Thanksgiving Construction Update, Part II

11 12 2012

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It still surprises me just how prominent Collegetown Terrace is from some parts of the city. It truly is a massive project for a city of Ithaca’s size.

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It looks like the first floor of concrete has been poured for Breckinridge Place. The project seeks completion in fall 2013.

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Renovation is just as important as new construction.

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One of the INHS new builds. Sometimes, they renovate. Other times, when the house is too far gone, or has been severely compromised from a historical perspective, then a tear-down may commence. This duplex is an example of the latter.

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The Iacovelli apartment project on West Seneca is topped out, with initial facade work complete on the faux dormers, and windows recently installed.

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I had expected external work to have begun for the new hotel tower for the Holiday Inn, but it appears this is not the case. I was wondering if it was interior asbestos removal, but the low-rise portion slated to be demolished looks to be fully occupied. I am honestly unsure what the time frame for initial site prep is.

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Likewise, the Ithaca Marriott / Hotel Ithaca site isn’t fenced off yet, so this will probably see a late winter/ early spring construction start.

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A row of homes, all set to be demolished. Two are for Planned Parenthood’s new building, but I’m unsure the reason for tearing down the other two. Parking?

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The new Fairfield Inn down in big box land. Framing is underway, so completion in six to eight months is feasible.

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Cayuga Place, with only vestigial site prep at best. This one probably won’t start until the Spring anyway.

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Finally, something that is well underway. Asbestos removal and demolition of the former Challenge Indsutries buildings to make way for the new Seneca Way apartment building.

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Site of what could be the future Harold Square. The Home Dairy and Benchwarmers buildings (the Sage Block and Miller Block, I think offhand) would be renovated, while the three smaller buildings at right would see the wrecking ball. It’s hard to imagine an 11-story building standing in the background.


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End-of-Summer Construction Update, Part II

24 08 2012

I felt a little more comfortable exploring the non-college part of Ithaca. For the most part. I bought an Ithaca Beer Company root beer at the downtown pharmacy, and because it came in a traditional beer bottle, I was concerned I’d be stopped by police for looking like I was violating open container laws. Rather than put up with that, I sat next to the ice cream counter and read the real estate section of the paper. The photos show would I did elsewhere.

I felt bad because I’ve largely ignored this project. Not purposely; it’s out of my normal search range – on the 600 block of West Seneca, near 13. The site was previous home to a service station and four homes, all of which were in poor condition. The project beings 17 units into a part of the city that has traditionally been one of the most overlooked Ithacan neighborhoods.

The new Fairfield Inn down in big-box land has had its foundation laid, and will likely be finished sometime in the spring. The hotel was approved last fall, and to be honest, I had expected this one to be further along than it was. When complete, the hotel will over another 106 rooms to the 1,800 or so currently within the Ithaca metro. On another note, the city expects a chain restaurant to be built next to the Panera Bread strip of buildings, with construction beginning in the fall.

Likewise on the progress for the Seneca Way project. For all the trouble it went through, I would hope it at least sees the light of day. The project seeks to build 32 apartments and some commercial space in a five story building on the site of the former Challenge Industries building. As for the Hotel Ithaca, no news as of late, and likely still stuck in funding limbo, a sign of our poor economic times. UPDATE 8/29/12: Apparently the Hotel is being reconfigured, switching from luxury hotel operator Gemstone Resorts to the Marriott brand. The number of rooms will be raised to 159, and the design will be slightly modified at base level. The height should remain the same. Re-approvals are required, but are not expected to be difficult to obtain. Construction is slated to begin next March, with foundation work during the winter.

Almost the same story here, except these two actually have funding arranged. The Holiday Inn expansion site in the top photo, the Cayuga Green lofts below. The Holiday Inn project started prep in July for the tear-down of the lowrise portion, to make way for a new 9-story building and conference center (I believe it was made one floor shorter from the original 10 stories, and stretched slightly longer to compensate for the loss of that floor space). The Cayuga Green project may have prep underway, judging from the equipment, but needs to start by the end of the year regardless to keep the city lawyers at bay.

