Syracuse, New York, readies for 'hurricane' of growth after decades of doldrums

Once a vibrant manufacturing center, Syracuse for years has been plotting its revival after several big factories closed. The state is tearing down an elevated highway that divided the upstate New York city, and local officials have laid out plans for parks and new housing. All that was needed was a catalyst to push progress along.

That came in October 2022 when Micron Technology, one of the world’s largest semiconductor makers, unveiled plans to build a $100 billion factory complex in the Syracuse area and hire tens of thousands of workers. Micron got a further boost in April when it was awarded a $6.1 billion federal grant for its Syracuse location and a smaller project in Boise, Idaho.

City and state leaders declared Syracuse to be a model for transforming other Rust Belt cities, and debate in the community turned from how to spark a revival to how to contain the growth. Boosters started touting Syracuse's access to outdoor recreation on the Great Lakes and at ski resorts and entertainment amenities such as its major collegiate athletic program.

Now, about 12 months before Micron plans to start construction, Syracuse wonders if its revival will come to fruition. There are questions about whether the federal grant will be available after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and its absence could leave Micron with a significant financial shortfall.

Whatever happens, it's clear Syracuse is pushing ahead to chart a new destiny.

Early signs offer a glimpse of what this future could be. Iron Pier, a four-story apartment building with a brewpub on the ground floor, recently opened near the south shore of Onondaga Lake, offering scenic views of the surrounding hills that remain largely wooded and undeveloped. Another brewpub, Buried Acorn, is just down Van Rensselaer Street, attracting big weekday crowds with its barrel-aged craft beer and wood-fired pizza. Franklin Square sits a few blocks away, a cluster of historic automotive manufacturing buildings converted to offices for brokerage CBRE, financial services firm Wells Fargo wealth advisers and other blue-chip tenants. A walking path along Onondaga Creek passes through the complex.

Syracuse will need many more commercial developments like those if Micron does come to the region, said Elizabeth Kamell, a specialist in urban planning. Syracuse has plenty of assets to leverage as it ramps up for a growth spurt, she said.

"You can see the water from here and people come here to walk, it's pretty great," Kamell told CoStar News during a recent guided tour of the city, referring to the Inner Harbor neighborhood where Iron Pier and Franklin Square are located.

"There's a whole loop that goes all around the lake and comes back into the city core," she said. "It's all pretty amazing."

Even with a handful of new commercial developments, Syracuse, in some ways, is little changed from its profile in the 1960s as a blue-collar, midsize city. The city's 2020 population of 148,620 residents is about 28% lower than it was in 1940, according to U.S. Census data.

"Growth in the area has been sluggish for a number of decades, with little increase in population or employment," according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Now, Syracuse is on the precipice of making a product essential to the digital age, including the electronic parts that let people watch videos on a smartphone instead of their living room TV.

The city's economy started its downturn in the 1980s when General Electric closed its TV manufacturing plant — back when it still made TVs — and moved the jobs to Virginia. The low-slung GE buildings, covered in sea-green metal panels and brownish-yellow brick, are now used by Lockheed Martin for its defense contracting business. But GE had about 17,000 workers there during its peak in the mid-1960s, while Lockheed Martin employs about 2,000 workers.

More dominoes fell in subsequent years with Syracuse losing large employers that made auto parts, heating and air conditioning equipment and soda ash, a material used in glass, soap and batteries.

The industrial exodus didn’t leave the city without economic resources, however, because it's home to Syracuse University, a large, private research institution with a healthy undergraduate enrollment and a cluster of hospitals that provide a relatively recession-proof employment base.

But the wider metropolitan area of about 662,000 residents hasn’t experienced blockbuster economic development like some other midsize cities, including Huntsville, Alabama, and Spokane, Washington.

“We haven’t had big building booms, not since General Electric,” Mark Rupprecht, managing director at CBRE Upstate NY in Syracuse, told CoStar News.

Micron Technology plans to start construction in November 2025 at a 1,400-acre site about 14 miles north of Syracuse at the intersection of State Route 31 and Caughdenoy Road in Clay, New York. The Onondaga County Industrial Development Authority recently acquired the final piece of property needed for the project that could eventually include as many as four semiconductor factories.

The Micron plant would breathe new life into an area where manufacturing operations from big companies have been declining for decades.

