There is so much going on here – it kinda blows my mind because a development of this acreage and number of units is extremely rare in a place like Ithaca, where highly subdivided lands make large acreages difficult to find or assemble, the financial and labor capacity for a large build is limited, and review processes are stringent and rather burdensome. With the exception of a few townhouse strings towards the middle and the community center, it looks like almost everything else has moved into the framing stage. In contrast to the renders, the townhouse strings are showing greater color variation in their brick and fiber cement panels – some are navy blue boards and orange-red brick , while others are jade green boards with maroon brick. Same goes for the apartments, some of which have a navy/orange-red scheme, while others are faced in different shades of grey panels. This helps to create more visual interest and differentiation between otherwise similar structures.
Embedded below are a couple of mock-ups from the on-site display unit inside the leasing trailer. It’s not a bad setup, though on a random note, no one in their right mind would hang a picture frame so close to the top of their bed. The units will come furnished. For those interested, the rental website can be found here. Also included below at the end are a few interior renders, of the community center, a study lounge, the fitness room and a bathroom (not a part of the walk-through mock-up).
For project background and planning, click here.
For a site plan breakdown, click here.
For a construction timeline, click here.
Webcam link here (updated ~15 minutes).
Ithacating in Cornell Heights 
I hope that the builders were respectful to the small Mitchell family burial plot which is adjacent to this development. Difficult to imagine that the Mitchell farm stood on this property at one time.
The plans and the town’s stipulations were pretty explicit that the burial ground was not to be disturbed. I can’t completely vouch for the actions of workers themselves, but there’s no reason they would have to be disturbing or trekking over the plot.
Not sure I feel about the architecture along Mitchell…the changes the locals forced (abandoning brick apartments for wooden, pitched-roof alternatives) now seems like an even more unfortunate compromise; the attempt to merge density with the farmhouse look has resulted in what looks like a lot of cheap mine workers’ housing you can see around the Appalachians.
What was the name of the former graduate housing that is now Appel Fields?? I know the complex was very run-down before it was all eventually removed; it looked like barracks with decades of deferred maintenance. But it did have a high bed count — housing that must be desperately needed while Maplewood is being re-built. Makes me glad I never attempted graduate studies at Cornell, since graduate housing seems to always be low priority.
That would be the Pleasant Grove Apartments. The first phase opened for married students in 1956, and the second phase in 1961. As you noted, they came down at the end of the 1990s to make way for the new North Campus dorms.
Graduate and professional housing has always kinda been the short end of Cornell’s stick, even as the school has long had a more libertarian approach to housing than its peers. Losing the 547 beds Maplewood and Hughes once provided led to a rare rebuke rebuke from me in the Voice.
https://ithacavoice.com/2015/11/opinion-cornells-decreasing-housing-options-hurt-ithacans/
Maplewood’s 872 beds will help, and the 2,000 new beds planned by Fall 2021 should help as well – though, since Cornell plans to add 1,100 undergrads, the net increase is 900. A lot of the local student-focused developers are holding off on new projects out of concerns of potential market saturation, so I really hope Cornell follows through on its plans to address the housing deficit.
https://books.google.com/books?id=nuY_BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=cornell+history+pleasant+grove+apartments&source=bl&ots=gtiJ4nEp5N&sig=Ou44FVqSB2QpS33XFX9hTdySD6o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv4JbTzdHZAhUFJt8KHfikDvUQ6AEIbTAN#v=onepage&q&f=false