4/7/07 South End’s future takes shape

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

Strategic plan lays out area development ideas

Bob Ellis/staff photographer
The roofline of the former railroad station frames South Avenue in Cortland.

Sitting in his office Wednesday, Mayor Tom Gallagher looked over a rendering of what the South Avenue area of the future could look like.
It shows trees and sidewalks that state grant money would help fund, a sprawling community garden and a housing development with a private road that would connect Crawford and Pine streets on the former site of Potter Paint.
The proposals are part of a strategic plan that lays out development ideas for much of the city’s South End.
A draft of the plan will be reviewed at 6:30 p.m. April 24 in the Randall Elementary School library.
“We were going to sit down and go over the draft. There is some tweaking that needs to be done,” Alderman Dan Quail (R-5th Ward) said. “We’ve been tossing out ideas; we didn’t really come to anything conclusive yet.”
As they roasted green coffee beans Wednesday in a large industrial-size roaster at Coffee Depot — the former freight depot on South Avenue — Craig and Michelle Brooks, the owners of the Coffee Mania drive-through stores, were excited at the prospects in the neighborhood.
“We are interested in doing everything we can — what that is, we don’t know,” Craig Brooks said.
“We’re in the infancy stages of figuring out what we’re doing,” Michelle Brooks added.
They already rent space inside their building to a dog grooming business and a massage business; they hope that by sometime in the fall, they will have opened a retail shop of their own in the depot.
“Not like a café, though. Our focus would be on home equipment and educating people about the roasting process,” Michelle Brooks said.
But in addition to their business plans, the Brooks also hope to use a roughly 1.6-acre lot next to their South Avenue building in some capacity to benefit the community.
“I have dreams of it being a farmer’s market. That’s my hope,” Michelle Brooks said, her husband stressing that the farmers are probably the one group that has not been queried about their interest.
Craig Brooks wants to see the remainder of the empty lot given over to plantings, picnic tables and playgrounds.
They’re looking forward to working with Thoma Development Consultants, which prepared the strategic plan and a $650,000 grant application for state Community Development Block Grant funds for the South End.
The grant funding would go toward single-unit and multi-family housing rehabilitation, multi-family homeownership, small-business assistance, overtime hours for the code enforcement office, and water, sewer, sidewalk and street improvements.
The city expects to hear back about the grant sometime in the summer or early fall.
The neighbors seem pleased with the strategic plan draft, said Ann Hotchkin, project manager for Thoma Development.
“There’s a lot of money going into the South End already — if it’s not there already, it’s on its way,” Hotchkin said.
A $7 million streetscape project that repaved south Main Street and added lights and trees, and improved sidewalks was completed in August 2006.
In addition, Housing Visions Inc., a Syracuse-based nonprofit, has recently closed on a total of nine properties, in anticipation of an $8.2 million project that will demolish some crowded and run-down buildings and rehabilitate those that can be saved. Thirty apartments will be available to low-income tenants by fall 2008.
Gallagher sees potential for industrial development of the 23-acre Noss Industrial Park. The city’s engineering firm, C&S Engineers, is working with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and Gallagher said he hopes the cleanup of some remaining contaminated areas would begin this year.
Gallagher said the city wants to obtain the former Cobako plant on Huntington Street from its current owner, Acorn Products, which would allow it to be developed in conjunction with the Noss site.
In the strategic plan, the vacant Wickwire warehouse property has a small grocery store sketched in. The landowner, David McNeil, has said that one such business has shown interest in developing on that site, but he was unavailable for comment as of Friday.
Also included is the demolition of several buildings that are double-stacked on lots — one of the main goals of the strategic plan is to reduce density, particularly along South Avenue.
“This is going to take some hard work, with the city and Thoma, to make this an amicable situation that will encourage people to work with us for the improvement of that area,” Gallagher said.