Allied Chemical shut down its soda ash plant on the shores of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse in 1986 after more than a century of operations. The business contributed to extensive environmental contamination of the lake, leading to a federal brownfield designation for remedial work.

General Motors closed an auto parts plant in Syracuse in 1993. Heating and air conditioning manufacturer Carrier, the former namesake of the Syracuse University football stadium, closed some industrial facilities in 2004. Chrysler in 2012 closed a factory in the area that made automotive gearboxes for more than a century.

The federal funding awarded to Micron is part of the CHIPS and Science Act, a program intended to help the United States catch up with foreign rivals and encourage the design and manufacturing of semiconductors domestically to ease supply chains. It's one of President Joe Biden's most frequently touted accomplishments.

But Trump slammed the CHIPS Act during the campaign, calling it "so bad" and a gift to "rich companies." New York state and local officials have urged him to keep the $6 billion grant to Micron in place.

"If you try to harm New Yorkers or roll back their rights, I will fight you every step of the way," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Nov. 6, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request to comment.

A Micron spokesperson said the company is "appreciative of the bipartisan support for the CHIPS and Science Act [and] has always engaged and will continue to engage with all our government stakeholders, regardless of party affiliation, to advocate for the issues that matter most to Micron and the semiconductor industry."

A spokesperson for the Center State Corporation for Economic Opportunity, an economic development agency in Syracuse, declined to comment.

CHIPS Act grants have been awarded to cities large and small, in regions with booming economies and others that are struggling. Areas with projects funded by the CHIPS Act include the Austin, Texas, suburb of Taylor; the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota; the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona; and elsewhere.

But the Micron grant will be applied to a region, Central New York, that hasn’t seen the rapid economic growth experienced in places like Austin, Minneapolis or Phoenix. Micron expects to hire thousands of permanent workers for the factories in Syracuse. Suppliers and related companies could hire thousands more.

Just as the CHIPS Act is intended to help the U.S. semiconductor industry catch up with China and other global competitors, Syracuse needs to catch up with commercial development to support Micron.

Only 384 new apartments opened within a 5-mile radius of the Micron industrial site between June 2022 and June 2024, according to CoStar data. The area could need 40,000 more residences to accommodate the expected population increase, about 10,000 of those within the next three years, according to local officials.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Syracuse, as of October, is $1,148 per month, 26% lower than the national average, according to CoStar data. The housing market is surging, too, Christopher Savage, director of sales at Cushman & Wakefield/Pyramid Brokerage, told CoStar News.

"There's more demand for home sales than we’ve ever seen in my lifetime" spreading from Clay south to Syracuse, Savage said.

Developers are racing to get up to speed. The city of Syracuse recently selected Albanese Organization to demolish the vacant Syracuse Development Center on the city’s west side to build apartments, townhouses and other commercial properties, according to the Garden City-based development company.

COR Development meanwhile is redeveloping a 33-acre site at the Inner Harbor on the south end of Onondaga Lake. The Fayetteville-based company also built the aforementioned Iron Pier apartment complex.

At least two hotels are slated for conversion into apartments, according to local media reports. High Tide Capital plans to convert a former Hilton hotel at 250 Harrison St., and Buxton Development Group said it will convert the former Crowne Plaza hotel at 701 E. Genesee St.

Hueber Breuer Construction and a partner opened a 248-unit apartment complex last year about 6 miles east of the Micron site in Cicero. A partnership between Widewaters Group and Whitestone Development is seeking to build a 220-unit apartment property at 3715 Route 31 in Clay.

Guy Hart Jr. is leading one of the area's most ambitious redevelopment projects. His firm, Hart Lyman Cos., acquired the vacant Great Northern Mall in July 2023 for $9 million from Kohan Retail Investment Group. Hart Lyman and partner Conifer Realty are planning a major overhaul. The empty mall is located about 3 miles west of the Micron site.

During a recent visit to the mall site, Hart said his $1 billion project will add more than 1,700 apartments, medical clinics, six hotels and 1.4 million square feet of retail, offices and entertainment space. The project still requires some environmental permits and zoning approvals, Hart said. All the financing is lined up.

Hart acknowledged that purchasing the 230-acre mall site was taking a big risk, but he decided that the Micron project was a sure thing.

“We were, you know, early believers,” Hart told CoStar News. “We were part of the 12 disciples on that. We said, ‘This is real. This is going to happen.’”

