• All three proposed designs violate the James Street Overlay District Zoning Standards in many ways.
• Video stores are unsustainable businesses unless they are selling adult videos – which “Family” Video does.

Not one of over a dozen comments in the email group of over 100 members was in favor of having this business in Eastwood. This community has spent years fighting bad design – and winning – so we’re not about to turn back the clock and allow suburban-style development in our urban community. That would cause all our property values to drop and would be a slap in the face of the James Street business owners who develop, successfully, following the guidelines.

Several commenters noted that selling videos is an outmoded business model and figured that it’s the sale of pornographic videos that keeps these businesses going. The last thing Syracuse needs is to end up in court over the issue of adult videos like Auburn is right now. The Post-Standard quotes Auburn City Manager as saying, “The fact that they advertise it as a family store and then have something that really is degrading for our whole community — I think some changes will have to be made…”

Note: the Adult Use Regulations for the City of Syracuse prohibit Adult Uses within 1000 feet of any residential dwellings, districts, churches or schools.

Common Councilor Kathleen Joy wrote to the email group the following (reprinted with permission):

I met with a representative of the “Family” video Monday. They fully intend on presenting at TNT on 3/22. I told him that I could not personally support this project as proposed because it does not  comply even with the spirit of our design guidelines &  I don’t like the idea of an X rated section (not disputed by him, by the way), they have no contract with the owner and have not vetted this project through any pre-development meeting.
He tells me that if the sense of the neighborhood is that it’s not wanted, then they won’t pursue it.

We were alerted to the problems with “Family” Video by PACNY‘s Mike Stanton, who sent the following, reprinted with permission (bolding mine):

Quote of the day: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Edward Abbey (The Journey Home, 1977).

Here we go again.

1) Family Video, a national video store chain with 550 stores nationwide, says it will build a $1 million store in Eastwood, but only if they can build a suburban style store with the parking lot on the corner and the entrance facing the parking lot rather than the sidewalk. Eastwood has an overlay district intended to promote walkability and pedestrian-friendly design. The video store would be built at the site of the former Steak & Sundae restaurant on James Street, which has been vacant and deteriorating for years. Mike Muraco, a Syracuse native who lives in Miami Beach, Fla., said “It’s a useless piece of property, unless they can bend a little.”

2) The city of Auburn took Family Video to court in 2008 because it rented X-rated adult videos. “The (store name) is a trap for families,” City Manager Mark Palesh said. “My family’s never going to go there again.” The city sought a court order to shut down the store’s sex video trade, saying it violates the city’s 1998 zoning ordinance banning sexually oriented businesses from operating within 500 feet of any area zoned residential. Family Video fought the city’s order in court.

3) A Buffalo News article says municipal officials in Western New York utter the name “Family Video” sarcastically these days. In the Town of Tonawanda, officials thought they nipped a potential problem in the bud when Family Video presented plans for a store in 2005. Not only was the Colvin Boulevard site not zoned for adult uses, town officials were assured that X-rated fare wouldn’t be offered there. And, for a while, it wasn’t. But recent complaints about adult videos in a back room — and Family Video’s alleged refusal to remove them — prompted the town to seek a court injunction barring their rental or sale. “The whole thing was, they misled us,” Councilman John A. Bargnesi Jr. said last week, when he announced the court case had been initiated.

If we must have a gas station (before it’s converted to an electricity dispensing station or fuel cell store), then let’s be sure we’re looking at all the options.

In this article, Urban Blight: It’s a Gas!, you’ll see quite a variety of gas stations, all of which have been built and which make economic sense to someone.  Which might make sense for our neighborhood now, in 2009?

What about the design of the whole site, if we assume a gas station must go in at this corner? It could be any of those in the above article, or it could be something like the lower picture you see here:

I see the Real Food Co-op and an ice cream parlor on the lower floor, luxury apartments on the second floor and a roof garden on the top. What do you see?

So do a bit of reading about walkability, urban design, and design guidelines and join the discussion. Then let’s debate the merits of what you have read. What specifically is wrong with Seattle’s plan or what do you like about it?

Our aim is to prevent in Eastwood the kind of disaster that happened at Lodi and Butternut.

How about Washington, DC? Did you know that the whole city is booming? Why? In large part it’s due to its walkability. Here’s another article whose points might be debated: Walkability = livability = billions.  Read that article – copyrighted by The Washington Post Writers Group – and find this assertion:

…(C)ities, competing, will likely keep heeding advice to lure creative young professionals; in fact, those that don’t offer true walkable urbanism, … are “probably destined” to lose out economically.

