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Plans for SU's new veterans complex underway with request for design proposals

Syracuse University
Syracuse University campus

Central New York’s upstate revitalization proposal calls for $12.5 million to be invested to create Syracuse University’s National Veteran’s Resources Complex. The university recently asked 30 architectural design firms to submit proposals on the look and layout of the new facility.

The plan is to select three or four finalists in late January and a winner in April. Mike Haynie, the vice chancellor for veteran and military programs at Syracuse University, said currently, the military and veteran programs at the university are scattered across campus.  

"The idea is to bring some of those programs, maybe not all of them, but some of them together under one roof, in one facility so that the synergies that naturally exist between those programs can be realized," Haynie said.

Haynie said they are planning on having a 1,000-seat auditorium in the building so they can bring in national conventions focused on veteran issues.

“Ironically, we host some of those but we have to do them in big metropolitan areas because we don’t have the physical infrastructure on this campus to bring those events here,” Haynie said.

In the upstate revitalization proposal, Central New York’s Regional Economic Development Council said in the first five years of operation of the center, they anticipate 300 total jobs created, servicing 48,000 veterans nationwide and 5,000 additional hotel nights in the area sold to service members, veterans and their families. A site for the facility has not been selected yet. Haynie said he hopes the building could be complete by mid-2018.

Tom Magnarelli is a reporter covering the central New York and Syracuse area. He joined WRVO as a freelance reporter in 2012 while a student at Syracuse University and was hired full time in 2015. He has reported extensively on politics, education, arts and culture and other issues around central New York.