Ryan Delaney

Syracuse will use money from a state program to take another step in the long process of redeveloping former industrial sites.

Syracuse is getting a $500,000 Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) grant for work on 113 acres just south of downtown and a 478 acre strip through the east side of the city. 

The grant is for the development of a revitalization strategy, the second of three phases of the BOA program, according to Owen Kerney, the city's deputy director for planning and sustainability.

Some of upstate New York's mayors are putting their brains together to deal with looming fiscal nightmares.

A Syracuse IT firm says a state grant will help it train and add new employees.

Former Syracuse mayor Matt Driscoll visited IV4 in downtown Syracuse Monday to announce the grant. Driscoll is now the director of the New York Environmental Facilities Corporation.

The $50,000 grant is part of the money the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council secured late last year.

Four years ago, Erick Cleckner was sitting next to his friend, Dave Chenell, in a class at Syracuse University. But they weren't exactly paying attention.

"[We were] just drawing in our notebooks instead of taking notes," remembers Cleckner. "And we were arguing about whose drawing would win a fight."

Their debate about whose character would triumph didn't end when class was dismissed. Cleckner and Chenell started working on a digital battlefield where their sketches could actually engage in battle.

Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long is challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-NY) fiscal record.

Long stopped in Syracuse this afternoon on an upstate New York campaign swing.

Taxpayers in New York are sending too much money to Washington, Long contends.

With the shove of a backhoe, work on a large downtown Syracuse renovation project took a step forward.

Construction crews yesterday began demolition work on part of the Bond Building on South Salina Street. The Bond Building is one of four being renovated by V.I.P. Structures for a project now being called the Pike Block, which encompasses the southwest corner of South Salina and Fayette Streets.

Those for it say it has little resemblance to Destiny USA other than the length of the tax break. But those in opposition disagree strongly.

Months of debate about Syracuse's development strategy and negotiations culminated Monday with the city granting just its second-ever 30-year property tax exemption.

The recipient is a developer who will build a mixed-use off-campus bookstore and fitness center for Syracuse University. The property in question is a long sliver of land currently owned by the nonprofit university, so it's not taxable.

Syracuse appears ready to give out its second 30-year tax exemption after months of debate. The decision comes at a time when many in the city are skeptical of public backing for development.

The Common Council has called a special session for later today to vote on the property tax exemption for a developer planning to build a Syracuse University bookstore and fitness center in the University Hill neighborhood.

The vote was supposed to happen back in March, but it was pulled at the last minute because it faced certain defeat. In the months since, councilors have negotiated with the developer and university.

On Friday, councilors confirmed the deal will finally proceed because it has gained the needed five votes.

Local labor unions are calling for politicians to do more to stop jobs from going overseas and encourage companies to bring jobs home.

Local chapters of the United Steelworkers (USW) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organized a rally Friday afternoon outside the shuttered M&K Candle factory on Syracuse's Northside.

There's an old promotional video the developer behind the Destiny USA megamall released several years ago. It includes images of glass-enclosed golf courses, huge hotels and helicopter tours of upstate taking off from Syracuse's Inner Harbor.

Despite ending by promising "grand opening, summer 2004," you won't see any of that on the shores of Onondaga Lake today.

All you'll see is an even bigger mall - despite developer Robert Congel winning a 30-year property tax break worth about $600 million as an incentive from the city to build the Disney Land-like attraction.

Despite months of preparation, the CEO of Welch Allyn says a new excise tax on medical supplies will hurt his company's bottom line.

As part of the Affordable Care Act upheld last week by the Supreme Court, a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices sold in the United States will go into effect January 1. The tax is supposed to help pay for the expanded health care coverage.

Downtown Syracuse is benefiting from an increase in investments and an uptick in young people wanting to live in urban settings, according to the Downtown Committee.

The Downtown Committee, a booster organization for the city's urban core, held its annual meeting Thursday to highlight several recent and about-to-begin projects in the city.

Nick Matt ducks into side doors and up staircases while rattling off the history of the F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica.

The brew house is like a second home to Matt because it was his grandfather, F.X., who first opened the brewery 124 years ago.

If you're racking your brain to see if you've ever heard of F.X. Matt Brewery, try this: they make Saranac ales and lagers. For the older generations, does Utica Club ring a bell?

For COR Development President Steve Aiello, Monday's vote by the Syracuse Common Council was a long time coming.

Aiello's firm was selected earlier this year to redevelop the city's Inner Harbor. Then it was granted a memorandum of understanding from the council in February.

But it wasn't until yesterday that the council officially voted in favor of Aiello's $350 million proposal.

Syracuse will be getting just a $210,000 increase in annual tax break payments from the expanded Destiny USA mega-mall.

That compares to several million dollars the mall would pay in property taxes if it didn't have a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) deal.

Syracuse common councilors learned the payment amount when they pressed the chairman of the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency (SIDA) Bill Ryan along with an attorney for SIDA this morning.

Five big new tanks have arrived at the F.X. Matt Brewing Company in Utica. But they won't be used to make the brewery's signature Saranac brand craft beer.

Instead, the tanks will act as anaerobic digesters for the brewery's wastewater.

Special bacteria will munch on the yeast and grains left floating around. The process will get the water about 85 percent cleaner before it's discharged into the sewer system, according to CEO Nick Matt.

But the digestion process also gives off methane gas and carbon dioxide.

That methane will be used to power a generator. CEO Matt says the new system will cover up to 40 percent of the brewery's electricity needs.