All across this country, cities are waking up the facts that European cities have known for decades: when mass transit is subsidized like highways are, when cities are valued, when a diversity of businesses that are easy to get to on foot are encouraged to develop, then cities are economically healthier, its residents are physically healthier, and communities are more cohesive.

Do your homework. Read the above articles, and more. And come back and share what you’ve read. Let’s educate ourselves, others, and in the process have some healthy discussion about walkability and its impact.

The challenge is to bring an article from a reputable source that is stating that walkability is not good for the economic health of communities. See if you can find any studies that show that single-use, suburban-style buildings set back in a big parking lot are good for urban neighborhoods. Please link (cite) your sources so the rest of us can read what you’ve found. It’s important to back claims with sources – that way our discussions remain focused.

- Lonnie and Jessica

Sean said in 2005:

Sitting in the car Thursday, watching as men and women flowed in and out of the Dinosaur, it struck me that people go there because it offers something unique – and because it embraces, rather than fears, authentic city ambiance. The funny thing is, if the Dinosaur went by the Walgreens rules (referring to Walgreens “need” for suburban, big-box style development – ed.) , a true Syracuse phenomenon would probably dry up and close its doors.

Sean reminds us that many of our pre-conceived notions of what makes a business work just fall apart in the face of this reality: a restaurant putting out top-notch food that caters to a serious diversity of people can be a destination. It doesn’t need to demolish a building to be successful. It doesn’t need acres of blacktop in front of it. It doesn’t need to alter the streetscape. It fits right in with the city and people come from all over to be there. And they aren’t afraid, and they don’t complain about having to walk a few blocks from their parking spot to get there. (They gotta do something to burn off the calories they’re about to eat!) This is what a real city is about.

But, sadly, Mayor Driscoll is singing the old last-century tune that has ruined much of Syracuse (and the fabric of countless cities across the country): demolish, demolish, demolish. Pave paradise, put up another drug store, and…  you won’t know what city you’re in any more. And you certainly won’t have economic development, because your money will be siphoned off to the coffers of a big corporation in another state.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again:

• Mayor Driscoll has been talking out of both sides of his mouth.
• There IS a developer who can take the existing Wittigs Ice Cream / Steak & Sundae building and turn it into something great.
• And the Dinosaur Barbecue is just the type of destination we can have in Eastwood if we’ll just stick to our standards.

How difficult is that?

Keep up the good work Sean! We need you!

But here’s what you want to read first, an email reprinted here with permission from our neighbor and retired professor of architecture, Sig Snyder:

from    Sig Snyder
to    Walkable Eastwood
date    Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:49 PM

As we all know, or do we? All right, as some of us know, 9 years ago Professor George W. Curry and Christine Capella Peters of ESF published a report which was the result of a study by their Urban Design Studio 2000 where 13 students spent two semesters studying the James Street Corridor and its relation to Eastwood. This report became the basis for the outline of an illustrated handbook which became the “bible” of the Eastwood Review Board. I was a member of this board until it was abolished according to General Ordinance #30-2003 after we spent two rather frustrating years trying to help move this vision toward reality.

Somehow, this crossed my mind last night when, at a very well attended forum sponsored by SEUNA, Mike Stanton introduced Syracuse’s 5 current candidates for mayor. One of the candidates mentioned TNT. “What’s TNT?,” asked a member of the audience. The answer was evasive. Which reminded me the late 90s when I became a facilitator in this citywide organization which appeared to be full of promise.

Perhaps now may be the time to pick up the ball once more and start by organizing a mayoral candidates’ forum for Eastwood? This might help bring various Eastwood organizations together, not only to find common ground, but also to impress our future mayor of the will and enthusiasm of our area which could well be a “vibrant” neighborhood with the help of  whoever may get to preside over our city this coming fall.

Meanwhile, I recommend Mike Stanton’s email on “Walkable Urban Places” for your consideration. Looks like given common sense and will and  patience, the James and Midler intersection might yet become the heart of Eastwood and an attractive show place.

How ’bout it?

Sig Snyder

Hint: Planning is the word, not speculation

—– Original Message —–
From: Mike Stanton

As Raleigh NC makes final adjustments to its comprehensive plan, city
planners are getting the same kind of advice from the experts that
Syracuse has received.

Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution says the era of
suburban sprawl is ending. The fastest-growing market now, said
Leinberger, a developer, is for “walkable urban” places that are
modeled on what cities were before cars took them over.