And finally, one project that has made substantial progress, the Breckenridge Place Apartments on the site of the Women’s Community Building. The project will bring 50 units into downtown when completed next year.

This was a b*tch to take photos of. Most of the perimeter of the lot was covered in a black opaque tarp, tied so sceurely I had to lay on the ground and reach under it to get a photo through the fence. The front side was a bit easier. Completion should be sometime in mid-2014, although it looks like most of the exterior glass curtain wall is installed – which would place the project ahead of schedule.

Do as I say, not as I do: never take photos and try to drive on a crowded campus at the same time. But, I was running late. Tarp and foundation work underway at Gates Hall. For the curious, I stopped by the site for the Big Red Marching Facility, and the site was still pristine – this makes sense, since site prep doesn’t start until next month.

Now that screen lags my typing by about thirty seconds, I’d better but the kibosh on uploading any more photos in this entry. However, I do have the good fortune of having one my best friends accept a research position at Cornell, so I now have a legitimate excuse to visit Ithaca periodically for the next couple of years.


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End-of-Summer Construction Update, Part I

22 08 2012

I had the fortune this past weekend of being near Ithaca to attend a wedding. Deciding to kill two birds with one stone, I figured it was also a good opportunity to take photos of Ithaca’s ongoing construction. So I made the drive over and tackled as much as I could in three hours, all the while avoiding students, as if my aging is a contagious disease (mentally, this involved my brain screaming “Don’t look at me! I’m old! I was once like you, now I do quaint 20-something-year-old person things!”). Awkwardness aside, I was fairly successful in my photo tour.

The Belle Sherman Cottages project continues its prep work on the east side of on the edge of the city. The model house is complete and the roads have been laid. Despite the rather high prices, a casual inspection shows that at least two of the lots have been sold. In keeping with the theme of traditional streets, the street has been named “Walnut Street”, which is an interesting choice, since walnut trees can only grow in the moderated climate of the lake shore in these parts (same goes for peaches).

Phase II of the Coal Yard Apartments is complete. This phase brings to market 25 units, and ~40 beds.

Josh Lower’s Project (Collegetown Crossing) is tied up in red tape as it seeks a very generous parking variance. Meanwhile, the current building sits underutilized, and somewhat barren. Rather disturbingly, this was a trend around much of Collegetown, with many old storefronts, such as Mama T’s and CTP, having closed their doors. It gave the entire area a derelict, ghetto quality. Not to mention some of the houses and their treatment, which I’ll cover in a future entry.

The townhouses at 107 Cook have had their framework completed. As you might recall, 107 Cook was the site of a deadly house fire in May of 2011.

On a brighter note, 309 Eddy is complete. The building replaces a 3-story apartment house, and has 24 units with 41 beds. The building is tall enough to make an impact on the Collegetown skyline as seen from other parts of the city.

…and this image is a clue that Ithaca and the electrical authorities that be should consider burying the power lines under the street. Seriously.

The massive Collegetown Terrace project by Novarr-Mackesey. In Phase I, which was just completed, eight buildings were built (seven on East State, one on N. Quarry). This amounts to about 1/5th of the projects intended 1250 or so bedrooms. Parking is generally under the building on concrete stilts, which is bad in earthquake regions, but I suppose it works for seismically-inactive Ithaca. Some of the current buildings, such as the Delano House and the Valentine Apartments, are still standing and rented, waiting to be torn down in a later phase (III, I imagine). The Williams House is not yet renovated, serving as the site office while building continues. By my guess, building “3” from the development plans is Phase II, and is one of the long wavy buildings, specifically the one that sits closest to East State. Phase II is underway for a completion next summer, with phase III (the final phase) being completed in the summer of 2014. I suspect at that time, we’ll be hearing significant news about whatever N-M has proposed for all the properties they bought on the Palms block of Dryden Avenue – I expect something substantial, a la Collegetown Plaza.

