UPDATED: March 7, 2019 at 12:40 p.m.

The town of Clay’s supervisor this week criticized an expanded community grid replacement option for the Interstate 81 viaduct in a statement.

Supervisor Damian Ulatowski said the costs of the community grid option and the message of community grid advocates are both unclear. Ulatowski, who has previously announced support for a hybrid grid-tunnel option, said that a new Community Grid Plus plan “sanitizes” the current grid option.

The Community Grid Plus solution incorporates community concerns about the existing proposals — a community grid, tunnel or hybrid grid-tunnel — and refines them into 10 components, said Jonathan Link Logan, director of Northside Urban Partnership, a CenterState CEO program working to improve the city’s Northside.

CenterState CEO, a Syracuse-based corporation that promotes economic opportunity across central and northern New York, designed the Community Grid Plus program. A group of individuals from the community and CenterState CEO’s board were also involved in its creation, Link Logan said.

The original community grid plan calls for the destruction of the existing viaduct and rerouting traffic to ground-level streets and other highways. County residents shared their concerns about the grid at several town halls, saying they were worried about the effect of increased traffic on the environment and travel times.

The Community Grid Plus’ components include rerouting truck traffic away from towns and drinking water sources, removing Thruway tolls for the city and creating a local revitalization commission in partnership with the city’s Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Participation Program, Link Logan said. These measures are designed to ensure inclusive redevelopment and mixed-income development projects for Syracuse residents, he added.

Ulatowski , in an interview with The Daily Orange, said he does not fully know how the Community Grid Plus plan differs from the community grid proposal.

“Is their vision evolving? And do the grid proponents now recognize the concerns of the surrounding community, or is it an attempt to pacify a growing consciousness?” the statement reads.

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The community grid replacement option was the basis for the Community Grid Plus method, Link Logan said. The corporation realized the proposed I-81 replacement options alone could not address the variety of concerns expressed by the community, he added.

“What we were looking to do with the Community Grid Plus plan is to move the conversation beyond this just being about the highway,” Link Logan said.

Ulatowski said he thought CenterState CEO created the Community Grid Plus plan after hearing the viewpoints and community grid concerns of those in favor of the hybrid option. The Community Grid Plus plan is a way to address those concerns, he said.

“I think maybe they started listening and saying, ‘Well, wait. Maybe the surrounding communities do have some legitimate concerns,’” Ulatowski said.

The plan aims to serve the interests of as many people and businesses as possible by acknowledging the community’s broader social, environmental and economic concerns, not just those surrounding transportation, Link Logan said.

One of the 10 proposals of the Community Grid Plus plan involves the creation of a mitigation fund to alleviate the loss of city parking under the community grid, Link Logan said. He added that the fund would create “demand drivers” that would prevent drivers on the grid from overlooking local businesses, among other things.

The proposed mitigation fund was one of the elements of the Community Grid Plus plan that concerned Ulatowski, he said. The bigger question is what the source of the mitigation funding will be, which he said is unclear.

Link Logan said the cost of the Community Grid Plus plan has not been published. He said replacing the viaduct is not the best replacement option, given I-81’s historic community effects. Repairing and expanding the viaduct would require tearing down 25 buildings, according to Syracuse.com.

The construction of the viaduct in the 1950s destroyed the 15th Ward, a predominantly African American neighborhood. Five buildings would be torn down under the community grid option, according to Syracuse.com.

Ulatowksi said the hybrid grid-tunnel is the only option that “respects everyone and disenfranchises no one,” a phrase he often uses to describe the tunnel option. He added that it combines the grid option the city wants while allowing motorists to drive uninterrupted on I-81.

Link Logan said the tunnel, though technically doable, is made impractical by its nine-year completion schedule.

The New York State Department of Transportation is currently reviewing the affects of each I-81 replacement option in its Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Mayor Ben Walsh said after Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon’s “State of the County” address on Feb. 19 that the city can move forward in selecting a construction plan once the NYSDOT’s statement is released.

CLARIFICATION: In a previous version of this post, Jonathan Link Logan’s reference to the Interstate 81 tunnel replacement option was unclear. 

Published on March 6, 2019 at 10:17 pm

Contact Emma: esfolts@syr.edu