The Syracuse Housing Authority (SHA) and McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS) on Tuesday hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for East Adams Phase 2, a new 125-unit affordable senior housing community at the corner of Burt Street and State Street in Syracuse.
It's described as the "next milestone" in the East Adams Neighborhood Transformation Plan. The ceremony follows the completion of environmental remediation at the site and marks the start of vertical construction.
The structure will be called The Simmons at East Adams, named in honor of William Simmons, the former executive director of the Syracuse Housing Authority.
In her remarks, Jalyn Clifford, the SHA's acting executive director, said the residents who will occupy the building are the backbone of the neighborhood.
"They raised their families here. They built relationships here. They stayed through period when this community did not receive the investments that it deserved, and they helped hold the neighborhood together," Clifford said. "Soon, we'll be able to tell them you don't just get to stay in the community you helped build. You get to come home to something brand new."
Allyson Carpenter -- with St. Louis, Missouri-based McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS) and project manager of the East Adams Transformation Plan -- served as the master-of-ceremonies for the hour-long, groundbreaking event. MBS is the project developer.
The event's speakers also included Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, who said, "This project ... this opportunity to be here today take multiple moving parts, multiple partners."
Those involved with the project include the Syracuse Housing Authority; the City of Syracuse; MBS; and the Hueber-Breuer Construction Co., Inc. of Syracuse,
In addition, the partners include Blueprint 15, the Syracuse nonprofit working to revitalize the city's 15th Ward; Langan, an engineering and environmental services firm based in Parsippany, New Jersey, which has an office in Syracuse; and St. Louis, Missouri-based Urban Strategies, Inc., which also has a site office in Syracuse.
Andy Breuer, president of the Hueber-Breuer Construction Company, Inc. of Syracuse, acknowledged the work of the all the partners on the effort.
"You guys are putting your heart and soul not only into physically building this community but into the notion of the community building," Breuer said. "The workforce goals, the utilization goals that really define this community and make up the fabric of what we're all doing here ... We're honored to be part of it."
Langan Engineering helped the partners through the state's brownfield cleanup program. Brian Gochenaur, associate principal, explained the purpose of that program.
"It's a program that incentives development by taking underutilized, contaminated properties like this one ... doing an extensive amount of investigation and cleanup and then basically turning them over to make them usable again and beneficial to the community," Gochenaur said in his remarks.
The East Adams Neighborhood Transformation is a $1 billion, 10-year effort to replace more than 600 units of aging public housing with more than 1,400 units of new, mixed-income housing, alongside parks, a business incubator, and a fitness center. The second phase brings 125 new apartments built specifically for senior citizens.
East Adams in the neighborhood name for what has historically been known as Syracuse's 15th Ward, a 27-block, 118-acre footprint that was once a thriving Black community, as described in a pamphlet provided at the groundbreaking. In the 1950s and '60s , the construction of Interstate 81 "physically divided the neighborhood, and decades of disinvestment followed." Today, crews are building East Adams from the ground up "with residents leading the vision for what comes next," the pamphlet read.