Community leaders are trying to prepare for the expected population growth.

The rural town of Clay is considering the adoption of a long-range plan to guide development. The town’s population is projected to grow 33% from about 61,000 residents now to about 81,000 residents in the next decade, according to officials.

The long-range plan, created by town leaders in partnership with architecture and engineering firm LaBella Associates, identifies sites as appropriate for specific uses such as residential or office development. And it encourages high-density, mixed-use development to create a concentration of commercial amenities. The plan still must be approved by the Clay Town Board.

Leaders in Clay, however, have also been willing to shoot down proposals they don't think fit with their rural community, even if they would accelerate commercial development. In June, the board unanimously rejected a concrete batch plant proposed for a 6-acre site on Goguen Drive after residents complained about potential truck traffic, air quality and noise, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Rapid growth has strained resources in a number of U.S. cities, including Midland, Texas, and Fort Collins, Colorado, according to a February 2023 report by the University of North Carolina's business school.

"The flow of new residents to these smaller areas often creates issues of housing affordability and access as home and rental prices increase sharply in response to increased demand," the report's authors said.

Another challenge will be balancing the often-divergent interests of elected officials, business leaders and community groups as plans are made. If Syracuse succeeds, it could serve as a model for other cities on the cusp of an explosion in growth, according to real estate, design and planning professionals.

So far, leaders from the public and private sectors seem to understand what’s at stake, Davis Yohe, a broker at Century 21 Bridgeway Commercial Realty in Syracuse, told CoStar News.

“I would say that the good thing about all of this is how the city, county and business leaders have cooperated,” Yohe said. “They’re setting a positive tone. And you can’t overstate how big all of this is. I tell people that if you’re in commercial real estate and you can’t get excited about this, you’re in the wrong business.”

What concerns some in Syracuse, however, is the potential for uncontrolled sprawl, said Kamell, a professor at the Syracuse University School of Architecture. Careful planning and the embrace of density in development should be made top priorities in how Syracuse prepares, she said.

The city's tallest building is the 21-story State Tower, a high-rise that was recently converted into residential and a small amount of office space. Downtown Syracuse has other residential and office towers, but outside the central city, it's largely unplanned development.

“The local municipalities don’t want density. They’re afraid of it,” Kamell said.

“They’re worried there’s going to be traffic and it will put a burden on the schools,” she said. “But creating a bunch of subdivisions with single-family detached homes isn’t going to be all the housing we need and it’s all going to look the same and it will still put a burden on traffic and schools.”

Other changes are in the works beyond new development. The Interstate 81 viaduct is a 1.4-mile knife cut through the heart of the central business district, creating an artificial boundary between two sections of the city.

On the east side, perched atop a steep hill that overlooks Downtown, is the 23,000-student Syracuse University with its collection of buildings designed in a diverse array of styles. Downtown Syracuse spreads out west of the elevated highway.

But the raised freeway also serves as the primary north-south corridor for the metropolitan area. If it remained standing, it would have carried thousands of workers from central and southern Syracuse to jobs at Micron.

Residents like Joe Driscoll have been trying to get it removed for decades.

“Nobody's going to develop a coffee shop right under that bridge,” Driscoll, I-81 project director for the city of Syracuse and former city council member, told CoStar News over coffee at Recess, across the street from city hall.

Financing has been approved for the $2.25 billion project, and work has begun on roadways that approach the viaduct. That amount includes a $180 million grant through the federal Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant program, an initiative created to rectify the problems caused by the “urban renewal” programs of the 1950s and 1960s.

Green paint is peeling off the steel beams of the elevated highway. Tractor-trailer trucks rumble loudly across the structure, creating noise pollution. The raised freeway blocks sunlight for the sidewalks and surface streets underneath the structure. Pedestrians must cross multiple lanes to pass from one side of the elevated freeway to the other.

The viaduct splits Downtown from the 22,700-student Syracuse University and the hospital complex that includes SUNY Upstate Medical School. Pedestrians on either side must pass through the darkness, a wholly unpleasant experience, Driscoll said.

Raised freeways have been demolished before in other U.S. cities.

Rochester, New York, about 90 miles west of Syracuse, removed the eastern portion of its Inner Loop freeway between 2014 and 2017, stimulating a wave of commercial development on the land that was freed. The city is formulating plans to demolish more of the Inner Loop.

