onto something that catches my interest in a more positive way. I have to issue a slight mea culpa on this, because the news regarding the Purity Ice Cream project has been floating around for a good six weeks already. For those who have yet to experience it, Purity is a fairly well-known local ice cream company, in operation since 1936. The current building, a rather plain one-story brick structure, was completed in 1953.

Of note and of particular relevance here, Purity is in a high-traffic but fairly low density area, on the Corner of Meadow and Cascadilla Streets, west-northwest of downtown. In what I would describe as a rarity for Ithaca, I don’t believe I’ve ever taken a photo of the store. Thank Heaven for aerials and Flickr.

Purity’s parcel is outlined in red in the above image from Bing Maps. It lies on the cusp of low-to-moderate density residential district (Northside), part of a small commercial district of mostly retail and warehousing. So it lies quite a ways outside the traditional dense clusters of development.

The plans are still pretty conceptual at this point. The owners, Bruce and Heather Lane, seek to keep the original structure and build vertically; rental office and retail space on the lower floors, with 13 to 26 1 and 2-bedroom apartments on the third and higher floors. The facade, in keeping with the original structure, will be brick. The number of stories is to suggested at 4-5, but the first floor would have 16′ ceilings, so it would be fairly likely to top out around 60′, and the new building would be a visual focus point in the generally low-rise neighborhood. Although the area is less built up than some other parts of the city, the owners are seeking to tap into new urbanist concepts, touting the walkability to Greenstar and the Waterfront Trail. The goal is to get the project underway in fall 2013, and the ice cream store will remain open throughout the duration of construction. A structure like this would have a 12-to-18 month time frame.

Not all of the structure would be saved, as the manufacturing space for the Ice Cream would be eliminated; but then, Purity has contracted out the ice cream manufacture to Byrne Dairy since 2006. It seems it would be a loss of underused space at worst.

Now here’s the consequence of my inattentiveness; the rendering is missing. I can come up with some ideas, since John Snyder Arch. is in charge, and they’ve been prolific in the area as of late (their flavor of choice being geometric forms/ modern design). But even with that knowledge, and knowing it was just a sketch plan, I would have liked to have seen the render. But unfortunately, it is missing from the IJ and its sister pubs, and even the article has been deleted (at least there were cached versions; but those did not have the render). Granted, it’s not like I’d be able to post it anyway, given the whole paid subscription thing. But, as the project continues to evolve over the next couple of months, I will attempt to stay on top of this for once, and post a rendering as a soon as a free version becomes available.

Update 1/17: And in fact one has, from Google image search. Sweet. Pun intended.