News Tidbits 6/13/12: “Cascadilla Landing” Makes Its Debut

13 06 2012

For those who pay any attention to Ithaca’s physical plant, news has been floated around for a while of a proposed waterfront project next to the city golf course, which in reference, was referred to as the “Johnson Boatyard Development”, after the boatyard located on the current property.

Well, in the fee-to-see Ithaca Journal this morning, renderings were shown for the proposed “Cascadilla Landing” project, which is the official name of the development. More renderings are included within a PDF from John Snyder Architects hosted on the IJ website.

I would love to share some of the images, but now that content is pay-to-play, that puts me in a much more difficult position. It was one thing to share an image up from a free online paper. But now that content is not free, the legal waters have become a bit dicier. I will say this much: click the links, visitors have a limited number of article hits before content is no longer displayed. After that, there are several other ways to get around the content wall (or you can pay). If I see them hosted (i.e. not linked) on a “free” content website, I’ll include them here. But until then…yeah. It’s unfortunate.

Following the PDF, the project has 185 units – 6 in duplexs, 11 townhomes, 168 apartments. The mid-rise apartment buildings are furthest east, with the townhomes in the middle, and three three-story duplex buildings built around the traffic circle that completes the west end of the project. Phase 1 has two buildings of 82 and 44 units respectively, in three 5-story apartment buildings, two of which are connected by a skybridge. Construction would start on Phase I in Spring 2013. The main street appears to double as an internal promenade.

As for the design, John Snyder Architects opted for angular and ultramodern. The duplexs have gable roofs and wood trim, and bear superficial similarities to the buildings going up at the 900 block portion of Collegetown Terrace. The apartment buildings are an angular pastiche of windows of all shapes and sizes and random balconies and overhangs closer to the waterfront, and a bit more orderly further into the property. The colors as shown are rather muted whites and greys. No one will ever call it pretty, but it certainly stands out from the traditional built environment. The townhome designs are not really shown, they’re likely still in the initial design process.

Ithaca’s economy hasn’t been something to be too excited about lately, but this project shows there must still be some demand to live in the City of Gorges.

EDIT 7/18/12: The city has published the images. As a result, I’m including them below:


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News Tidbits 5/31/2012: New Apartments Squeezed Onto Thurston Avenue

1 06 2012

So, I’ve been waiting for this piece of news for a while, but it took a little bit of sleuthing to come up with details about a proposed project for Thurston Avenue. First, the location:

The location is a parcel next to the Rabco (Highland House) Apartments on the corner of Highland Road and Thurston Avenue. To give you a better sense of locale, its the woody, slightly hilly piece of land across Thurston from Seal & Serpent, and across Highland from Alpha Zeta. A highly trafficked area, the property was once home to the Wyckoff Mansion, which became the home of Phi Kappa Psi from 1915-1964. The Wyckoff property was torn down to make way for the Rabco Apartments, which were finished in 1966. This portion of the parcel has never been developed. I actually used to walk by here almost every day, but never felt the urge to get photos of a stand of trees and rocks.

The proposal is as follows: three buildings, clustered, four stories in height (est. height ~40 feet, within zoning regulation). 36 units and 88 beds, making it one of the densest properties north of campus. 40 parking spaces are proposed, but the planning board has expressed the desire to share space with the excess western parking lot on the Rabco property, and that will probably be a stipulation for approval. Time-wise, since this is the sketch plan, and given the size and location, don’t expect construction for several months (although they want city approval by late July – which is highly unlikely), and expect a year more before it is complete. The project lies within a contextually-sensitive area, the Cornell Heights Historic District, and its design will probably be much more scrutinized as a result. It may also be rather historicist, because I can’t anyone is going to approve a “modernist” or “contemporary” design in the heart of a historic district, even in a city that likes svelte modern boxes.

