Hi all,
Thanks for a great June meeting of the Syracuse Urbanism Club!
If you are a project manager or have any updates for the next monthly newsletter, please send an update to Jaynelle Nixon at nixonjaynelle@gmail.com by July 1st.
We also shared some upcoming events, all also available on our website at syracuseurbanism.org/calendar:
- City Summer Hikes – 1pm on Sunday, June 30 at Webster Pond. RSVP with the email subject “City Summer Hikes” to syracuseurbanismclub@gmail.com!
- Paint a Street Mural – Saturday & Sunday, July 6-7. Help Hopeprint and the West Pond Alliance paint a street mural / pedestrian plaza on the Northside. Volunteer at https://volunteersignup.org/LKD9R
- Meals on Wheels: Alley Cat Ride – Saturday, July 13, 11am at Harvey’s Garden. Learn more about this bike ride (not hosted by the Syracuse Urbanism Club) at https://www.meals.org/events
- Tree Walk with Clare Carney, Community Forester for the City of Syracuse – Columbus Circle at 6pm, Tuesdsay, July 16.
- Urbanism Club Picnic – 5pm on Saturday, July 20 at Leavenworth Park. Bring your own food / chairs / blankets / etc. RSVP with the email subject “Picnic” to syracuseurbanismclub@gmail.com!
- Wasted Imagination Tour – Ithaca, NY, Sunday, August 4, 10am. RSVP to kanischamiller@gmail.com. This tour is limited to 25 people!
This month, we had plenty of exciting project updates!
- The Creekwalk Wayfinding Project is planning for implementation and will likely host a 2-day volunteer effort to paint hundreds of wayfinding signs along the Creekwalk with stencils sometime in August. Stay tuned for more details!
- The M. Lemp Park Project has signed a contract with the City of Syracuse to authorize our temporary activations of the space. We’ll be hosting a movie night this summer. More updates on this coming soon.
- The Mini Meadows team has continued to clean up and install plantings in Loguen Park. Plus, the project won a $2000 grant!
- The Parks Audit project is now in the works, seeking to do an audit of Syracuse’s parks to understand the present conditions and greatest needs for public spaces in this city.
- The Safe Bike / Pedestrian Infrastructure team has been developing a media strategy and videos to begin a public conversation on the benefits of protected bicycle infrastructure while seeking to partner with other groups.
- Our urbanism conference this fall, in collaboration with Hopeprint and others, will occur on November 15-16. Friday will be at the McCarthy Mercantile, while Saturday will be at Palladian Hall at the Treasury. If you or your organization would like to be involved in some way, please let me know! More details to follow soon. The topic will be Smart Growth in CNY, centered around the six tentative panels listed below:
- Transportation & Infrastructure
- Housing & Development
- Placemaking, Open Spaces & Public Amenities
- Local and Regional Development Patterns
- Environmental Sustainability
- Building & Maintaining Thriving Communities
- We’ve had the chance to present the highlights of our I-81 Viaduct Project Recommendations to NYSDOT for a second time this week, and they seemed quite receptive to most of our ideas. Our recommendations have been forwarded to their design coordinator, who is carefully looking over them to assess their feasibility.
- The SWAG Bike Fest held its first annual event this month. The festival was a great success, with strong turnout and an engaging agenda, even featuring demonstrations of how to use bus bike racks from Centro! This event will be back next year with even more to offer!
If you’d like to join any of these projects, visit the project pages at syracuseurbanism.org/our-projects. Each project page has instructions for how to reach out and get involved!
We also have a few organizational updates: the Syracuse Urbanism Club is working to become a 501c3 nonprofit organization. This will be accompanied by a slight rebranding / name change, and a shifting of some board responsibilities.
As always, you can reach us at syracuseurbanismclub@gmail.com.
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Regards,
Baxter Hankin
Chair of the Syracuse Urbanism Club
