Proposal for a Kinneys in Eastwood

The proposal is discouraging, and not only because it erodes the adjacent residential street:

1. The curb cut on James St is a surprise; it will promote neither automobile though-traffic flow nor walkability along James.
2. The dumpster next to the remaining houses, despite the landscape buffer, is going to generate noise and odors for residents.  The community would do well to regulate the hours the truck will come by to empty it.
3. The placement of the loading dock facing Midler, where one would expect to see the building address the sidewalk with transparent storefront windows, is very disappointing.
4. The lack of an entrance at the corner of James and Midler is the biggest surprise, running counter to the pattern established by the most successful buildings on James, such as the Ausman Building.

The last two issues demonstrate the difficulty presented by:

1. plunking retailers’ standard plans for freestanding buildings into urban sites, and
2. conflicts between building orientation suggested by traditional urban patterns and that suggested by parking lot locations.

Allowing site conditions to influence the internal plan of the store might have yielded a longer, shallower building along James.  Such a building could re-establish the street wall, address both corners and the side streets, and leave more room behind for parking and loading without invading the residential zone; I suspect that the zoning dispute could be made moot by allowing the building to respond to the site.

Mr. Marcoccia’s existing building at the northwest corner of the site does a much better job of site response. It exhibits an easy and appropriate neighborhood urbanity (despite its current condition) that the proposal lacks, making its loss as lamentable as the loss of the houses on Edward.  It demonstrates patterns that new construction ought to emulate, in order to recover walkability in Eastwood:

1.  It incorporates small-scale mixed-uses; apartments above retail.

2.  It activates the sidewalk with a number of retail tenants in narrow storefront bays that were originally transparent to the street.

3.  It is built to the sidewalk on both streets it faces.

4.  It presents a strong corner to the street, with an entry appropriately located there.

So here’s a modest proposal: locate the drug store in the ground floor of the existing building.  Doing so would not fill the corner of James and Midler, but the proposal does not do so very well either. The proposal is a suburban, single-use building with a standard plan pulled out of a drawer, that presents an unfortunate side to Midler.

The design professionals are not to blame; they are doing the best that can be done with an unfortunate brief.  It’s the single-use, single-story, standard-plan development model that has to change, a model that prevents good urbanism from being practiced.

Only when retailers begin to co-locate with other uses and adapt their store plans to the particularities of the site will urban neighborhoods begin to recover the walkable and vibrant characters they once possessed.  Bringing habitual development practices (learned whilst developing sprawling outlying greenfield sites) into the city only further erodes the desirable qualities of the neighborhood business district.

In my view, before making zoning changes detrimental to the neighborhood, the community should be asking for a complete redesign of the proposal.

-Don Argus AIA

We all know, as Sean said, that “…an absence of planning had the cumulative effect of making life miserable for walkers, who have a significant presence — but little political voice — in Syracuse.” In Eastwood and in other parts of the city, residents have successfully lobbied against suburban-style development that makes city streets unattractive and dangerous and that makes property values drop. In the mid-2000′s, it was my belief that City Hall really needed more trained, experienced planners on board so that development would be informed by people who had been educated to develop standards for design and who deeply understood how suburban-style development (oceans of asphalt) ruins cities.

Then Stephanie Miner campaigned on a platform of sound urban planning and was elected mayor. She made changes to personnel in City Hall, bringing in many who had the academic credentials and the experience necessary to plan well into the future for a city that has for too long succumbed to outdated or inappropriate planning.

Now we are being treated to the spectacle of the Common Council pitting itself against the rest of City Hall. While I deeply respect the enormous amount of work and commitment that the council members bring to our city, as well as the high quality of much of their work, I have to think about the inherent difference between government appointees and the elected members of the Council.

The appointees were brought on board because their combined experience and education means they are qualified to realize the campaign promises of effective urban planning. The Council, however, is made up of politicians whose job it is to please their constituency. This does not mean they have the tools necessary to create a viable, long-term development plan and appropriate set of development standards.

I applaud the Planning Commission’s efforts to protect the residential fabric of our neighborhood. Already, because Walgreens was allowed to have that sea of asphalt, it has set a precedence that Kinney’s wants to take advantage of. If the Planning Commission allows the razing of residential properties to make more parking spots, it sets yet another dangerous precedent. Planning decisions have consequences that affect the livability of our city for generations after the decisions are made. If I were to have major surgery, I’d want a specialist working on me to be sure of the best possibility for positive long-term outcomes. I’d never want a generalist, much less one beholden to popular opinion, to be doing that kind of work.

There are many difficult details that the Commission must still work out with the developer. If the Council insists on going through with an amendment to the city charter, it will take that much longer to get the details of this development worked out. We do not need more distractions, nor do the Planning Commission and the developers. We do want these two corners developed. We need to let our planners finish the job.

I have sought to learn about the backgrounds of the members of the Planning Commission and, upon reading them, I have found myself in awe of their many accomplishments. I include here just the tiniest portion of what I’ve learned about them, so that Syracuse residents might begin to have an idea of what a great team we have working to keep our city from being further blighted by inappropriate development.

Dr. Ruben Cowart is chairman of the City of Syracuse Planning Commission. Among his long list of accomplishments, he is the Chairman of the Governor of New York Medical Advisory Committee, he serves on numerous boards and has received national and local awards for his outstanding service. He founded Syracuse Community Health Center in 1977 which serves some 66,000 individuals, employs more than 400 individuals, and has an operational budget of more than 57 million dollars.

Linda L. Henley has a Masters in Public Administration from Cornell University, with many of her studies in community development. She was the first Director of Development for the Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative, has many years of experience as a fundraiser and has served on numerous committees and not-for-profit boards.

Rebecca Livengood has a BA with a major in Government and specialization in Urban Studies. She also earned a Master of City Planning from MIT with specialization in Environmental Design. Her thesis was on the impact of zoning and building codes on building form and site planning in two residential neighborhoods. She has served as an urban planner for an architecture and planning firm in Boston and in a variety of professional positions in twelve years at the Department of Community Development of the city of Syracuse.

George Matthews has been a member of the Syracuse Planning Commission since 2008, and has attended the annual Onondaga Planning Federation training conferences. He has been active in planning positions in numerous TNT committees, in parks initiatives and in academic planning committees at OCC.

Steven W. Kulick earned a Master of Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and attends the Annual Planning Conference for planning commission members presented by the Onondaga County Planning Federation. His extensive experience includes more than eleven years of experience in city government, including having led a team of professionals charged with developing a comprehensive plan for the City’s Urban Cultural Park Program.