EASTERN SUBURBS – What will the eastern suburbs look like in 10 years in light of Micron’s massive investment in northern Onondaga County?
That’s the question that County Executive Ryan McMahon wants community leaders to start thinking about right now.
Last week, McMahon met with leaders from the town of Manlius, villages of Minoa, Manlius and Fayetteville, the East Syracuse-Minoa Central Schools and the Onondaga East Chamber of Commerce to discuss how the eastern suburbs can get “Micron-ready” and how the area fits into the county’s overall plan for growth. The meeting was held at the Fayetteville Municipal Building and was attended by about a dozen members of the chamber.
McMahon estimates that Onondaga County will grow to a population of more than 600,000, from its current 475,000, in the next six to seven years. That growth will touch every part of the county – some more than others – but McMahon believes the eastern suburbs are well positioned for growth because of the strength of its communities, the quality of life and the school districts.
Housing
As the county prepares for a massive influx of people, McMahon said communities in the east should prepare for a substantial increase in the need for more housing – and not necessarily the type of housing that has historically been favored in communities in and around the town of Manlius.
By the end of 2024, about 5,000 construction workers will be arriving in Central New York. The following year, Micron will bring in new employees at a mass scale. They will be joined here by thousands of employees with companies in Micron’s supply chain who will site facilities in Onondaga County as well.
Single family homes will be part of the mix, but McMahon encouraged the other municipal leaders in the room to train their focus on multi-family projects and apartments, and not to simply follow a home-ownership model.
Many of the people who will come to work in the semiconductor industry will be millennials, and that generation tends to have different residential wants and needs than previous generations, he said.
“There are people who make really good money that don’t want a $3,000 per month mortgage payment but do want to live in your community,” he said of the need for more rental properties. In other growing markets, he said, new single-family homes are built expressly as rentals. That type of development will be part of this expansion as well.
The village of Minoa may have a leg up in the rental market with the expansion of the Minoa Farms development. In Minoa Farms, there are 84 lots ready to be developed with one-, two- and three-bedroom homes that are designed to be rentals.
Mayor Bill Brazil said the Minoa community saw a need for this type of development both for new residents coming to the area and for older residents who want to move out of their larger single-family homes into something easier to maintain.
While some might consider the development of more apartments, multi-family dwellings and rental properties detrimental to their communities, McMahon warned that that kind of thinking will mean communities will be left behind. Municipalities that want to position themselves for residential growth may need to reevaluate their restrictive regulations and zoning, he said.
“There are certain towns – I’m not saying you’re one of them – that have a tougher reputation [when it comes to restrictive zoning],” McMahon said. “We believe in your ability to plan your own communities, but if you want to be a growth community, work with these folks to adjust this regulation or that regulation.”
What he didn’t suggest is that local planners lower their design standards. Quite the opposite, he said he wants local planners to keep high design standards and to reject any “bottom feeding” developments.
“You can find bad multi-family developments that were done in our community,” he said. “That’s not going to happen anymore.”
The town of Manlius is already beginning that process of looking at its zoning and regulations through the development of its comprehensive plan – a project that is about to go into its third year.
Supervisor John Deer said through that process, the town is “pivoting from just single-family development to filling in the gaps, adding some more commercial to help fund all the services that residential needs, while at the same making sure that we hold onto the character of Manlius.”
He cited the Twin Shores project on North Burdick Street, where early plans call for the development of some commercial buildings adjacent to a high-density residential community with up to 300 apartment units. Earlier this year, the town board approved a zone change on the parcels to pave the way for the project.
“The mixed-use piece is really important,” Deer said. “We need to allow people to live right next to their services. That’s how we build a more cohesive community.”
Industrial / commercial
Manlius Councilor Katelyn Kriesel, who moderated the session, asked McMahon how the town could go about recruiting potential industrial development in the portion of the town north of Minoa that features a lot of undeveloped and agricultural land.
If that is what the residents of the area want, he said, it is important to identify large sites with property owners that are “willing to play ball,” and to do it quickly. For those companies in the Micron supply chain that are looking to locate in Onondaga County, those decisions need to be made by the second quarter of 2023 if they are going to be up and running when Micron goes online.
“If you want to get on the map, you really need a 200-acre to 500-acre site,” he said, and that site would preferably have infrastructure, including ample power, water and sewer.
