Work has progressed at the site of the apartment project at 206 Taughannock Boulevard on Ithaca’s Inlet Island, where seven apartments and office space are being built from the gut renovation of a furniture store and warehouse. The changes on the exterior have been slow, but given this past winter, the focus of the past few months has probably been on the interior space.
Since November, a little more siding (best guess, fiber cement/Hardie board) had been installed on the exterior, and the industrial steel siding at the front side of the roof has been replaced with an irregularly-shaped plywood-and-housewrap structure. Looking at the window spacing, siding and trim boards already applied to the front of the building, this rooftop re-do is likely intended to break up the bulk of the old warehouse by giving the impression of individual buildings within the greater structure. It could look nice or it could look clunky, we’ll have to wait and see.
206 Taughannock was until 2014 the site of the Unfinished Furniture Store (otherwise called the “Real Wood Furniture Store“) owned and operated by the Zaharis family. From the county records, the building itself is a 9,156 sq ft structure originally used for retail and warehouse space and dated to sometime in the 1970s. The store closed last April when its owners retired, and a building permit issues a few months later. Photos of the store before renovation can be seen here at Ithaca Builds. Perhaps the biggest loss in this renovation is the removal of a rather attractive mural from the front of the structure.
Next door, work continues on a satellite office for the Ithaca Police Department in the ground floor space of the former Lehigh Valley House, now a six-unit condominium. The Lehigh Valley renovation was done by local developer Tim Ciaschi, with design work by local architect Claudia Brenner.
Two more Inlet Island projects are waiting in the wings, although only one is likely to start anytime soon. The 21-unit 323 Taughannock apartment project is expected to start construction this year, but no work appeared to be taking place when I checked the site at the start of April. Meanwhile, 12 affordable apartment units have been proposed for 910 West State Street in a project called “The Flatiron”. The developers, Alpern and Milton LLC, applied for affordable housing grant funding to help finance the project. However, the IURA has deemed the project a low priority because it wasn’t feasible as presented. The site as-is is shown below. The red building with the mansard roof would be renovated, and a structure of similar height and appearance would be built on the triangular lot to its left (west).
Ithacating in Cornell Heights 
