The North Side

One of the city's oldest neighborhoods, the North Side is much as it has been for years. The city attempted to make it more attractive by fabricating a “Little Italy” neighborhood along several blocks of its main artery, North Salina Street, at a cost of roughly $2 million. Parks were expanded and sidewalks were completely replaced and widened, but aside from a handful of Italian restaurants and one travel agency, there is virtually no genuine Italian atmosphere, unlike the Little Italy in Manhattan. Most storefronts are businesses such as HSBC Bank, Rocky's Newstand, Lee's Place, Rent-A-Center, which have no Italian connections.

Foot traffic on the widened sidewalks remains as it was before the project. Despite the city's efforts to make the neighborhood more "pedestrian friendly," the reality is the opposite. North Salina Street between West Willow and Butternut Streets lacks crosswalks and walk signals entirely. Crossing West Willow at Salina Street is also an adventure, with southbound traffic on Salina generally refusing to yield to pedestrians as drivers turn left onto Willow without slowing unless challenged by oncoming traffic. Less than 100 feet away, drivers coming off the Salina Street exit of Route 81 South commonly perform a U-turn to travel northward on Salina, despite the sign at the ramp prohibiting left turns. Syracuse police have not cracked down on the practice.

Slowly, buildings all over the North Side have been demolished and not replaced. The North Salina Street Historic District has lost several contributing properties inside its boundaries. 601 had to be condemned and demolished after its owner intentionally allowed it to deteriorate beyond repair, a technique called “demolition by neglect” that is practiced by many property owners in Syracuse. While other cities including New Orleans have passed regulations and laws aimed at deterring the practice, Syracuse continues to tolerate it. 601 was an impressive three-story Queen Anne style building with an oriel window jutting out over the corner of Salina and Ash Street.

730 was fire-damaged then demolished. This lot will likely vacant and remain fenced off, as there has not been any new construction of houses or small buildings on the North Side in many years, the only notable exception being Asti Caffé's expansion in 2005.

537 North Salina, once home to Michael’s, which sold fresh Italian pasta, sits with its ornate architectural decorations rusting away, long-dead plants mummified in the store window. This building has the distinction of being possibly the narrowest building in Syracuse.

Upper North Salina Street is even less occupied. The old Fluorescent Lighting Company building has been vacant since at least 1999, when it was last and briefly occupied by Twilight Book and Game Emporium as its final location before going out of business. Twilight was considered the biggest and best comic book store in Syracuse for many years. Gary Kelley's Pro Sports and Awards at 1323 is also gone. All three companies were long established businesses with decades of history on North Salina.

Across the street, the former post office has been empty since circa 1992, when the functions of the 13208 post office were distributed between the Carousel Center station for window service and the Franklin Street station for window and delivery services.

Further north, the Mack Miller candle factory at Wolf and North Salina also burned and collapsed and only an uneven, overgrown dirt lot remains at the site. Another building at the northwest intersection of Lodi and Salina was leveled in the mid 1990s, leaving an uneven triangular lot. Across the street at 1710-20 North Salina, Penfield Manufacturing closed in late 2005 after 113 years of operation, citing in part the atmosphere of uncertainty and possible eminent domain battles with the DestiNY USA project.

Just off North Salina, the Shane building on North State Street has had all of its street-side windows shattered, and the former Syracuse Restaurant Exchange sits in near ruin, its once imposing architecture falling victim to neglect.

Also on North State, vacant dirt lots have been appearing as more buildings have been knocked down. This building at 4.. is likely to be demolished, despite what should be a very attractive feature in today's car-crazy world - a two-car garage on the first floor. Its neighbor immediately to the south has already succumbed to the bulldozer, as have several other buildings on the 300 and 400 blocks.

Northwest of Downtown

Franklin Square, The Inner Harbor & Carousel Center

The Franklin Square area to the northwest has seen many of its former factories converted to upscale condominums, offices and apartments. Spaghetti Warehouse had its long-vacant upper floors converted to loft apartments, although the process was slow in Syracuse's weak economy.

Between Carousel Center and Franklin Square, the Inner Harbor is a mess of vacant factories, warehouses and lots waiting for word of Destiny USA, which was originally planned to open in 2004. Before DestiNY, Pyramid Companies originally planned Carousel Landing, a discount strip mall south of Carousel Center that would have been linked by a section of Hiawatha Boulevard closed to traffic.

Oil City, which held approximately 75 storage tanks, was condemned and appropriated by the city through eminent domain. The tanks were removed in 2000, leaving fields of dirt and crumbling buildings that persist to this day.