On another piece of news, the Johnson Boatyard project has realigned its entrance to be on Willow Avenue rather than Pier Road (not a big changed, it just means its moved from the north end to the east end of the property), and the number of duplexes has been decreased from eleven to six. The project still has townhomes [warning: Ithaca Journal link], which now vary from 1-2 stories in height. A small retail portion might be included in the first phase. After all the news about the original proposal, this first phase is a bit…underwhelming.


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The Keyword Bar XVI

24 05 2012

1. “chi omega” “cornell university” closed -“alpha chi omega” (5-23-2012)

Yes, and no. Chi Omega was active at Cornell from 1917 – 1963, and then again from 1987-2003, when low membership caused it national to shut its doors. The house at 10 Sisson Place is now occupied by Sigma Alpha Mu. In contrast, Alpha Chi Omega, which was established at Cornell in 1984, it still active on campus.

2. “cornell store summer employment” (5-16-2012)

If four years ‘experience is any indicator, they’ve already filled up. A bare-bones student staff of five or six stays on during the summer along with the full time staff, and most of those are current student employees (the year I worked through the summer, we all were). In sum, you can check, but don’t hold your breath.

3. “johnson boatyard ithaca” (5-16-2012)

If this is in any reference to the big mixed-use project underway for the boatyard site, then I have good news – they are making progress and gave an update to the city planning board just last night. As soon as those minutes areuploaded, I hope to include them in my next “news tidbits” entry. These entries will be pulled directly from the minutes,  since the Ithaca Journal, in a responsible but unfortunate move, now charges for article access beyond a nominal number of articles (renewed each month). Also on the docket – a redevelopment project for apartments on Thurston Avenue.

4. “location of former ithaca hotel, hotel leonardo aurora st, ithaca”

Going back in time, the Hotel Leonardo was located at 105 N. Aurora Street – at least, back in 1965. The address today pops up a location in front of Sushi O Sake (which is 107 N. Aurora). A search indicates that section of Aurora was known as the “Casey Block“, which was built around 1904 (the Wanzer (corner) Block was built the following year), but the stretch was renovated and substantially rebuilt in the 1990s. The Casey Block could be the building that Viva Cantina is now in, or it could have been in the 1990s renovation (the architects refer the original building as “burned out“) that now sits at 107 N. Aurora.

5. “vine street cottages ithaca ny how much are townhouses”

I’ll just link to this previous entry, in an effort to limit unnecessary visits to the Ithaca Journal pages.  Mid-200,000s expected. Definitely not a place to buy for your child- student. 10 to choose from, four styles.

6. “new townhome proposal for route 96 ithaca”

That would be the Holochuck Homes project. The plan is for 106 townhomes, one or two-stories, clustered together near the road. Final approvals were granted last month. This is about the only image I could find of them, from a now-inaccessable article in the Elmira Star-Gazette:

7. “new apartments 600 W. Seneca street ithaca” (5-11-2012)

Okay, I maybe dropped the ball on this one. Back in the summer 2010, a 24-unit, 3-story apartment building was proposed for the northwest corner of Seneca and Meadow Streets by Iacovelli Properties. It only recently started construction, and I know there’s a billboard standing on the property, and it shows the design of the new building(s).  I know this because I saw it the last time I was in Ithaca I passed the property, but I was driving and did not have my camera in hand (a blessing to all other drivers on the road), I was unable to get a photo. If someone does gets a photo of the project and wants to email that in, I would be delighted.


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News Tidbits 4/12/12: Ithaca Plots to Get Rid of its Lots

13 04 2012

Image

So, Ithaca has a lot of things going for it…and some things that aren’t. One of the unfortunate aspects of being a small city with a large university and a medium-sized college is that a lot of the local land is owned by said institutions, making it tax exempt. In fact, the proportion of tax exempt parcels in the city is right around 60.82 percent, 83.1 percent of which is owned by Cornell. So, this often results in a tight budget situation (Cornell, to its credit, has a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) agreement that pays the city $1.1 million annually, or about 4.5% of the tax value of its holdings; Ithaca College, at last check, pays jack squat). As one might imagine, this is a huge source of controversy, more than enough to merit discussion in a future entry. Anyway, this year, like many, Ithaca is looking at a deficit, to the tune of $3 million. To alleviate some of this burden, the city hopes to sell some of its unused property (at least $120,000 worth) to put it back on the tax roll and hope that someone redevelops it, for further benefit to the community and the city’s bottom line. This entry takes a look at the properties.

