Walkable Eastwood » residential

Reasons to be cheerful

Lonnie — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:13:28 +0000

When you stack Syracuse up against other cities, you actually end up with a lot of reasons to be cheerful about living here. Yeah, we get into our scraps about what’s the best way to improve it. But at least people really care! Listening to people who have lived elsewhere is often enlightening:

A newly-minted urban planner, passing through Syracuse on her way from Ohio to Germany, expounded on the many delights she was seeing in Syracuse: “People in Syracuse don’t realize what they have! Unlike out in Ohio, you have parks, lots of them, built on the top of every drumlin in the city. There are beautiful buildings still, and public art popping up everywhere.”

A woman at the arts and crafts festival yesterday (in and of itself a great reason to be cheerful) sold us a purse made of leather from Gloversville, NY, embossed with a machine that’s survived the economic downturn in that city. It’s gorgeous. She took the time to explain to us the difference between “top grain” leather and the leather that is actually inferior marked “genuine leather.” And she commented that, while they go to over 100 arts and crafts festivals per year, Syracuse has the cleanest downtown of all. Until you spend some time in other downtowns, it’s easy to take that for granted.

A couple from Burlinton, Vermont, a beautiful, walkable city in its own right, moved in next door. I pointed out the old vertical clothesline hiding way in the back – the kind that holds two pulleys, one for the upper flat and one for the lower one. Wouldn’t you know, within days our neighbor had strung up a line from her pulley to a new one on the house and some very tiny baby clothes were hung out in neat array. Unlike in Greenwich, CT, where they have banned the use of clotheslines at a public housing development (dryers there cost these elderly folks 90 cents/load!), Syracuse continues its proud tradition of outdoor drying. Look in the back yards of Eastwood and you’ll find a very old clothesline in a good percentage of them. Nothing like the savings and the disinfecting power of sunlight and air that you get with line drying – not to mention the possibilities of actually talking with your neighbor!

What reasons does living here give you to be cheerful?

Sunday Evening Strolls

Lonnie — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:00:21 +0000

Here in Eastwood we like to walk… as if you couldn’t tell. Given that, and in order to more easily meet our neighbors, we’re proposing folks take a walk at a particular time each week: Sunday evenings between 6:30 and 7:30.

If you don’t want to walk, you can just sit out on your porch or front steps or in your front yard at that time so we can meet each other. Got some baked goods or fresh veggies from your garden to share? Bring ‘em on out!

If we focus on including a certain couple of blocks in our walks, we’re more likely to bump into some of our neighbors. So here’s the line-up for this summer.

Update: All walks indicating two street names include James Street between those two streets.

June 14: Teall to Peck/Cook
June 21: Hillsdale to Midler (Laci’s Burger Joint and Cafe)
June 28: top-o-the-hill in Sunnycrest Park
July 5: Homecroft to Plymouth
July 12: Plymouth to Eastwood Plaza (OIP)
July 19: Sheridan Park (Nichols near Burnet)
July 26: Peck/Cook to Grant
August 2: Forest Hill to S. Collingwood (Laci’s)
August 9: Midler to Homecroft (Golden Crown Chicken)
August 16: Grant to Forest Hill
August 23: top-o-the-hill at the old Eastwood High (Sunnycrest and Mosley)

If you’re looking for a more serious work-out, just try this walking route through Sunnycrest Park. The basic idea is to walk up and down every set of stairs you find, then walk on to the next one.

Let’s talk about coffee!

Lonnie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:19:16 +0000

I’ll admit it. I’m a coffee nut. So I emailed my neighborhood coffee roaster to see what was going to be available this week. The answer: the usual great selection, plus a Kenya Chania Estate organic. This one is roasted to a full city roast, which works well in my antique vacuum pot. The label on the bag tells me what’s inside. The aroma: lemon, berry. Taste: papaya, spice. Body: medium. Aftertaste: milk chocolate.

Am I so experienced that I was able to actually pick up on all that? Not by a long shot. But I do know that when I taste this coffee and I don’t have to put cream in it, it’s because it’s smooth and bursting with flavors that are too interesting to cover up.

In case you haven’t been reading this blog for awhile, you may have missed the fact that Eastwood boasts one of the best coffee roasters in the Northeast. At one end of our James Street business district, in the Eastwood Plaza, is Cafe Kubal. While the cafe itself is small (okay, it’s tiny!), the taste of the coffees being roasted before your eyes in the 1904 roaster is huge. Matt and Rachel Godard go out of their way to find the best beans, to form business relationships with the growers themselves, and to bring the beans to Syracuse where Matt roasts them expertly.

In the cafe, you always have a choice of light or dark roasts for your cup o’ joe, as well as the usual variety of ways to prepare it. These folks pull a mean shot, equal to the best to be found in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Ithaca. Even if you’re not likely to do it often, try their espresso drinks once in awhile. You’ll never go back to Charbucks.