Redevelopment of this mostly derelict and empty block would be a blessing at this point.

So, trying to break up my update into manageable chunks here (since the tech format here isn’t keen on photo-laden posts), I’ll post the rest of Ithaca and Cornell’s Campus later in the week.


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News Tidbits 8/17/2012: The Tax Argument

17 08 2012

I held off on this entry for a few days. Not because I was particularly low on time, but because I was waiting for the latest planning board project review minutes to come out, to see if there was anything newsworthy (and pretty much everything on there was minor, or I’ve already covered it, so…nope, nothing newsworthy). So I’m going to take a closer look at an article recently posted by the Ithaca Journal.

It was noted that the Collegetown Terrace (aka the giant hard hat-bedecked property south of State Street between Quarry and Valentine) is quite the tax revenue generator for the county. Now, here’s some of their numbers: The initial properties on the land, small apartment buildings and single-family homes (~29 total), were valued at $19,143,000, which would (by my calculation) generate taxes of around $700,000 per year. Just under half of that would go to the school district, with a little more than one-third (~35%) going to the city coffers, and the rest to the county. The partially-built property, as it was assessed in March, was assessed at $526,800, according to the IJ, with a property value of $14,430,000.

Now let’s keep in mind two things. The property wasn’t even finished, and finished properties garner much more in taxes; and the property is being developed in three phases, with the currently assessed phase counting for just 18 percent of that.

It would be hard for me to say what the value of the finished property is, so let’s conservatively go for 20% greater than the current value, for the sake of this exercise. That gives $17.32 million. Now let’s apply that to the developed project, 100% complete: ([100/18] * 17.316=) $96.2 million. Five times its former value before the property was sold. If taxes are kept the same, that would be a tax bill of about $3.5 million. And for the city, an extra $1 million in cash would go a long way, since the annual revenue is about $61.5 million. An extra million is equivalent to the amount Cornell pays annually in its PILOT agreement with the city.

It would not be out of place to think, “oh, but with the slow rate of growth, this is just cannibalizing other local properties”. To some extent, yes. But these are properties that have a very captive market, namely, 20,000+ Cornell students. The landlords that will be hurting the most will be those with properties furthest from campus, of which a good chunk of that hinterland lies outside city limits, in the neighboring town of Ithaca, or Lansing. In my mind, the biggest concern will be if this project pulls grad and professional students away from downtown and Fall Creek, but I imagine the effect will be minor, all things considered (most notably, because if apartments in this place are going for $1,000+ per month, then that $600 one bedroom in Fall Creek is still going to appeal to a lot of folks with tighter purse strings).

In conclusion, I think that if a developer approaches the city regarding new student housing in the Collegetown area, they’ll have a powerful card in there hand – the tax argument. I’ll be curious to see if Novarr-Mackesey mentions it when they release their proposal for the Palms property and its neighbors along the 200 block of Dryden Road.


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Spring 2012 Construction Update – Cornell Edition

9 05 2012

The new Food Sciences Building has completed a substantial amount of exterior work, although the glass facade has yet to be installed. The $105 million renovation is to be completely done in early 2014, with the new Dairy Bar sometime earlier than that.

Site prep is underway at Gates Hall (the new Computer Science building). The $60 million, 103,000 sq ft building is targeting a December 2013 completion date.

It’ll be a happy day when these plain beige boxes are removed. Unfortunately, the $51 million renovation of Warren Hall that necessitated their construction will not be complete until early 2015 (with the Dyson School portion complete by mid-2013 – and it annoys me to refer to the AEM Department as the Dyson School, as if the perceived pedigree was needed to remove themselves from the stigma of CALS).

Not the most telling image, but Rice and Fernow Halls are currently in the middle of their renovations.

This Bradfield-based photo of Fernow shows the partially-subterranean classroom being built on the east side of the building.


