New I-81 stretch could make Syracuse’s Inner Harbor more inviting for drivers, visitors

Most of the attention on the state’s plan to remake Interstate 81 in Syracuse has been on downtown, but the $2.25 billion project could also bring some life to the long-neglected Inner Harbor.

From Downtown to Destiny USA, the state is preparing to fix exits, entrances and bridges over the highway. State officials also plan to spend significant energy to make city streets more appealing for drivers who won’t need to use the highway for a short trip.

The hope: Make the struggling waterfront neighborhood more inviting to drivers, visitors and development.

If you’ve ever tried to navigate I-81 around the Syracuse Inner Harbor or Destiny USA, you know it’s not easy. Sometimes, you wind up in a jam around the Regional Market. Southwest of the highway, you find yourself surrounded by hundreds of acres of vacant land on a long path to the entrance ramp.

To get back on the highway, you have to throw yourself into high-speed traffic.

The I-81 project gives the state a chance to fix highway entrances and exits that never made sense.

It also gives an extra boost to a part of the city that for years officials have been struggling to make more inviting for developers. There are hundreds of acres of vacant land on unappealing, unlit streets near Syracuse’s Inner Harbor.

The state is working to award the third of eight contracts on the large I-81 project. The state rejected the first round of bids earlier this month because they all came in with overestimated costs. They plan to start again early next year, officials said.

This part of the project extends from the Butternut Street bridge to the mall.

The state will close three entrance ramps and eventually build a new interchange near the mall. That means drivers will have just one place to get on and off at Bear and North Clinton streets instead of driving alongside the highway on Genant Drive and merging into high-speed traffic.

The winning contractor will design the details, but generally, the project also calls for big improvements to the streets and sidewalks away from the highway.

Transportation designers hope drivers will use an improved North Clinton Street as an alternate north-south route from the mall to downtown Syracuse. The whole point of a “community grid” is to bring the elevated highway to street level and encourage drivers to use city streets to navigate to their destinations.

Now, North Clinton Street is an unimproved street best known for the Harbor View Wine and Liquor store. The street doesn’t even have stripes.

Across from the liquor store are hundreds of acres of vacant land controlled by the owners of Destiny USA.

The state is using eminent domain to buy a strip along that vacant land along North Clinton Street to build a path for pedestrians and bikes. This shared-use path would be 10 feet wide. It would be built off the street about 5 feet from the curb with trees planted as a buffer. In the end, there would be 800 newly planted trees in the neighborhood.

Decorative lighting would be placed about every 100 feet on both sides of North Clinton Street from Bear Street to Genant Street. The design is expected to match the lights in the Inner Harbor.

Plans also call for new on-street parking spaces and improved access to the city’s Creekwalk, which city officials would like to end with a viewing platform at the lake.

City officials are excited about the possibilities for future development. A planning document still in the works shows families and couples biking, lounging on rocks along the water and walking by outdoor cafes.

While success ultimately depends on private developers, government officials at every level say they are setting the stage for new ideas, said Owen Kerney, the city’s deputy commissioner of planning and sustainability.

This construction is scheduled to happen at the same time the county is building an $85 million aquarium and the city is imagining new parks, trails and gathering places.

Cor development has built Aloft Hotel and the Iron Pier Apartments with a coffee shop and Meier’s Creek Brewing’s taproom. The company recently proposed a new 62 one-bedroom senior apartment building with hopes to bring the number of units at the Inner Harbor to 700.

The company hopes to tap into the population boom promised by Micron Technology’s plan to build a $100 billion microchip plant in Clay over the next 20 years.

Development of the Inner Harbor has been slow.

The area is commonly referred to as “Oil City” and has a long history of industrial use. It was swampland filled in over time and used by the salt industry in the 1800s. Large petroleum storage facilities were built in the early 1900s and used through the 1990s.

More than 30 years ago, then-Mayor Tom Young and mall developer Robert Congel had a dream to turn the polluted lakefront into a destination. Congel built the Carousel Center mall, which later became Destiny USA.

Congel and his partners redeveloped the old industrial neighborhood Franklin Square into apartments and restaurants.

But the land between Franklin Square and the mall remained mostly vacant.

Land around the former Barge Canal was owned by the state’s Canal Corp. That state entity gave the land to the city with hopes of development. In 2012, the city transferred 28 acres to Cor Development.

Now, residents of the new Cor apartments can bike to the Amphitheater or downtown on the Creekwalk. There are restaurants with water views.

The city is planning to rebuild a park with a new playground at Kirkpatrick and Van Rensselaer streets.

The city recently published a master plan for the area between Onondaga Lake, the Regional Market, the baseball stadium and the Inner Harbor — each its own island.

“I think what we’re seeing is that this development is starting to become increasingly a self-sufficient neighborhood, which is great,” Kerney said.

There is still plenty of undeveloped land in the neighborhood.

Pyramid Companies, which owns most of the vacant parcels, has not revealed its plans, if any. Congel died in 2021. The company has not approached the city with any proposals, city officials said.

The city recently changed zoning on much of the land to encourage a mix of housing and businesses. The language in the zoning code was written to specifically encourage a pedestrian-friendly, transit-friendly neighborhood with some high-density residential development and nodes of retail and commercial space that would support the neighborhood and visitors, Kerney said.

Allowed uses include entertainment and recreation, restaurants, bars and coffee shops, hotels, offices and small and large retail stores. That includes something like Wegmans or Ikea, he said.

“We know this is an area that is not only going to have local interests, but is going to have regional interests,” he said, pointing to visitors to the mall and the new aquarium. “There’s a lot of different ideas that you can come forward with.”

Kerney praised the state for its effort to make new connections well-lit with sidewalks and attractive bike lanes.

“Let’s make it easier for people to get in and out of here,” he said. “81 improvements are going to do that.”

Here are a series of maps that show the planned changes. The bold paragraphs explain the map that follows.

Map below: The red box outlines the state’s plans to build a new exit and entrance for access to Destiny USA and the Inner Harbor and the North Side. Southbound drivers will enter and exit the highway at North Clinton Street. This work is scheduled as part of the third contract, expected to start next year. New northbound on- and off-ramps are planned for Bear Street as part of the seventh contract, starting in 2026 and ending in late 2028.

Below: The state plans to close the ramps outlined in red between Destiny USA and the mall. That includes the southbound on- and off-ramps at Genant Street; the northbound on- and off-ramps at Sunset Avenue and the State Street ramp to northbound 81.

The southbound ramps are part of the third contract. The northbound ramps are part of the seventh contract.

Below: Between the mall and downtown, the state plans to replace four bridges over the highway. New bridges at Bear, Court, Spencer and Butternut streets are circled in red. They are designed with sidewalks, giving people on the North Side safer access to the Inner Harbor. The bridges at Bear, Court and Spencer streets are part of the third contract. The Butternut Street Bridge work is in the seventh contract.

Below: The stretch of North Clinton Street in the red box will be lined with shared-use bike and pedestrian paths to be built off the street and buffered by trees. There will also be new street parking. The hope is that drivers will use this route instead of the highway to get from downtown to the Inner Harbor or Destiny USA. That is how the concept of a “community grid” works.

Contact Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com | 315-470-3186.