First off, the process on how to get rid of the properties has been, for lack of a better word, a clusterf**k. Two parcels have been cleared for sale, since there are no major environmental issues – 213-15 Spencer Street, and 321 Elmira Road.

Image

213-15 Spencer Street is a 0.47 acre property with a value of $124,000. The property is planned to be transferred to the Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency (IURA), which then sells the property for some value to an interested buyer, which in this case looks to be INHS, the local real estate development NPO. In sum, probably going to be developed for an INHS house.

321 Elmira Road is a 0.40 acre property with an assessed value of $189,000, probably because it’s in the middle of the rapidly developing big-box chain district in the southwestern part of the city. The sale of this property will be done via auction with sale to the highest bidder. At 0.40 acres (17,400 sq ft, not including zoning restrictions), don’t expect development here to me more than a small chain store of some variety…if anything at all, given drainage issues on the site.

Cherry Street parcel 100.-2-1.2 (i.e. 300 block). Is an 8.25 acre property in an industrial park with an assessed value of $825,000. This property is tied up in red tape due to some wetland on the south side of the property, but once those 2.25 acres have been subdivided off, the other 6 acres will be given to IURA, to be sold to an entity that will provide “commercial development”, if it gets redeveloped at all (some are calling for no sale due to the sensitive nature of the neighboring wetlands).

Given the tax rate, if all three were sold and assessed at current value (saying Cherry Street’s 6 acres are $600,000 for the sake of argument), you’d get about $32,000 in property tax, not to mention the one-time revenue of the sale itself. All in all, these sales aren’t really anything special, but it will be interesting to see what gets proposed for the Elmira Road and Cherry Street properties if the sales are ever completed.


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News Tidbits 3/16/2012: What Lies Ahead for Cook Street

16 03 2012

From Cornell Daily Sun. Image Updated 4/25/2012.

From the Ithaca City Planning Board:

Site Plan Review, Townhouse Apartments, 107 Cook St., Jason Demarest, Applicant for Owner, Dan Liguori. The applicant is proposing to construct two 2‐story townhouses with partially finished basement levels, four parking spaces, and asphalt‐paved access drive, walkways, and landscaping. The buildings are each 2,304 SF with 6,128 SF finished floor area, and contain two 3‐bedroom dwelling units, for a total of 4 new units with 12 new bedrooms. Proposed exterior finishes include brick, fiber cement board, cedar shakes, and stained wood lattice detailing. The project is in the R‐2b Zoning district. This is a Type I Action under the City of Ithaca Environmental Quality Review Ordinance and the State Environmental Quality Review Act (because the site is contiguous to a historic district) and is subject to environmental review.

If the address looks familiar, it should. The ca. 1912 house that stood on the property was engulfed in flames in May of last year, killing a Cornell student. One of the factors that was believed to have weighed in on the fire (which was accidental) was a confusing internal configuration due to subdivision of the original property from single-family into multiple tenants (there were eight units total, housing 13 students).

The first proposal for new development on the property was rejected for a couple of reasons – for not having a porch, and for having a mansard roof that wasn’t much of a mansard roof. The planning board has been fairly adamant that any new property on the street fits in with the current set of buildings. Well, that and fire safety. Old single-family houses that are subdivided are usually grandfathered from the sprinkler requirement as long as the alterations are strictly internal.  The new building would have to have a sprinkler system in order to be approved as a multi-tenant building.