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Spring 2012 Construction Update

2 05 2012

I’m disappointed, and I’m not disappointed. I can’t be at Slope Day itself because of a morning meeting (and to seal my fate that day, I’m having new tires put on my car). On the bright side, I did get a chance last weekend to go to a Cornell alumni reception for my major, and the traffic, one could assume, was a lot better than it would be with thousands of young alumni driving back to the area. I took the downtime between alumni events as an opportunity to do some construction photo updating.

As nice as it would’ve been to report on some downtown construction, all the sites approved or of buildings “underway” appeared to be dormant from the outside – if they’ve started anything, it might be interior demolition, but there wasn’t any demolition equipment at Seneca Way or Breckinridge Place (which, as I have now discovered, is scheduled for May 15th); the latter had a tarp poster, shown above, but that was about it. As kinda expected, significant work has yet to start at the Holiday Inn, Hotel Ithaca and Cayuga Green II.

That being said, it’s not like there was no progress at all in the area. The Argos Inn is nearing completion of its renovation.

Comparably, construction in Collegetown has been rapid. Here, 309 Eddy is undergoing facade installation, and looks on track for an August completion date.

The progress at Collegetown Terrace has been nothing short of astounding. The following photos try to convey a sense of the size and scope of the construction, but I feel they fail to do so. By Ithaca standards, this project is enormous.

Definitely not a fan of the giant concrete pedestal.Here’s to hoping it gets landscaped into obscurity.

The Ithaca College Boathouse nears completion on Inlet Island.

So, this one I only came around by chance, as I was going out with old friends for dinner. Apart from them thinking I’m nuts for taking photo of a building under construction, I’d say this was a pleasant surprise. The building is Magnolia House, a 14-person women’s homeless shelter.

The Coal Yard Apartments Phase II is virtually complete. The 4-story building holds 25 apartments.

The Vine Street Cottages development continues, with the model unit currently the only building under construction. The project includes 19 houses and 10 townhomes.

Seeing as my computer is lagging substantially with the uploading of all these photos, I think I’ll cut myself some slack and upload the Cornell project photos in a later entry next week.


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A Snowy Ithaca Update

30 12 2011

It’s a running joke that Ithaca is “centrally isolated”. Luckily for me, however, I grew up not too far north of Syracuse, so visiting my family for the holidays can also have “pay a visit to Ithaca to update my photo collection” somewhere on the itinerary.

Unfortunately, although I had the date planned well in-advance (I even wrote a list of places to visit so I wouldn’t miss any of my intended targets), it also happened to be one of the coldest and snowiest days yet of the upstate winter. The lake effect had set itself up in a large and fairly strong band south of Syracuse, enveloping a wide swath of land from about Ithaca up through Lafayette. With the passage of a cold front the night before, a brisk northwest wind kicked up, turning a snow day into a windy and snowy day, with near-whiteouts on the interstate.  Combine that with puddles from the heavy rain of the previous evening freezing over, and the driving was a bit of a harrowing experience. At least the old days of practicing controlled skids in a parking lot came in handy. Anyways, the weather slacked off after lunch and I was able to get some photos.

The BJ’s in Lansing (just north of the mall) is near completion. I did not notice any senior homes being built when I visited.

One of the housing projects nearby, Ivar Jonson’s Heights of Lansing. 6 more units of the 80 unit project are under construction in the background. I took photos of some of the Lansing suburban sprawl, but I figured no one would know the difference between a cul-de-sac of McMansions here vs. any other city. I’ll save the photo for another entry that could better use it.

Not much happening with the Ithaca Gun site. The site is cleared, but no construction has taken place. According to an article in the Ithaca Journal, the project is supposed to finish clean-up this year, and the developer plans to finish clean before starting any redevelopment. So probably no construction until 2013.

The site of the Breckenridge Place project. The Women’s Community Building’s days are numbered. According to a very recent Ithaca Times piece, demolition will occur starting in March.