But if you just want a great cup of coffee at home, pick up a bag of beans. They’ll grind them for you or you can buy them whole for grinding at home. (If you want really great coffee taste, you’ll invest in a grinder and grind seconds before brewing.) Either way, you’ll know the date when the beans were roasted so you can be sure to use them within about ten days, when they’re at their peak of flavor.

Don’t want coffee? Try one of their many teas! In the mood for something to eat? They have an array of cookies, muffins, bagels, desserts – including Purity Ice Cream from Ithaca – as well as soups and other savory items.

Do you live out of town? That’s okay. Cafe Kubal’s internet business is even older than the cafe, and Matt ships his coffee all over this country and internationally. So if you’re originally from Eastwood and want to support a local business, give his coffee a try!

One of the best things about Cafe Kubal, of course, is that it’s located in a “20-minute city” – that is, everyone who lives in Eastwood (formerly a village, now a neighborhood), is within a 20-minute walk of the cafe. A daily walk of about 20 minutes is considered by some to be the minimum amount of exercise for maintaining health. How sweet it is, to combine a walk along Eastwood’s sidewalk-lined streets with a top-notch coffee experience.

Planning Commission meeting re: sign waiver

Lonnie — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:20:18 +0000

FOR PUBLICATION FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2009

PUBLIC NOTICE
CITY OF SYRACUSE
CITY PLANNING COMMISSION

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that a public hearing will be held Monday, April 27, 2009, at 6:00 p.m. in the Common Council Chambers, City Hall, Syracuse, New York to consider in full or in part the following applications:
. . . . . .
7) Application No. AS-08-33, for a Sign Waiver of area, type, and number, on property situated at 2327 James Street, owned by Five Point Development Grant, zoned Local Business, Class A, pursuant to Part C, Section X, of the City of Syracuse Zoning Rules and Regulations, as amended.

(See notification of complete meeting HERE.)

Look familiar?

Yep, we just went to the same meeting on April 6. What happened in that meeting? No decision was made. After three years of not communicating with the community and only one whole business day before the April 6 planning commission meeting, the developer requested and was granted the opportunity to meet with community members before a decision would be rendered. So he didn’t show up or even send a representative to the April 6 meeting where one person, Minch Lewis, spoke in favor of the waiver, one person offered a compromise (and was told this was not the meeting in which to do that), and over a dozen people spoke against it.

So what are we to do now?

Let me quote Frank Coon here. Frank, owner of CareFree Realty, grew up in Eastwood and has been responsible for the design, permitting and development of more than 120,000 acres, more than 18,000 homes being sold and/or built, and several million square feet of all types of commercial properties in New York, Texas and Florida. He knows the developer game. Frank says:

If their requirements are reasonable, a good developer knows that they will be able to attract quality businesses and tenants. These will last for years.

Especially in today’s economy, and some of these do this even in good times, there are the “vultures” out there who will do or say anything to get things their way – and all “on the cheap”. Nothing is left unturned to accomplish their goals – political manipulation, bullying tactics toward the residents and other business people, etc. Sound familiar ?? That type of “cheap” development may work for a couple of years, but will not last.

This is primarily due to the fact that this type developer ends up with a similar class of tenants who run their business “on the cheap”, end up running them into the ground and leave owing all kinds of money. Then the community is left with buildings that not only do not fit with the rest of the community, but will not and do not stand up to the elements – and good quality tenants turn their noses up at that type property – and it can turn them off to the community. That’s because that type development tells them a lot about the quality of the community and their prospective customers.

The “birds of a feather” thing does apply.

Frank

Eastwood is full of people who do not have the experience with developers that Frank has. They haven’t had to think like a developer to get their work done, so they cannot necessarily conceive of the game that’s being played with this last-minute meeting and the offer of one more “compromise” when in fact we’ve already been compromised to death. Too bad we have to be that cynical just to protect ourselves from the type of developers whose deeds on James St., present or future, would contribute to the kind of destruction of the social fabric that has taken place at Salina and Ballantyne streets.

Streetscape design includes lighting, sidewalks, where buildings are placed and how transparent they are to the street. If streetscape design were not beneficial, the City of Syracuse would not have invested over three hundred thousand dollars in the sidewalk improvements we’ve gotten in the past three years. Yet all this can be overshadowed by poor building design. In other words, if we allow the guidelines to be disregarded, we have essentially thrown away all the money spent on sidewalks and other beautification.

The unraveling of the fabric of our community starts by allowing one hole in the enforcement of the guidelines. Strong guidelines attract good developers.

No ground signs. Period.

Frank would concur. And so would the public.

So far, forty-six people have voted in the public survey about the sign waiver (top right sidebar). The results:

79.55% chose the following options :
- Absolutely not. The signs on their walls are more than enough.
- No, that kind of sign shouldn’t be there.

