Syracuse’s Northside neighborhood is a low-income area and its rundown buildings and infrastructure reflect that.

In the neighborhood surrounding Butternut Street between North McBride and North Townsend streets, 38.7 percent of residents live under poverty level and 12.8 percent are unemployed, according to city-data.com. From these conditions emerged Butternut Commons, a planned project to rejuvenate the downtrodden area.

 According to a release from Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner’s office, Butternut Street LLC began tearing down 10 decrepit buildings on Butternut Street last Friday. The group plans to replace them with 24 apartments, 18,000 square feet of retail space and two to four townhouses available to be rented, pending zoning permission.

The two-phase project is estimated to cost $7.85 million, according to the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency. 

Open Atelier Architects, which designed the building, said “the neighborhood surrounding the complex will be transformed from abandoned and dilapidated structures to a revitalized new urban center with sufficient density to herald a new era for the area,” on their website.

The man behind the transformation is Giovanni LaFace, vice president of C&D LaFace Construction Inc. LaFace said his desire to address the needs of the area stemmed from his own roots in the neighborhood. He grew up in the house his grandparents moved into on Butternut Street when they first emigrated from Italy, and for five years he lived in a nearby apartment.

Now, his childhood home is one of the buildings slated to be destroyed, but using the company his father founded 35 years ago. He said he hopes to make the area more prosperous.

The Butternut Commons project will build 12 apartments and approximately half of the retail space, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, said Anthony Catsimatides, principal architect at Open Atelier. He added that the remainder of the apartments and storefronts will be built in a separate building during the second phase.

 Kinney Drugs, which is currently housed across the street in St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, will move into an 11,000 square foot space in Butternut Commons, expanding from a small in-hospital store to a fully-stocked pharmacy, LaFace said. St. Joseph’s, which is undergoing expansions of its own, has given LaFace advice on how to make the renovations complement each other, he said.

Construction on the complex has been in progress for the past year, Catsimatides said, and will feature a variety of stores on ground level, with tasteful apartments situated above them. Mixed-use buildings are “part of a national trend” that Syracuse has been participating in as the city renovates itself. Catsimatides added that his modern-meets-traditional design has received positive feedback from the community.

 For his work, LaFace and Butternut Street LLC have been awarded more than $1 million in tax breaks, from mortgage and property tax exemptions to sales taxes on construction materials being used to build the complex.

Catsimatides said that while construction has gone forward without any difficulties, a definitive date of completion is not able to be determined just yet. 

“They’re going through budgeting now,” he said. “We hope to have (the first building) completed by the end of this year or early next year, but right now we really cannot tell.”

Published on February 26, 2014 at 1:09 am