Rendering Courtesy fo Hart Hotels

 

The Holiday Inn has begun the initial phases of proposal with the planning board. The plan calls for the low-rise portion, shown here, to be demolished, with a new conference area and a few more rooms attached to the mid-rise tower of 10 floors. The new hotel would be built at this street corner. I don’t have many faults with the design, except that the east wall looks cheap. Like 1960’s pre-fabricated cheap.

The Cayuga Green Condos site awaits construction. The project is currently unfunded (and therefore stalled), but with a reorganization and a ground floor tenant secured, the developers hope to secure funds and start construction by next summer.

It seems I’ll have a plentiful supply of “before” images. This is the Hotel Ithaca site. I’m willing to venture this project is much like the Cayuga Condos – tenant secured (Gemstone Hotels), but no funding yet in place as a result of the tight loan market for new projects. Hopefully, we’ll hear positive news in 2012.

Hm. I’m sure things will be much more interesting one year from now. Here’s the Seneca Way Apartments site. The renovation of the Argos Inn (turning a dilapidated house into a LEED-certified boutique hotel) continues in the background. The Seneca Way project will begin demolition of the old Challenge Industries building this spring, and be built on a (slow if steady) 18-24 month time frame.

Moving towards Collegetown, it was hard to fully capture the sheer size and scale of the Collegetown Terrace. Simply put, it’s massive. The house in the background to the left is the Williams House; the project extends further up the street beyond that. In contrast to Seneca Way, the time frame here is brisk – phase one, consisting of 12 of the 16 new buildings, is expected to be completed by August 2012. The other two phases are expected to be completed in 2013 through early 2014.

I did some mental math – the rental market will see Novarr’s 600 beds come online in the next couple of years, which might be around 5% of the total market. That’s quite an impact, most likely to be felt by the student-oriented apartment complexes furthest from campus.

The apartment building under construction at 309 Eddy. Look for a completion date around late summer 2012.

The site of the “Collegetown Crossings” project, formally known as 307 College Avenue. The project is back on the agenda as a sketch proposal, but I’m yet uncertain as to whether it keeps the form of a 6-story 60-unit building with a distinct lack of parking, or if the proposal has been modified.

EDIT 1/23/12: The above rendering (from the Sun, courtesy of the City of Ithaca) is the latest design of the project. The project, if granted approval, will be home to a Greenstar Co-Op Grocery branch. The building would be complete by 2014.

Phase II of the Coal Yard Apartments project off Maple Avenue. The 4-story, 25-unit project looks to be heading towards a spring 2012 completion date.

The site for the Vine Street Cottages project has been cleared. Construction of the model house should be complete by the spring. The 29-unit project (19 homes and 10  townhouses) effectively redevelops the eastern edge of the city (Belle Sherman).


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News Tidbits 10/26/2011: I Can Barely Keep Up With All These Proposals

26 10 2011

When I started writing about construction projects, it seemed like they were relatively unreported by different news sources. Now it seems like I can’t avoid seeing an Ithaca Journal or Cornell Sun article detailing some construction project. I dunno if that’s because someone decided that construction is suddenly more noteworthy or if I’m just relatively more observant on these sort of things now that I live outside the area, and information is harder to retrieve. Lately, another reason might be that there’s been a ton of new projects coming down the pipeline.

In the latest Ithaca Times, it has been noted that Fairfield Inn project down in big box land, and the Seneca Way project, have both met their final approvals, which means sites can be cleared and construction can start hopefully in the near future. While that should be no problem for the hotel, the funding concerns with Seneca Way may cause some delays with that project, and it will be a waiting game to see when site prep begins and construction starts. Personally, I’m hoping to avoid a repeat of Ithaca Gun.

Image Courtesy of Cornell Daily Sun

As for new projects, a new sketch plan was proposed, informally referred to as the “Johnson’s Boatyard Housing Project”. The project is sited for Willow Avenue, which lies to the northwest of Fall Creek, on a parcel of land jutting out past Route 13 and across the inlet from Cass Park (so, right next to the city golf course). Apart from the boatyard, there are several light industrial and commercial properties, as well as some undeveloped space. Since the project is planned to be adjacent to Willow Avenue, I suspect it is within the already developed area.