The remaining 20.45% was evenly divided between “I like it”, “It’s okay”, and “I don’t care either way.”

What do you think?

Who wins monumental competition?

Lonnie — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:11:35 +0000

When people drive into Eastwood from downtown Syracuse, the first thing to greet them at the gateway to our “village” has been this, the Veterans’ Monument. It is in an area that is 50% residential. We finish our Memorial Day parade there, where we gather for speeches and silent contemplation.

The proposed “monument sign” makes our gateway all about Walgreens instead:

We’ll let our monument speak for itself:

Planning an Eastwood veggie garden

Lonnie — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:47:00 +0000

With the economy tanking, one begins to think about things even more elemental than whether a business district is built for humans or for cars. (I can hear a few developers breathing a sigh of relief…) Yeah, I’m thinking it might be a good idea to grow food. We already know, thanks to Karen, that it’s possible to grow a lot of food in Eastwood.

There are lots of people in Syracuse thinking the same thing about their neighborhoods, too. Look at the websites that have sprouted just this winter (disclaimer – I’m the webmaster of the last two):

Syracuse Grows “…is a grassroots network cultivating a just foodscape in the City of Syracuse. Syracuse Grows provides coordination, programming, education, and resources to support equitable local food production, distribution and consumption through community gardening and urban agriculture.”
Community Supported Agriculture of Central New York “Since 1998, CSA-CNY has been bringing people together to safeguard, promote, make available, and enjoy locally grown organic foods.”
Slow Food CNY is a new chapter in the Slow Food USA network. Slow Food is “a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.”

With this flowering of organizations interested in very local food, it doesn’t seem quite so daunting a task to imagine the kinds of food we can grow in Eastwood. It’s the last day of February, high time I got some seeds and started them in the sunny southern window. My first shopping stop will be the Seed Savers Exchange. Why not just shop the Burpee catalogue or Lowes for seeds? Well, we’re losing biodiversity at a tremendous rate and I feel I can just as easily do my part to help maintain it, for the sake of my kids and grandson.

If you’re growing a garden this year, let us know what you’ll be planting and how you’ll cook it. I could use a little inspiration. For instance, I just learned that I don’t have to go to the trouble of breading and frying eggplant – it can easily be cut up and roasted with some olive oil and the fresh rosemary from the garden. So let us know what your favorite preparations are for the veggies you’ll be growing!

Here’s what my compost pile looked like today. The sun shone through the slats and melted only some of the snow:

The next slum is not in the city

Lonnie — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:26:35 +0000

Take a drive down West Onondaga Street and notice the amazing architecture. One mansion after another, some in great shape, but far too many broken up into apartments, turned into slums. At one time, these were the McMansions of their time. The same holds true for much of James St. Think this couldn’t happen out in suburbia? Think again.

No less a prestigious periodical than the Atlantic Monthly has published an article, “The Next Slum?“, outlining the kinds of changes that are already positively affecting our cities and threatening the vast rolling hills of McMansions. You know where they are in the Syracuse area – out beyond the villages that surround the heart of Central New York, on land that you may remember for its dairy farms and corn fields. When you walk into one of these houses, look up. You’ll see where all the (expensive) heat is rising to – wasted space in cathedral ceilings. Count the number of square feet per person living there – by international standards, it borders on obscene. Look around and notice the large lawns requiring much mowing and many chemicals to maintain. Take a walk and notice the distinct lack of humans. No human interaction to speak of, just a lot of cars pulling into and out of the driveways. The garages are not “a pair of parking spaces” but rather car parks vaster than the average family home in most countries in the world.

Contrast this to our “village within the city” of Eastwood. We have a mix of homes, with many two- and three-family homes mixed in with the single-family variety. We even still have our James St. mansions. People from all walks of life are found on our streets and in our cafes, actually meeting and even greeting each other, especially in the good weather.

We are a five-minute drive from the urban center, where apartments are renting for twice what they rent for in Eastwood. We have many community groups, grassroots activists, people who have lived here their entire lives and people who have moved in from the suburbs. Things are getting visibly better in Eastwood. The phrase “Eastwood renaissance” is being used and correctly so.

Here’s a bit from that Atlantic article that forecasts what we in Eastwood can look forward to (bold font mine):

Twenty years ago, urban housing was a bargain in most central cities. Today, it carries an enormous price premium. Per square foot, urban residential neighborhood space goes for 40 percent to 200 percent more than traditional suburban space in areas as diverse as New York City; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

It’s crucial to note that these premiums have arisen not only in central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development. For instance, luxury single-family homes in suburban Westchester County, just north of New York City, sell for $375 a square foot. A luxury condo in downtown White Plains, the county’s biggest suburban city, can cost you $750 a square foot. This same pattern can be seen in the suburbs of Detroit, or outside Seattle. People are being drawn to the convenience and culture of walkable urban neighborhoods across the country—even when those neighborhoods are small.