(CORRECTION June 18th, 2 p.m.: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the estimated cost of environmental cleanup. That amount is roughly $12 million.)

The topic was the redevelopment of Syracuse's Inner Harbor, but it didn't take long for a councilor to bring up the elephant in the chamber: the failed expansion of Destiny USA.

But Steven Aiello, president of COR Development, didn't have much choice on the timing of his meeting with the Syracuse Common Council.

It was just last week that grand plans by the developer of Destiny USA were finally laid to rest.

Aiello isn't looking to build a mall, but councilors couldn't help but raise concerns. The proposed project is just down the road from what was once going to be Syracuse's Disney World.

Ariel Norling, 20, is from San Antonio, Texas. She has a lip ring and a spunky attitude to match. She majored in policy studies at Syracuse University.

Oh, and she's the CEO of her own online dating site called YouShouldDate.me. Tagline: "Online dating sucks, but it doesn't have to."

"We're trying to find the middle ground between 'casual whatever,' which generally just means people hooking up, and marriage," says Norling, describing her site.

She says she didn't really expect to become an entrepreneur - hence the social sciences degree. But last fall, after some convincing by a friend, Norling decided to pitch her idea at a local startup weekend.

The pitch worked. Folks liked it. And now she's spending the summer in Syracuse along with her two business partners in a startup incubator called the Student Sandbox.

The Green Party candidate for congress in central New York says a massive public works program can create jobs and improve the environment.

Ursula Rozum called for a “New-Deal”-like $10 trillion, 10-year program to fund clean building, energy and transportation programs.

She says it would create needed jobs.

Senator Charles Schumer is backing changes to this year’s farm bill that he says would better protect local farmers in the future from damages like those caused by this spring’s frost.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture today declared many upstate New York farms are now eligible for federal aid from those frosts.

Instead of painting houses or mowing lawns, a group of college students in Syracuse is spending the summer launching companies.

The Student Sandbox incubator just got underway at the Syracuse Tech Garden. And participation is ballooning.

When the program started four years ago, just five teams took part. This year, there are 34 teams. The Tech Garden had to find overflow space to fit everybody.

The city of Syracuse wants to get half its power from renewable energy sources by 2020.

That's just one of the targets laid out in a draft version of Syracuse's first sustainability plan [PDF].

It still has a ways to go, however: about 24 percent of New York's power currently comes from renewable sources - with hydropower accounting for the vast majority of that number, according to the New York Independent System Operator [PDF].

Syracuse is also hoping to reduce its energy consumption, advance education about environmental stewardship and increase urban agriculture and tree cover.

The thunderstorms that rolled through upstate New York Tuesday afternoon kept George Weiss' plane grounded in New York City.

So Weiss, the philanthropist and founder of Say Yes to Education, decided to drive up to Syracuse in order to make it to a student event Tuesday evening.

He told a crowd at McKinley-Brighton Elementary School Wednesday morning that the long drive was worth it when a student came up to him teary-eyed.

She told Weiss that he had given her a hug two years earlier when she graduated high school. Now, after graduating from a community college with the cost covered by Say Yes, she wanted another hug.

"Any time you see the smile on these kids' faces and the hope," Weiss said. "This is what it's all about, the hope."

Representative Bill Owens is working to increase economic ties between the North Country and Canadian businesses.

The Democrat held a series of meetings in Canada this week in an effort to entice more Canadian companies to look to Northern New York for expansion.

Candles are again being made at a Syracuse factory that had made them for almost 100 years.

Three years after Will & Baumer closed up shop and moved its candle-making operation to Tennessee, a new manufacturer of devotional candles has taken over the old plant.

The new company - Light 4 Life Candles - is headed up by former Will & Baumer president Marshall Ciccone.

Ciccone and other company officials held a ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday.

"It's just very, very heartening to see kind of a new start," Ciccone said after the ceremony. "A new company, but doing the same kind of thing."

Researchers are warning of a higher concentration of ticks this summer and thus more potential for tick-borne illnesses – like Lyme disease.

That’s because more ticks survived the warmer winter.

As a result, Senator Charles Schumer is pushing legislation that would increase education and research.

Investments in research take a while to pay dividends.

So says Dr. Karin Pavese, director of innovation at the New York Academy of Sciences.

At a biotechnology symposium in Syracuse Tuesday, Pavese told attendees there's great growth potential in state-backed research. But since the fruits of those investments often take many years to bloom, Pavese says politicians are often hesitant to pony up key funding.

One job created in the innovation work force - like a research position - creates three additional jobs, according to Pavese.

But standing in the way is something called the "valley of death."

From the plain curious to those seriously considering moving, a chance to see Syracuse’s downtown living options brought lots of people out over the weekend.

The Downtown Committee says about 2,000 people poked around apartments and condos during its 6th living tour Saturday.

The lawn signs started popping up a few weeks ago, but Dan Maffei didn't officially launch his campaign for Congress until this weekend.

In fact, Maffei said, the signs are from his previous campaigns. He hasn't printed the new ones yet.

Maffei met with several dozen supporters at his newly opened campaign headquarters on East Washington Street in downtown Syracuse Saturday afternoon.

The city of Syracuse has a new tool it hopes will reduce the number of vacant and tax-delinquent properties.

This week the state gave the OK for Syracuse and Onondaga County to create one of the first five "land banks" in New York State.

The new agency has plenty to work on.

There are 3,300 delinquent plots in the city of Syracuse alone.