ONONDAGA COUNTY — A group of Onondaga County town supervisors gathered April 20 to reiterate their opposition to replacing the Interstate 81 viaduct through the city of Syracuse with a community grid. While the local leaders said they do not oppose the grid concept itself, they believe the I-81 solution must incorporate high-speed through-access.
In a press conference at Home Team Pub in Liverpool, Clay Town Supervisor Damian Ulatowski led his colleagues in expressing concern about Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to earmark $800 million of the 2021-22 New York State budget for the replacement of the I-81 viaduct.
While the NYS Department of Transportation has not made a final decision, the DOT’s preferred alternative would replace the 1.4-mile viaduct in the city of Syracuse with a street-level community grid and a “business loop” from the southern interchange at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. East (formerly East Castle Street) to the Interstate 690 interchange. The existing Interstate 481 will be re-designated as the new I-81 for through traffic.
“As representatives of 69% of the county’s population, the Onondaga County supervisors expressed frustration with the Albany Department of Transportation’s unwillingness to listen to their constituents’ concerns over a ‘grid-only’ proposal being pushed by Governor Cuomo,” Ulatowski said. “Our constituents are looking for a complete solution that recognizes the needs of all residents, as opposed to the proposed grid-only plan which would fail miserably in many ways.”
According to the suburban supervisors, replacing the viaduct with the community grid would increase pollution, traffic congestion and emergency response times. Rerouting through traffic to 481 would also hurt businesses in towns that have built their economies around the interstate, Salina Town Supervisor Colleen Gunnip said.
Salina’s 19 hotels and nearly 60 restaurants would be crushed by a community grid-only solution.
“If that traffic gets rerouted, all of those businesses go away,” Gunnip said, adding that Syracuse city residents who work at Salina establishments could lose their jobs.
Reporters asked the supervisors about I-81’s decimation of Syracuse’s 15th Ward, a once-thriving neighborhood and business district largely populated by Black people. According to U.S. Census data released in 2019, Syracuse is one of the cities with the highest rates of poverty for Black and Hispanic residents.
“Salina had 81 go through our neighborhoods, too — look at Galeville, look at Mattydale,” Gunnip said. “Instead, we thrived. We built our commercial corridor around our [I-81] exits.”
DeWitt Deputy Supervisor Kerry Mannion acknowledged that the original construction of I-81 “wasn’t a great plan.”
“Let’s do it right this time. We did it wrong 60 years ago,” he said.
Mannion added that with Amazon building facilities in Clay and DeWitt, removing the viaduct would exacerbate existing traffic problems in the eastern and northern suburbs.
The suburban supervisors said they have written letters to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Gov. Cuomo, Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, but their calls for “a seat at the table” have gone unanswered.
Despite their insistence that they “want to continue to work with the governor to find common ground,” the suburban supervisors had few new, concrete ideas for their next steps. Ulatowski told reporters he has not “had a direct conversation” with Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, and he reiterated his desire to see a new viaduct, depressed highway, or suspension bridge. The DOT has not addressed the idea of an iconic bridge, but in its 2019 report it rejected options that would rebuild the viaduct or replace it with a tunnel or depressed highway.
