Ithacating in Cornell Heights

When the Maguire Carpenter Park proposal was shot down in November 2016, that wasn’t the end of the company’s expansion plans. Maguire is by far the largest auto sales firm in the county, and is the 11th-largest employer with about 440 employees as of 2018. Auto makers expect constant refreshing of facilities to keep up with their designs; a failure to maintain the preferred aesthetics and desired features in a sales facility could result in the loss of privileges to sell the latest models rolling off the assembly line.

There’s also another factor that goes into vehicle sales, that being vehicle service, which is a large share of Maguire’s business (something like 40%). People don’t like to travel far to get their vehicles inspected and repaired. This limits Maguire’s ability to move to just the urban and inner suburban parts of the county; the town of Lansing might have offered them land at the Town Center, sure, but the Town Center site is too far away from most of the county’s population for the Maguires to maintain a viable business operation.

While the Chrysler-Fiat dealership was refreshed and modestly expanded a few years ago, the next phase of projects is more substantial. Maguire Ford-Lincoln-Nissan will be the first of those projects. Located at 504 South Meadow Street on the southwest side of the city, it is a two-story auto dealership on 3.11 acres, originally built in 1983 and expanded in 1999. Maguire will be demolishing some of the older portions and building new additions – the southern half of the building, used more for service, will remain largely intact from the outside, though the interior will be renovated. The northern half is where the bulk of the work will take place. The existing building is 18,500 SF, with 2,265 SF proposed for demolition and 7,865 SF of additions. The new building will be 24,110 SF.

The goals of the project are to meet Ford’s revised corporate standards and customer experience requirements, and improve interior circulation while expanding the Ford/Lincoln sales area (quick note for those unaware, Lincoln is the luxury sister brand to Ford; Mercury was the upscale in-between brand, before it was shut down a decade ago). The Nissan dealership will move to a brand new 25,300 SF location to be built off of Cinema Drive in the village of Lansing.

The western addition includes a service drive through addition to the rear (west side) of the building, including the expansion of the existing second floor for additional offices displaced from the first floor. This addition replaces an existing canopy (open air) structure currently used for car parking. The first floor will be renovated to include a new service waiting area for customers.

The northeastern addition includes expansion of the showroom end of the building (north and east side), aligning the building with the existing service bay portion of the building currently located on the south side of the building. Also included in this addition is a new entrance to the showroom meeting Ford corporate branding requirements. On the outside, Ford corporate requirements dictate new metal exterior panels that will encompass all sides of the building. The showroom (north side) will be differentiated from the service side of the building with differing types of metal panels. The showroom addition also includes the new Ford “foil” curved form vestibule. The interior will also feature new plumbing, electrical, mechanical and HVAC. To quote the application, “(t)his will transform the exterior appearance of the building making the exterior of this “utilitarian” car dealership into a modern, contemporary car showroom and service center.”

On the outside, new striping, LED lighting and landscaping will be deployed. During the review process, the planning board had issues with the lack of green space, so the lot attempts to use as much as possible within the limited size of the lot and Ford’s corporate requirement for parking spaces on-site (brands dictate a lot of the programming). The site will host 311 spaces, the vast majority (207) for new car display, and a smaller number for staff, customers and on-site service parking, but it also meets the 12% green space requirement for the SW-2 zone.

It’s a pretty tight timeline for construction, and Ford was pressuring Maguire quite a bit on the lengthy approvals process (the BZA wasn’t planning meetings in December 2018 or January 2019 due to lack of quorum, so the project team was practically begging the planning board to approve the front yard variance at the same time as preliminary approval). The project is expected to be completed by the end of the fall at the latest (this says September, but I dunno when the permits were issued in March as planned). During review, the project added more windows as requested, but did not employ masonry as suggested by the board because Ford rejected it.

John Snyder Architects of Ithaca is the project architect, and local firm Elwyn and Palmer is the structural engineer for the project. Saratoga Associates (of Saratoga Springs, fittingly) is the site and civil engineer. According to a tipster, G. M. Crisalli of Syracuse is the general contractor – and it’s not their first Ithaca rodeo, as they were GC for the Dryden Eddy Apartments and the Top of the Hill Apartments in Collegetown. The project cost is estimated to be $1.5 million, according to the Site Plan Review filing.

At this time, demolition is underway, and it looks like Bellisario Excavation and Drainage is the demo/site prep subcontractor. Some of the exterior facade has been stripped in the areas to be refaced and/or built out, while the northern wing is largely exposed thanks to the selective tear-downs. Props to the car salesmen who were working while all of this was going on.

Gosh, have trucks gotten expensive…

Early site plan.

Final site plan.