Map Courtesy of Google Maps

The sketch proposal suggests three phases of development.  The first phase, to start next year, will build about 20 townhouses. The second and third phases will be multistory (2-4 floor) mixed use buildings (retail on bottom, apartments on top) built near or along Willow Avenue. Market conditions will decide the final scale and timeline for those phases.

Last but not least, and this falls more into the rumor mill, but Tompkins County is planning a Center of Government building in downtown to place all of its administrative services under one roof. The possibilities range from a new building on the site of the now-vacant old county library, or renovating and adding on more floors to adding 2 or three floors to the Board of Elections Building on Buffalo Street. The final decision will be made within the next several months.

So, quite a bit of news in the past month. The approval of the Breckinridge Project (52 apts, 6 floors), the approval of the Seneca Way Project (32 units + retail, 5 floors), the approval of the Vine Street Cottages project (29 units), the Holiday Inn expansion (9 floors), the approval of the Fairfield Inn project (4 floors), the announcement of the new Humanities Building (66,500 sq ft) and new information on Gates Hall (101,000 sq ft), the announcement of the Johnson Boatyard Project (20+ units)…just a lot of stuff lately. Which certainly isn’t a bad thing.


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Homecoming Construction Update

19 09 2011

I came. I saw. I took photos. Note that all the photos can be enlarged by clicking on the image.

Milstein Hall – The building so nice I visited it twice (and by nice, I mean it’s “nice”, but not “great”, and hard to believe it cost $55 million). During the second visit on Saturday evening, a group of about ten skateboarders converged on the white humps and concrete curves. I’m going to guess it will only be a matter of time before that gets banned if it hasn’t been already.

The Human Ecology Building. The woman at the info desk offered up a “scavenger hunt” assignment, but I was short on time.

The Food Science Building (Stocking Hall Addition/Reconstruction). From my favorite Bradfield perch.


Prefabs on the Ag Quad. Sad face.

The Johnson Museum Addition

The Physical Sciences Building

309 Eddy Street. When they say “opening soon”, they mean next summer. I also have a photo of the Collegetown Terrace site from a distance, but I could see was a fenced-off area that was largely cleared out.


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News Tidbits 8/22/11: Kappa Delta’s Swanky Renovation

22 08 2011

It would be nice to live in Ithaca, but since I don’t, I increasingly find about construction projects from word-of-mouth rather than investigating on my own. In correspondence with “BB” from the Milstein Hall entry, he briefly mentioned that he’d take some photos of KD’s renovation project.

It piqued my curiosity because that was the first time I had ever heard about it. My first thought was that it may not have been an immense piece of work because I hadn’t seen anything in the planning board minutes from the city. But, I decided to quickly check online to see if there was anything special about this construction project.

I barely recognized the house.

Here’s the before photo, from my own archives (dated July 16, 2008).

Here’s an after image from a construction blog on their website:

It’s a pitifully small photo, but I’ll rectify that when I take a photo at Homecoming. Note that the west wall (right side) visible in the before image is now the front entrance.

The most substantial change is the construction of a generous wrap-around porch from Sisson Place onto Triphammer Road. The construction itself isn’t expanding the structure much, about 800 sq. ft on the first floor (based off what my strained eyes can pull from the elevations image at top). But the exterior reclad with an emphasis on a traditional appearance does wonders for what was arguably one of the more rundown-looking sorority houses on campus, creating a more graceful, less bunker-like presence. According to the webpage, the renovation cost is around $400,000.

Regarding the comment on the webpage about Triphammer Road being the original entrance location, I don’t have any verification of that, but it is quite likely. KD moved to its current location around 1923 and underwent several renovations/expansions in the years since.

In terms of exterior alteration, this is probably one of the most substantial changes since Sigma Pi built a new house in the mid-1990s. I must admit that the final result looks impressive.


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