In Milwaukee, the demolition of Park East Freeway in 2003 stimulated commercial development, especially along the Beerline Trail, according to the city.

Boston completed a similar project in 2007, the Big Dig, which involved placing multiple freeways underground. The $8 billion Big Dig produced the 17-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway and triggered economic development.

Seattle demolished Alaskan Way, its elevated freeway along the Puget Sound waterfront, in 2020 and replaced it with a tunnel.

Syracuse and the state of New York are still working on determining what will happen with the property after the raised freeway is removed, Driscoll said.

The issue of passing vehicles has been partially addressed, as I-81 traffic will be rerouted to the east on I-481, extending commute times. Public transit options will also be enhanced, though the details haven’t been decided, Driscoll said.

The city hired urban planning firm Dover, Kohl & Partners to devise a master plan, called the Community Grid, to create connections between existing surface streets on both sides of the freeway.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a city to rethink how it looks, feels and operates,” Josh Frank, an urban designer with the firm, told CoStar News.

The way newly available land is divvied up among interested parties hasn’t been determined. Driscoll said. Mayor Ben Walsh has emphasized the development of affordable housing on at least a portion of the land.

A section should also be set aside for public parks, walking paths and other amenities available for the community, Driscoll said.

“We want some economic growth,” said Driscoll. “We want to see mixed-use development, we want to see coffee shops, we want to see restaurants, we want to see retail, but with that balance of affordable housing, too.”

Commercial development along the I-81 corridor would provide a much-needed boost to the city’s property-tax base, Driscoll said. The challenge is balancing commercial development with public amenities.

“It can't be all for the public’s benefit,” Driscoll said.

Rupprecht at CBRE Upstate NY said much of the 18 acres of new property that will be created by the demolition will be too narrow to interest commercial developers. Instead, land along both sides of the interstate will increase in value.

“There are properties there that have been for sale for a long time that probably in the not-too-distant future, things will start happening with them,” Rupprecht said.

The cluster of hospitals that sit next to I-81, a group that includes SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital and Crouse Hospital, could potentially acquire land for expansions, Kamell said.

One development next to I-81, the Syracuse University Center of Excellence, has already been completed. Another large block east of the freeway is owned by the state of New York, the Hutchings Psychiatric Center.

There’s also the issue of Pioneer Homes, one of the first public housing projects in the United States. Though it’s located directly next to the elevated highway and its residents suffer health problems from its air and noise pollution, there are residents who want to stay, Kamell said.

It’s possible to upgrade and expand affordable housing, like Pioneer Homes, without removing longtime residents, Tom Gallas, CEO at Washington, D.C.-based architecture firm Torti Gallas & Partners, told CoStar News.

Public housing historically involved moving residents out of their homes, tearing down the buildings and rebuilding on the same site, said Gallas, who isn’t involved in the Syracuse project.

“We were proud to create these neighborhoods,” Gallas said, referring to his firm’s past work. “But we ignored the people who lived there.”

Now, Torti Gallas designs and builds housing first when working on affordable housing projects without moving residents out of their homes. When the sequence is reordered, existing residents will have their new, permanent home ready for move-in. The demolition of their old homes takes place later.

The same concept should be applied at Pioneer Homes, Kamell said. The complex has wide outdoor spaces between buildings where children play and adults gather to talk. Front doors are covered with canopies to provide a place to be outside even during rainy weather. Dozens of mature trees cover the property.

It would be a shame if Pioneer Homes was demolished and people whose families have lived there for more than a half-century are forced to leave because “there’s a real social fabric there,” said Kamell, who has studied the community.

Whatever happens with Pioneer Homes, Kamell, Driscoll and others have said, it’s certain that the neighborhood is going to change dramatically soon. And Syracuse, too, is likely to look much different in 10 or 20 years. Longtime residents hope the city can get its ducks in a row before the change starts.

“Syracuse has a very pronounced attitude of self-deprecation, you know, like nothing ever happens here, an inferiority complex,” Driscoll said. “But I don’t think a lot of people realize what a $100 billion investment will look like. There’s a hurricane coming.”

Dover, Kohl & Partners created the Community Grid master plan with additional work performed by SWBR, Azar Design, CHPlanning and Marc Wouters Studio.

Corrected Dec. 2 to note the vacant Syracuse Development Center is on the city’s west side.