So here we are on proposal two; townhouses, two units in each, 12 bedrooms, so two bedrooms less than the previous proposal and one less than the original building. Based off of description alone, with cedar shake and wood lattice detailing, it sounds like this structure is more in-line with the current style of buildings on Cook Street. I for one will be curious to see how it looks.

Arguably, from a purely financial standpoint, it would be a blunder to not redevelop the property – several new units close to Cornell would fetch a higher going price than neighboring houses, just for being newer and safer. Also, paying taxes on land as highly valued as Inner Collegetown’s probably dissuades the owner from sitting on the property. If one were planning on holding onto the parcel for the long-term, this could be a potentially lucrative setup for the small-scale owner/developer.

Taking a grander view, I wonder if projects like this could be a demonstration of what may lie ahead for some smaller Collegetown properties.  As large new developments open up (CTown Terrace, the Palms proposal, etc.), and assuming a static student population, the rates for older unrenovated buildings will go down and the owner’s revenue will take a hit. This will be further compounded on poorly-maintained properties; owners who suddenly have a building declared unfit by the city, and have to make costly repairs or rebuild (while being excoriated by local residents and officials).  Ii is possible that over the next decade or so, more projects that seek to build smaller but  student-specific properties will be proposed in the area. Quality of design and materials, of course, is up to the owner and requires the city’s approval. In summary, I see the redevelopment of 107 Cook as an illustration of what may lie ahead for Collegetown.


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The Rejuvenation of Gannett Health Center

28 02 2012

A while back, I mentioned that the plan for Gannett Health Center was to tear down the current structure and replace it on the same parcel of land with a new 90,000-130,000 sq ft building. While the project is still in the pipeline, a massing proposal suggests one rough idea of the future Gannett:

From HOLT Architects’ portofolio section comes this little nugget of information:

“…the 2007 HOLT Master Plan developed a comprehensive building space program for a 119,000 gsf replacement facility. Concept designs tested the full program fit on the existing central campus site and including substantial new parking requirements. Massing models, single and multi-phase construction sequencing, project costs, and schedules were outlined to assist the university with strategic planning.”

In other words, its a proposal for a new building, but it’s just one possible solution that may or may not be pursued by the university for the new Gannett. The proposal offers up a 119,000 sq ft 5-story (+1 more floor for mechanicals) structure whose massing suggests a curved face to maintain context with Campus Road to its southwest.

A couple of things stand out in the massing concepts. One, the ground textures were not updated to reflect the massing proposal. Two, the revised Hollister Hall can be seen at right (southeast). I’d be inclined to say that that would be based off of the master plan, but the master plan also calls for a demolition of the Cornell Store and Day Hall, which are not included in the imagery. It could be a saved time and effort on behalf of the company, or it could mean that the plans for Hollister are a little more solid than the other master plan suggestions. Either idea is plausible.

Since Gannett is currently only 39,000 sq ft, a building three times larger would leave an indelible impression on the intersection of Campus and College, arguably one of the most prominent on campus. Whether Cornell goes with this massing model, the tiered building in the master plan, or another design (not a hypermodern box, I can hope) remains to be seen in the university’s long-term plans.


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News Tidbits 1/31/2012: The Big Red Bandhouse Will NOT Be Open This Summer

31 01 2012

Image Property of Cornell University

http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2012/01/31/new-building-big-red-band-will-open-summer

Dear Cornell Daily Sun – If a building starts construction in June 2012 with a tentative completion date of January 2013, in no feasible terms will the building be open by the summer of 2012.

Anyway, semantics aside, the design of the Big Red Bandhouse (or as I like to think of it, Fischell Hall) has been released. It’s a whole lot of Big Red Boring, but I suppose its purpose is more functional than aesthetic. It fits the general theme of ultramodern buildings that the university has more than happy to construct in the past several years.