Raleigh’s comprehensive plan seeks to curb sprawl and guide
development into designated “growth centers.” But Leinberger says the
plan identifies too many growth centers and some are in the wrong
places. In addition to the downtown regional center, the plan shows
seven other “city growth” areas. Some are near the planned commuter-
rail line but others are along the beltline highways and nowhere near
the transit corridor. By Leinberger’s math, Raleigh should attempt to
create only two or three “walkable urban” places, in addition to
downtown. These places should all be on the rail or a streetcar
corridor, which, he said, are permanent and attract investors,
developers and upscale buyers. “I have never seen a dollar of real
estate investment generated by a bus stop,” Leinberger said.

Mindy Fullilove, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia
University Medical Center in New York, said true urbanism is
characterized by a sense of connectedness that allows people of
diverse backgrounds and incomes to nonetheless feel that they live in
the same community and share an identity with the same “great place.”
Studies show that in such neighborhoods, the incidence of mental
illness even for the poorest people is less than it is for the well-
off who live in suburban isolation, Fullilove said.

You can read more about Raleigh’s comprehensive plan HERE.

=============================================================

Imagine Raleigh without sprawl

18 MAR 2009

by Bob Geary
Indyweek.com

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A331163

In the run-up to this week’s public hearing on Raleigh’s draft
comprehensive plan, the advice to city leaders from a stream of
visiting experts has been remarkably unified. Success, experts say,
depends on taking city life “back to the future.”

The era of suburban sprawl is ending, these planners maintain, not
simply because of high gas prices, but because it is fundamentally
unsustainable. As Christopher Leinberger, a fellow at the Brookings
Institution in Washington, D.C., put it in a recent talk, the more
“drivable suburban” neighborhoods a city allows, the lower the quality
of life becomes for everyone living in them. The fastest-growing
market now, said Leinberger, a developer, is for “walkable urban”
places: the kind Raleigh doesn’t have, yet needs to create, that are
modeled on what cities were before cars took them over.

Such places are far more complicated to build and manage than the
suburbs, Leinberger said. But done right, these areas improve as they
grow. They have more cultural diversity and housing options—and with
public transit, the chance for people to save money by owning fewer
cars, or none. If Raleigh fails to create them, Leinberger warned,
“You will be left in the 20th century.”

The question for Raleigh is where these walkable urban places should
be.

Leinberger’s analysis and the other experts’ jibes with the basic goal
of the comprehensive plan to curb sprawl and guide development into
designated “growth centers.” Yet it also raises the issue of whether
the plan identifies too many centers—including some in places that can
never be urban.

In addition to the downtown regional center, the plan shows seven
other “city growth” areas. Some of the seven are tangential to a
string of distinct, “transit-oriented development” zones along a
planned commuter-rail line; some are along the beltline highways
(Interstate 440 and Interstate 540) and nowhere near the transit
corridor.

The plan invites the redevelopment of shopping centers and strip malls
along these and other major roads, such as Capital Boulevard, as mixed-
used urban spaces. But to hear the planners tell it, such
redevelopments are rare.

Adding housing to a strip mall doesn’t make it urban, they say. And
adding more housing to suburban places may undermine the potential of
other locations, including those on the rail-transit corridor, to
grow.

However, Raleigh Planning Director Mitch Silver, who will present a
revised draft of the comprehensive plan at a joint public hearing of
the City Council and Planning Commission Thursday, doesn’t think the
highway and rail-transit locations conflict. He says Raleigh will grow
fast enough over the 20-year span of the comprehensive plan for both
to develop successfully.

Silver argues that given the number of strip malls in Raleigh, the
city must encourage their redevelopment, using “very robust” bus
service and a new zoning code for highway spaces.

But Silver is aware of the question, and posed it himself last month
to a trio of planners attending the annual urban design conference
sponsored by the N.C. State University College of Design.

“How do we create a public [urban] realm in a suburban realm”
dominated by oversized thoroughfares and skinny or missing sidewalks?
he asked.

Simon Atkinson, a professor of planning at the University of Texas
School of Architecture, shook his head. “The suburb was designed not
to have a public realm.” The whole point of suburbs, Atkinson added,
is privacy.

In contrast, the walkable urban places that the planners describe are
typically located on a grid of city streets, not highway
thoroughfares. They feature sidewalk storefronts, public plazas and
parks that help to offset the mass of high-density housing
developments. They usually offer—because of inclusionary zoning rules—
a mix of housing types, including affordable units, middle-income and
upscale housing, often in four-story or smaller buildings.
“Inclusionary zoning is a no-brainer,” Leinberger said.

