Hi all,
Thanks for a great March meeting this week of the Syracuse Urbanism Collective!
At this month’s meeting, we hosted a nonpartisan Q&A at CNY Jazz Central with candidates running for Onondaga County Legislator and New York State Assembly. In the spirit of a nonpartisan event, we invited all candidates for each race we reached out about. Thanks for all of the great questions you sent us ahead of time to ask the candidates! Thank you for Maurice Brown and Jo Bennett for participating in the panel and answering questions.
At the end of the meeting, we didn’t have much time for announcements, so here’s a list:
- Our treasurer, Johny Rizk, has let us know that he has limited time to continue in this role. We’d like to thank him for his time and dedication to this organization. He’ll continue to be our treasurer for now, but he let us know we could start to look for our next treasurer. If you’re interested in joining our board as next treasurer of the Syracuse Urbanism Collective, please let us know! Experience helps, but more important considerations are: trustworthiness, an attention to detail, willingness to learn, and a consistent ability & availability to keep our finances and filings in order.
- We’re considering putting together a team to create a float for the Onondaga Creek Art Float! Let us know if you’d like to join.
- I recently reached out to Centro with an analysis and comments on Better Bus Onondaga. If you’d like to take a look, my personal analysis of the bus system redesign is below. I was asked to share that Centro is limited by driver shortages. If you’re interested in driving a bus for Centro, please apply!
- Our I-81 Viaduct Project advocacy has updates, too. Below, you can see our diagram showing Contract 6’s pedestrian and bike infrastructure around West Street & I-690. Elements of the project added based on our requests are the crosswalk to the Creekwalk at the east end of Park Ave (pink), a shared use bike/pedestrian path connection on W Genesee between the East and West Creekwalks (green), and an extra pedestrian connection from Genesee to Franklin Square between Leavenworth Ave and the Creekwalk (brown dashed line). We also got NYSDOT to create a safer redesign of the northern end of the protected bike lanes on Almond Street from I-690 to Butternut St, wider bridge spans to allow for wider sidewalks along multiple streets crossing under I-690, and to add extra off-street bike infrastructure wherever possible, including a shared use path between Almond St and the Erie Canal Museum on Erie Blvd.
- The next chapter in our advocacy work surrounding the I-81 Viaduct Project pertains to contracts 7 & 8, where we’ll advocate for more crossings at Almond Street, simplifying the Almond/Genesee intersection for greater safety and traffic flow while expanding Forman Park with a new event plaza, safe crosswalks and Sidewalks on Hiawatha Blvd across the on/off ramps for I-81, and more.
- Adjacent to our I-81 advocacy, we recognize that new opportunities are emerging for a better-connected cycling infrastructure network in our city. See the map below to envision what’s possible! Orange is existing protected bike infrastructure. Red and pink are new cycle paths and shared use paths being added by the I-81 Viaduct Project. In yellow are four short potential bike routes that could help close the gaps in the system and will be newly possible connections because of the I-81 Viaduct Project.
- The Public Policy Team has developed short lists for public policy priorities at the city, county / towns, and state levels of government, as well as for the Vision Zero program and Centro. Stay tuned for more updates soon.
We also have several events this month to announce, including:
- Public Policy Team Meeting, Monday April 13, 6:30-7:30pm, @ Salt City Market
- Urbanist Book Club, Wednesday April 15, 6:30pm @ Salt City Market. Read halfway through Streetfight by Janette Sadik-Kahn and Seth Solomonov.
- Next month‘s general meeting is at the Upper Onondaga Park Firebarn, at 150 Onondaga Park Drive. Our guest will be Eric Ennis, the city’s Chief Development Officer. In this role, he oversees Intergovernmental Affairs, Economic Development, Assessment, Planning & Zoning, and the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency (SIDA). We’ll be having a discussion about topics that relate to his role at City Hall and our organization’s mission. If you have any requests for topics or questions for that discussion, please let us know.
- On May 3rd, 17th, and 24th, PACNY is hosting Southside walking tours from 2-4pm!
- Please also join us in watching the Syracuse Mets on May 21. $5 of each ticket goes toward our programming and projects! We truly appreciate your support! You can join us at this link: https://www.gofevo.com/event/Syracuseurbanismcollective
All events and additional details are listed at syracuseurbanism.org/calendar
As always, you can reach us at contact@syracuseurbanism.org.
This month, I have a call to action for each and every one of you: Invite one friend who has never been to one of our meetings and isn’t on our email list to sign up at syracuseurbanism.org/join. Help us reach more people and grow the community that we continue to build everyday. Thanks!
—
Regards,
Baxter Hankin
President of the Syracuse Urbanism Collective