Image Property of Cornell University

With the extra large front doors open, it kinda resembles a “Dust Buster” portable vacuum.The architects are the same folks responsible for the Plantations Welcome Center.

To allay the fears of the budget-conscious, the building is expected to be paid for entirely by private donations from Big Red Band alumni (in what I imagine will be a veritable inundation of pleas to their alumni to donate). The site is the current location of a small maintenance building (the Schoellkopf Garage), which will be removed and most likely rebuilt somewhere nearby.

I’m not a fan of the design (which should come as no surprise to frequent readers of this blog), but I figure this building was meant to be functional more than anyone else.


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News Tidbits 1/19/2012: Ithaca Develops Its Waterfront

19 01 2012

In today’s “Holy crap WTF” factor, the full scale of the Johnson Boatyard project has been released. I expected to hear about the 20 or so townhomes expected, and that was about it. But the project is, uh, quite big by Ithaca standards.

This starts by going back to last year, when Ithaca modified its waterfront zoning to accommodate larger, denser projects (this was not without contention). It appears that Jeff Cleveland, the owner and potential developer, plans to take advantage of that in a big way.

The proposal for the boatyard is as follows –

The boatyard itself will be closed and 4 buildings are set to be demolished on the site. In their place will go the following:

11 three-story attached townhouse units with a gross square footage of 62,500 sq ft.

5 5-story mixed-use structures. These will contain 130-150 residential units occupying an area of 215,000 sq ft, and another 15,000 sq ft of retail commercial space. This includes 290 parking spaces on the side of Pier Road, with a roundabout installed at the end of Pier.

A plaza, a waterfront promenade, and a pier along Cascadilla Creek. The seawall will be rebuilt and all the boat slips will be retained. Essentially, the entire 7.8 acre property will be completely redeveloped.

This project would, perhaps, give Ithaca the developed waterfront it never had (or following the opinions of some locals, never wanted). The location is a bit weird because it’s outside of the more developed areas of the city (Inlet island seemed like a more logical winner from the change in zoning).  Walking across the promenade will give a lovely view of some trees…and the wastewater treatment plant right across the water. Unusual project, and surprisingly large project, but it wasn’t clear what was going to be built in what phases (my guess is that it is still the townhouses first, and some staggered development from there). Impressive proposal if but only for the scale of the project.


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Where Have All the Drinkers Gone?

13 01 2012

I had first seen rumors of this on facebook, but it was only verified by the Sun sometime last night: The Royal Palm Tavern, or rather, “The Palms”, is closing, after 70ish years of service to the inebriated community (I’ve seen opening dates ranging from the late 1930s to 1944; the Sun went with 1941). The Palms closing next month will mark the third Collegetown bar closing in less than year, following in the footsteps of Dino’s and Johnny O’s.

I think most older readers of this blog have some memory attached to one or more these places. The Alumni Magazine did a nice piece about drinking-holes of yesteryear just back in November, complete with the line “the Royal Palm Tavern—still open, despite recent rumors to the contrary—has served a steady stream of students since the Thirties.” To some extent, I worry with the closure of multiple bars and the restrictions on fraternity parties are only furthering the move to drinking in the rundown houses of Collegetown, arguably a more dangerous environment than the aforementioned options. Let’s be honest, if a third of the drinking establishments in Collegetown have closed, and traffic was pretty high on many nights as it was, the traffic that would go elsewhere might just get frustrated with the lines and crowding and just drink at a private party. For the record, Johnny O’s closed after legal issues and their landlord opted for another tenant, and Dino’s was not allowed to renew their lease. The Palms is closing because of financial issues, and the owners are retiring.

As much as I could pursue an entry just on drinking culture/concerns, I’d rather stick to what I do best – Ithaca history and development. First, the Palms’ property, at 209 Dryden Road,  is not for sale, it has already been sold.

