Syracuse’s revival a template for Y’town

By David Skolnick (Contact)

By David Skolnick

A guy walks into a bar...

I’ve always wanted to tell a story with that opening line so I’m seizing the opportunity.

I visited my in-laws in central New York over the Thanksgiving weekend. Last Saturday, I met a long-time friend at a bar in Syracuse, N.Y.

I went to a college near Syracuse — graduating 20 years ago — and was never impressed with the city.

It’s downtown was essentially dead, even on weekends.

Imagine my shock when I entered downtown Syracuse. I found a vibrant and thriving downtown filled with bars, restaurants and several retail stores.

Back to the guy who walked into a bar.

I was talking with some people at the Blue Tusk, drinking a $6 draft beer, when some people mentioned the mayor just walked in.

Not up on my central New York politics, I had no idea who is the mayor of Syracuse. The people at the bar pointed to a boyish-looking guy in a dark suit and blue tie.

His name is Matt Driscoll, and he’s been mayor of Syracuse since July 10, 2001. Because of the city’s term-limits law, he couldn’t run for re-election this year so he only has a few more weeks as mayor.

Being the curious type, I walked up to Driscoll and his small entourage.

I introduced myself and we spoke for about 15 minutes.

I write this because much of our conversation was about reviving downtowns in Syracuse and Youngstown, urban cities that relied for decades on manufacturing and industrial jobs that are now scarce.

Driscoll told me what Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams repeatedly says about struggling urban cities: the decline occurred over many years and a recovery won’t happen overnight.

Not everything is ideal in Syracuse.

The city’s facing its highest unemployment rate since the early 1990s. The national recession hit Syracuse rather hard. Its unemployment rate is 8 percent, compared to 5.6 percent just a year ago.

Perhaps the most interesting part of our discussion was Driscoll’s explanation of how his city’s downtown was revived.

It’s very similar to what Youngstown has started to do and what it eventually wants to accomplish.

Among Driscoll’s points were:

UMaking the downtown a hub of activity. The day before we met there were thousands of people downtown to enjoy the lighting of the city’s Christmas tree. Youngstown’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony is Saturday.

Downtown Syracuse not only has an assortment of bars and restaurants, but several retail stores that stay open at night.

One very cool store is The Sound Garden where you can buy vinyl records (remember those?) and cheap used DVDs. The store is open till midnight Thursday through Saturday.

UTie downtown to the local university. Syracuse has a few colleges, but none bigger than Syracuse University, a well-known school with close to 20,000 students.

Syracuse University owns or leases about 12 buildings in the city’s downtown. It’s difficult to connect downtown to the main campus because of their locations.

Youngstown and Youngstown State University are working to tie the university to downtown with YSU’s business college project and the expansion of Hazel Street.

UPromote downtown living. There are about 400 market-rate apartment and condominium units in downtown Syracuse with more than 300 in the planning stages.

In Youngstown, the Realty Tower Apartments complex is hopefully the start of moving toward downtown living here, though that’s going to be a challenge because of the depressed housing market.

UFinally, work to promote “professional-type” businesses to the downtown.

The Youngstown Business Incubator and the other “Tech Block” projects on West Federal Street in Youngstown are examples of how that works.

This is not to say that in the near future downtown Youngstown will look like downtown Syracuse ¬≠— or better. But the steps taken locally are similar to what happened in Syracuse.