In Onondaga County, wastewater is largely controlled by the county, and McMahon said the county doesn’t have plans to expand its sewer system for additional residential growth, but the county would consider expanding sewers for additional industrial growth.
“I would figure out quickly potential sites,” he said. “If you have to rezone specifically for that, look at that process. But the game is now.”
Schools
East Syracuse Minoa Superintendent Donna DeSiato is bullish on Micron’s investment in Onondaga County and said her district has been planning for this type of growth for years. At least initially, she doesn’t believe there will be a need for new schools in the area to serve the thousands of new students that will be moving to the area.
Because of population decline in the past few decades, many of the school districts in Onondaga County have capacity for the influx of additional students. ES-M and Jamesville-DeWitt have had consistent student populations and Fayetteville-Manlius’ enrollment has only dipped slightly, but the three districts have all invested in modernizing their schools and are prepared for growth in the student body. The northern school districts – North Syracuse and Liverpool particularly – have lost thousands of students from their peak enrollments and have the capacity to bring in many more kids, she said.
DeSiato also touted the types of curriculum goals districts must be focused on to help create the talent that will be needed at Micron.
ES-M is the only school in the area with a program that allows students to graduate from high school with an associate degree, she said.
“We already have graduates – engineering science, computer science and math science – by the time they get here we will have had over 40 or 50 graduates that will have those degrees and will be in four-year schools,” she said. “They’re going to be the first employees of Micron when they open.”
Traffic
More people inevitably means more traffic, which is already a challenge, particularly in the villages of Manlius and Fayetteville and the main arteries that feed them.
In the future, how people get to and from work could drastically change, with the potential additions of light rail or express bus service to and from massive employers like Micron. For today, however, there is a call for coordination of traffic studies in the town and the three villages.
Fayetteville Trustee Jane Rice is a former member of the village’s planning board that extensively studied the traffic impact from the Hannaford’s grocery store that the board passed last week. That work was done, she said, without coordination from other municipalities that are working on their own development projects, namely the Twin Shores mixed-use development on North Burdick Street.
She would like to see the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council create a holistic traffic study for the eastern suburbs that would allow planners to see the impacts of new developments outside their own municipal boundaries.
“To tell me that that traffic situation isn’t going to affect the intersection at North Burdick Street and Genesee Street – you’ve got to be kidding me,” Rice said. “All I’m trying to do is make it easier for our planning boards to go through these projects.”
While bullish on the possibilities this economic growth provides, Kriesel, of the Manlius Town Board, acknowledged there will be an inevitable increase in traffic on roads that are already somewhat congested.
“We’re going to have more traffic here,” she said. “We aren’t going to be able to get to Syracuse in 11 minutes anymore.”
Of concern in the northern part of town is the additional truck traffic coming to and from the CSX train depot that has increased with the arrival of Amazon and is likely to continue to increase with Micron and others coming to the area. That traffic currently accesses the railyard via Fremont Road and Kirkville Road, going past homes and schools before reaching the highway system.
Because of resident opposition, the town has previously turned down a zone change for an “inland port” at the CSX railyard that was advertised as a way to control – not limit – truck access to the railyard and is now turning to the state Department of Transportation to create an access road adjacent to current Route 481 in the town of DeWitt. The town of DeWitt is also advocating for this solution.
McMahon said he has not been involved with these discussions but would be interested in helping advocate for a solution.
Coordinated growth
In creating its overall plan for growth, the county is modeling itself on Greensboro, N.C., which has also had an influx of high-tech manufacturing that has triggered quick growth.
That plan, McMahon said, features strong community centers, developing housing and neighborhoods, focusing on “greenways and blueways,” while ensuring that people can get from one place to another efficiently, all while not losing sight of the county’s agricultural heritage.
McMahon said the county will hire four new community planners – more than doubling the size of that department – to coordinate with local municipalities on growth initiatives. The county, he said, plans to work with all the municipal planning boards in the county to make them aware of the county’s goals for growth and “what the Micron opportunity and the challenge is.”
“Our plan is ready for a larger community, but within the plan, people need to decide where they want to fit in,” McMahon said. “The communities that know what they want to be and know where they want to go first are the ones we want to lean on.”