That is, unsurprisingly, a prime, prime piece of property to tap into the more expensive segment of the Collegetown market. Now, being such a prime property carries a hefty price tag, so the developers would have to be fairly deep-pocketed, and in fact they are; it’s the firm Novarr-Mackesey, the same developers of the massive Collegetown Terrace project. The rumor mill has been cranking out the possibility of a mid-rise or high-rise apartment building on the site of the Palms. Unfortunately, at this early stage, it’s hard to say what the proposal will look like.

However, there are two certainties – they’re going to have one hell of a time tearing the Palms down, and if it goes over 60 feet (or over 6 stories, whichever comes first), then it’ll be even more difficult because they’ll need a height variance (B-2b zoning says building should be 6 stories or less, and no more than 60′ feet from base to roof). The zoning could be pliable depending on any fringe benefits for the city or any public enhancements (for example, offering public meeting space). The building was built around the early 1920s, and has operated as a restaurant/bar for virtually all of its life, and is seen as a potential historic landmark. Notably, some of the members of the Planning board also put together the historic buildings document. If Novarr-Mackesey wants to build anything, I see this being a prolonged battle, especially if it needs to go up to the Zoning Board of Appeals, where more objections can be raised.

Honestly, I hope to see something, because if buildings appear totally vacant like this, giving a poor impression to visitors and potential students, that is unacceptable:

Update: The Palms and two neighboring buildings on Dryden were sold last year toan LLC associated with Novarr-Mackesey for $3.75 million, well over their assessed value. In the Cornell Sun, Novarr claims there are no set plans for the location yet, but there will probably be a housing component. Considering his work with Collegetown Terrace, which will not be finished until 2014, it could be a couple years before financing and plans are lined up for the site’s redevelopment – leaving that part of the street rather blighted in the short term.


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News Tidbits 11/16/2011: Cayuga Green II Gets a Revival (and a Revision)

16 11 2011

In terms of Ithaca-area development, I consider myself an optimist. But Cayuga Green’s second phase was one of those projects I had written off as left for dead. For a quick background, Cayuga Green is the formal name for the mixed-use project that has been underway on Green Street in downtown Ithaca for about ten years. The project, proposed for a piece of land that was then-used for a large parking ramp/lot, was aimed to revitalize that section of downtown, but was not without controversy due to its use of property tax abatements by developers Bloomfield & Schon. The first phase includes the new Cinemapolis (one of the results of the controversy was to switch from a new multiplex to a new space for Cinemapolis), the redone parking garage, a creekwalk, and the Cayuga Place Apartments, where the new TCAT stop is.  The first phase was completed a couple years ago.

By a fair account, the project has had mixed success. What has been built is doing quite well. Gimme! Coffee, Palmer Pharmacy and Urban Outfitters filled the new commercial space (all of which were new, not companies that moved space), and the apartments had a low vacancy rate. Cinemapolis has adjusted to its new space and the street is rejuvenated. The project spurred nearby development, including Gateway Commons and the Hotel Ithaca project. The caveat comes from the second phase, which was supposed to start in mid 2007. The financial market started to tank, and this phase had never gained financing, government or private. The space it was intended for, behind the city’s new parking garage, was left empty.

It would seem that is about to change. Thanks to a tip from from frequent visitor and favorite old fart “Ex-Ithacan”, the project is going in front of the Planning and Economic Development Board. The revision is for a six-month extension on the site (construction was supposed to start by 12/31/2011, even after a previous delay),  The amendment notes the project seeks no tax abatements, but must go to the Common Council at the end of the month for final approval.

Also notably, the project is revised. The original proposal looked like this (image from developer’s website):

Which was revised to this:

and now looks like…this (from the agenda):

The newest incarnation is 6 stories, 35 units of condos, and 8,500 square feet of office space, of which about 5,000 feet is reserved for the Park Foundation, a local non-profit. No new environmental review is required, which should save time in the approvals process, and that will be handy since final approval and building permit will have to be issued by June 30, 2012.


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