Most such places are accessible by transit or by car, bicycle and on
foot, said James Charlier, a Boulder, Colo., transportation planner
who spoke at the conference. Once people arrive, though, there are
“pedestrian districts” where people can hang out, have fun, shop and
live—while the cars are parked.

Charlier calls them pedestrian districts to distinguish the real
pedestrian places from the new fad of “pedestrian-friendly” roadways
that, despite cosmetic changes, continue to function as “traffic
sewers” hostile to walkers.

The only way to turn a highway mall into an urban place is to tear it
down, start over on a street grid and connect it to the adjoining
neighborhoods, he said.

At the same conference, Mindy Fullilove, professor of clinical
psychology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said
true urbanism is characterized by a sense of connectedness that allows
people of diverse backgrounds and incomes to nonetheless feel that
they live in the same community and share an identity with the same
“great place.”

At a time of rapid upheaval in the world, Fullilove said, people yearn
for the kind of stability and belonging that existed—before urban
renewal cut through it—in the Hill district of Pittsburgh where her
parents grew up. It was a relatively poor, predominantly African-
American community of row houses, storefronts and apartments. There
were no high-rises, nothing fancy. But it was a place where people
believed “whatever problems you have … you can get together and
solve them.”

Studies show that in such neighborhoods, the incidence of mental
illness even for the poorest people is less than it is for the well-
off who live in suburban isolation, Fullilove said. Like Edgar Allen
Poe’s “The Raven,” she added, “you can lock your doors, but the
problems get in anyway.”

Leinberger said his study of metropolitan Washington, D.C., and
Atlanta suggests that a city should have no more than a half-dozen
walkable urban places per million people. Some of these will be
downtown, some in inner-ring neighborhoods, and some in the suburbs,
But what they have in common is their location at rail-transit stops,
not on highways.

By his math, Raleigh should attempt to create two or three such
places, in addition to downtown, by 2030, when the comprehensive plan
anticipates the city will be home to 600,000 people.

These places should be on the rail or a streetcar corridor, which, he
said, are permanent and attract investors, developers and upscale
buyers. “I have never seen a dollar of real estate investment
generated by a bus stop,” Leinberger said.

This morning, at home and in an equally pre-caffeinated fog, I did this:

What’s wrong with this picture? Hmmm…. seems I didn’t see that the lid was still on the coffee grinder. I thought I knew what I was doing. I expected one thing but got something quite different. It took me awhile to pick up the beans and put them where they really would be most effective.

This little adventure did wake me up. Got me to thinking about all the mistakes we make before fully awake. Within memory of our own grandparents, we used to think it perfectly fine to deny the vote to women and to lynch blacks. Then we woke up. During our own lifetimes we thought it fine to pollute Onondaga Lake and replace Syracuse’s historic buildings with parking lots. Then we woke up and gave some measure of power to the people who have devoted their lives to understanding the long-term effects of our deeds. We finally heeded the words of Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rachel Carson. After 30 years of ignoring the warnings of Al Gore and many others, we are finally waking up and paying attention to what the experts have been saying: global warming is a serious threat to the entire planet.

Isn’t it time Syracuse woke up and hired experts to make design and development decisions about our city? I don’t mean people who stand to make money or inflate egos off plunking down new construction that’s inappropriate to our city’s urban settings. I mean people who have graduate degrees in urban planning and design, people who understand the effects of our deeds within the complexities of physical and historical context. That means where our city, its buildings, its businesses and its inhabitants stand in relation to the past, the present and the future.

Please, let us not have “planning commissions” full of people who have no advanced education in planning. Please, let us not allow developers to be the sole “deciders” about what our children will be dealing with. Let us fix a system that allows the pre-caffeinated to build an interstate highway right through a cohesive neighborhood (thus dooming it for decades) or a small coterie of developers to bamboozle a city into thinking that we have to choose between sick kids and historic preservation (we don’t).

Keep your eye on what’s happening to the Kingsley-True house. If state or federal funding is sought by Ronald McDonald House, it must undergo a review process before any demolition takes place. See this letter from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and this letter from the Preservation Association of Central New York to Mayor Driscoll for further details.

Please, Syracuse, wake up and drink the coffee!

Now that gasoline is pricing the use of our cars nearly into the luxury zone, living here is looking smarter than ever. An article in the Opinion section of last Sunday’s Post-Standard is not only in hearty agreement with this, it elegantly explains just what we’ve been asserting here all along at Walkable Eastwood: “Discarded and ignored in the second half of the 20th century, our green, gas-saving and money-saving older cities may well be our salvation in the first half of the 21st.”