Given this, is not Eastwood currently the bargain of the century? Don’t you wish you’d bought a building in Armory Square in the early ’90′s? Well, Eastwood is still undervalued but on the rise. While the rest of the country frets about recession, Syracuse does what it seems to do best – moves slowly, carefully, without the big booms and busts that plague many other parts of the country. The cost of living is still low here, while the simple pleasures that make life worth living – people to enjoy, recreation, sports, cultural events, good food and plenty of water (and wine and beer!) – are here in abundance.

Please come: important TNT meeting Jan. 28

Lonnie — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:12:06 +0000

Tomorrow’s Neighborhoods Today (TNT)
Huntington School (at Sunnycrest and Forest Hill)
Monday, 1/28/08 at 7pm
Discussion: Neighborhoods of Choice.

During the last year and a half that has been spent on the TNT Eastwood 5 Year Plan, discussion has centered on tentative “neighborhoods of choice” within Eastwood- such as Arlington, The Park District, The Hill District and James Terrace. At this meeting, residents will be asked to sit with people from their own neighborhood of choice and discuss issues regarding their part of Eastwood and also what makes their specific area unique from the other areas indicated. Don’t worry if you don’t know what your “neighborhood of choice” is – part of the purpose of the meeting is to define those neighborhoods.

Everyone takes pride in where they live and want the best for Eastwood. Your attendance would be an asset to this meeting and to the future of Eastwood.

Topics to be discussed:

• What is working and what is not within each neighborhood of choice.

• Image: The neighborhood will have a positive image that attracts investment – from homebuyers,homeowners, business, and government.

• Market: The residential and commercial real estate market will reflect the confidence people have in the future of the neighborhood.

• Neighborhood Management: Collective action by residents, institutions, and businesses will ensure the neighborhood will compete well with other neighborhoods for resources.

• Physical Conditions: Physical conditions, whether residential or business, will reflect pride of ownership and a high standard of maintenance.

Yard waste pick-up dates

Lonnie — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 03:46:27 +0000

Yard waste and construction debris in Eastwood will be picked up by the City of Syracuse six more times this year. You are allowed to put yard waste and construction debris between the sidewalk and curb, not in the street, on the weekends listed below ONLY:

May 5-6, June 2-3, June 30-July 1, August 4-5, September 1-2, and October 6-7

Yard waste must be out to the curb NO SOONER THAN the Saturday and NO LATER THAN THE EVENING OF THE Sunday before your scheduled week to ensure collection for that week. Once the crews have been through an area they will not return until the next scheduled week. Yard Debris out any other time than your scheduled week for pick up is a Violation of the Health and Sanitation Code. Yard Debris may be piled loosely at the curb line. Do not place in the street, near sewer vent pipes, or blocking sidewalk. Do not put any yard debris in plastic bags, boxes or cans. Paper lawn and leaf bags may be used.

Construction debris (wood or wooden products, shingles, plaster, masonry, roofing materials, concrete, insulation, etc.) is limited to 2 pick ups per property per year of not more than 2 cubic yards (approximately the size of a washer/dryer side by side). Construction debris must be set out according to the April through October monthly quadrant schedules. You must schedule a pick up prior to placing construction debris out to the curb. No contractor generated construction debris will be picked up by the city. Do not put construction debris in plastic bags, boxes, or cans.Click here to request a construction debris pick up.

Hazardous/unacceptable construction debris includes but is not limited to asbestos roofing shingles or tiles, asbestos siding or any material containing asbestos, and any kind of paint. For information regarding the disposal of hazardous waster debris click here.

Leaf collection beings November 1st. Place leaves out to the curb line, not in the street. Avoid sewer vent pipes. Leaves may be loose or in the large paper lawn and leaf bags that can be purchased at most hardware/home improvement stores. Do not put leaves in plastic bags. Leaves in plastic bags will not be picked up. Because leaves are composted, no other forms of yard debris can be mixed with leaves. No other forms of yard debris may be set out to the curb after your last quadrant pick up in October.

Snow removal is a large part of the Syracuse scene. The Syracuse DPW maintains a large fleet of snow plows in addition to numerous private plows that are contracted by the city. Snow plowing priorities are as follows: main arteries-rush hour routes, snow emergency routes, hospital routes are plowed first, followed by secondary routes, side streets, and dead end streets. The City of Syracuse maintains 406 miles of city streets.

Street sweeping is routinely done April through October on all curbed streets with the cost being assessed to the property taxes.

Free mulch is available year round. The mulch pile is located on the access road to the DPW complex, just off S. Midler Avenue. Pull up and help yourself. You must provide your own containers and labor.