Another Collegetown construction project is getting its first real progress report. This time, it’s 327 Eddy Street in Collegetown, also known as the “Dryden Eddy Apartments”.
Excavation has been underway for a little while now, since the old Club Sudz/Tung Fong Grocery came down earlier this summer. The Club Sudz building had been built around 1910 as a 3-story building, but the structure was partially destroyed by a fire in 1970, and only the bottom two floors were rebuilt.
These photos are nearing two weeks old now, but a more recent photo taken by Mark Anbinder shows steel sheet piles on site. The project will use “flowable fill” to a depth of three feet in its foundation. Flowable fill is an alternative to concrete and is often used in roadwork or as retaining wall backfill.
What comes in its place is a 5-story building broken into three stepped sections. As elevation increases going eastward, the building steps back to another five-story section. Initial plans approved in 2014 called for a 6-story building with a different crown treatment (which looked better, in my opinion). Somewhere along the way, the building lost a floor, and then very shortly before construction began, the crown was changed from a triangular prism to a glass box. Presumably, this doesn’t affect the appraisal for the crown projecting into the city’s right-of-way.
The new 5-story building will bring 1,800 SF of retail space and 22 new units with 53 bedrooms to the market in August 2016. Longtime Collegetown landlord Steve Fontana (of the Fontana’s Shoes family) is the developer, Jagat Sharma is the architect, and GM Crisalli & Associates of Syracuse will be overseeing construction. A construction loan of $4,824,000 is being provided by Tompkins Trust Company.
Ithacating in Cornell Heights 
BC
I believe the loss of one floor resulted in a loss of 11 bedrooms. This certainly doesn’t help to alleviate the shortage of bedrooms in town. The cynic in me believes that some unqualified people are making important decisions on a whim.
Maybe just as important is the fact that the City loses tax money. And it loses revenue over the course of years and decades. But the point is proven. The roof line of 327 Eddy Street is not higher than its neighbor and the character of generic masonry blocks is maintained.
[…] the rebar mesh, but given the elevation render, it might be filled out first with the “flowable fill” referenced in the last update. Rimming the base are steel sheet piles, which lock together […]