By Hank Chapman
Village of Manlius trustee

At a recent meeting of the Village of Manlius Board of Trustees, a resident asked the question, “What is going on with all of the vacant buildings in the village?”
It is a question we all have been asking ourselves as well. Why are there several abandoned properties on the main streets of our village, and what can we do about it?
After that meeting, Mayor Whorrall and I got together and created a “Main Street Revitalization Committee.” This committee has been meeting now for a little more than two months and is made up of the mayor and myself, representatives of the village DPW and Codes’ office as well as village residents, a town board member and a representative of the business community on Main Street.
Our committee has a long-term goal and a short-term goal.
The long-term goal is to address the concerns about traffic and parking.  In the end, we are never going to solve the problems that exist on our main street corridors until we figure out ways to calm the traffic going through our village – first and foremost – and to address parking for many of the sections of our main street corridors.  Cars driving through our village at high speeds, fighting to change lanes and speeding to beat the lights is not conducive to the success of our businesses. Not having enough parking also makes it difficult for some businesses to succeed.
Unfortunately, these are not problems we can solve overnight.  The New York State DOT controls these roads and past attempts to solve some of these problems have been unsuccessful. We intend to begin a new dialogue with the DOT and hope to work together with them on these issues.
Some of our ideas include going from four lanes back to three lanes as it was not too many years ago (with the middle lane being for left turns,) a left turn signal turning onto Stickley Drive, the closing of some of the curb cuts on Fayette Street, more on street parking on the main streets as well as more ornate lights with hanging baskets and more street friendly trees designed to help calm traffic.  The latter two items are things we can do in the short term.
We have recently been informed that the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council will be conducting a traffic study in Manlius.  We are very excited and hopeful that this will be the opportunity to address our concerns on traffic and possibly even parking. I’m also confident that this study will include ways to make our village more pedestrian-friendly.
That is the long-term goal of our Committee.  As Mayor Whorrall likes to say, it makes no sense for there to be two lanes of traffic going into the heart of our village and then four lanes going through the main corridor and back to two again.
The short-term goal of our Main Street Revitalization Committee is a $300,000 grant we are applying for from Onondaga County for the purpose of beautifying our main street corridor.
Our application, due Jan. 31, will have two components.
The first is the public component – replacing old trees that have grown too large for our main street with more street-friendly trees that will hopefully help with the calming of traffic on our main streets, more ornate light poles with hanging baskets and creating some public seating areas along East Seneca Street.
The second component is to use a portion of this grant, if approved, to provide small matching funds for businesses to improve their facades or welcoming areas in front of their store fronts.
We have retained a professional planner to help us with design plan concepts and the grant application.  As a committee, in addition to regular planning and strategy meetings, we have done several walking tours of the main streets, speaking to business owners and getting ideas for how to make our village main streets better.  We also had a meeting with several of the business owners on East Seneca Street to speak about the matching grants we hope to make available.
There are nine villages eligible to apply for these grants and five will be awarded.  We are confident that our grant application will clearly demonstrate how important the awarding of this grant will be to our village.
The primary focus area of this grant is along Fayette Street from Pleasant Street to the corner and then along East Seneca Street from the corner to North Street.  We are not addressing the rest of Fayette Street with this grant, as it doesn’t make sense to invest money in areas that may be developed by new businesses in the future.
Included in this category is the development at the former Hollowick Building next to CVS. The developer has not gone forward with the original project, but we are still in discussions with him and are hopeful we will have a great project for our village in the near future.
We are also hopeful the owner of the former Mobil Station will work with the village and be willing to sell this property to someone who can create something there that will eliminate the current eyesore there.
On West Seneca Street, we have been made aware of an additional grant we will be able to apply for, specific to that area.
Mayor Whorrall and I and the entire village board, I know, are grateful for the work of this committee thus far and are excited of what is to come.  We are also committed to keeping the momentum going and applying for additional grants to improve our main street corridor – the heart of our village.
As always, we welcome your input and ideas on how to make our main streets – and our village in general – better.  I can be reached anytime at hchapman@ manliusvillage.org.