There are skeptics that Destiny USA will benefit Downtown. The same rosy visions of downtown's salvation were offered when Carousel Center was being constructed. Many believe that Destiny will never even happen, especially since Pyramid chairman Robert Congel said the 800,000 expansion approved in May 2006 was part of Carousel, but not part of Destiny. Pyramid had no concrete plans for Destiny, other than a nebulous vision that may or may not happen in years to come.

The Syracuse New Times mocked Congel's vague plans at the end of 2002: "When last we left SpongeBob Congel, he was gracing our 2001 Year in Review edition in the guise of Tinkerbell, sprinkling fairydust over his ambitious--some would say insane--plans for a $2 billion 'entertainment complex,' Destiny USA. He promised a magical fiefdom that would solve all of Syracuse's financial woes by bringing in tourists by jet-, train-, bus- and carloads (more than Disneyland, he proclaimed), and by creating countless new jobs."

Also languishing is the Inner Harbor, cut off from the rest of the city by Interstate 81.

Post-Standard columnist Dick Case wrote of the area, "In the more than a decade since Carousel opened, the turf from the lake to downtown has been a killing ground of ideas: Projects came and went without touching earth." ("Inner Harbor venue blossoms, despite Destiny" 6/13/06)

Mayor Matt Driscoll approved an agreement with Pyramid in May 2006 after remaining a staunch opponent of the project through most of his term. In late June, the Syracuse Common Council -- the legislative branch of Syracuse government which also had to approve the deal -- voted against the project, citing inadequate safeguards for the city should other obstacles prevent the project from being built. The mayor, infuriated, called a surprise meeting with the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency, whose members are all mayoral appointees. During the meeting, the participants wrote a new agreement identical to the previous agreement but written to bypass the Common Council, requiring neither their debate nor approval. Driscoll also ordered corporation counsel Terri Bright to withdraw the appeal the city had previously filed against a court ruling that would allow the project to proceed. Councilors saw implicit opposition to the agreement in the fact that Bright -- essentially the city's lawyer and responsible for reviewing all legal agreements involving the city -- refused to voice support for it. Speculation ran high that Driscoll had ordered Bright to conceal her disapproval. Driscoll refused to comment on Bright's stand other than to say, "That's a lame excuse for voting no." Upon finding out about the withdrawal, the Common Council ordered Bright to reinstate the appeal, which she did. Driscoll terminated Bright's employment, citing lack of loyalty, although the corporation counsel is pledged to obey both the mayor and the Common Council. In the escalation that followed, the Common Council retained its own attorney to appeal the ruling while the mayor and the SIDA board -- positions appointed by the mayor rather than elected -- worked up a new agreement with Pyramid that doesn't need council approval, which Post-Standard columnist Jeff Kramer called a "ham-handed" end-run. Enmity between the council and the mayor is high, resulting in what Randy P. of SU compares with a death match in a steel cage. Columnist Rick Moriarty wrote, "Driscoll declared war on the council."

Carousel Center opened with much fanfare in 1990 as Syracuse's urban megamall, built at the cost of $250 million. On the night of the mall's grand opening, traffic was backed up for over a mile on the roads leading to it. Inside, visitors and shoppers were packed like sardines in the standing room only aisles. The crowd flowed slowly through the mall, serenaded by grand pianos being played continously at each of the three intersections on the first floor. But behind the scenes, trouble was already brewing. Bonwit Teller, one of four anchor stores for the new mall, had gone into bankruptcy as construction on Carousel was proceeding. Pyramid did not want to open with its upscale anchor missing and bought Bonwit Teller for $8 million. Donald Trump bought the flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City and demolished it to erect Trump Tower. Ultimately, the company could not save the struggling retailer. Their store at the Walden Galleria in Buffalo closed in 1997. The Carousel store hung in the longest but closed in 2000, after incurring $6 million of losses for Pyramid.

Much of the original grandeur of Carousel has been lost over the years. Customer service desks at the four corner entrances were abandoned within a few years of the opening, leaving only a single customer service location by the second floor food court. The Skydeck, which was supposed to be a public observation deck when not closed for special events, has been closed to the public for years except during special events. It was converted into offices for DestiNY in 2005, ensuring that visitors will never again be allowed to mill around that level.

Within years of its opening, Carousel had decimated the suburban malls of Pyramid's rival, the once-dominant Wilmorite. Among the casualties of the Great Syracuse Mall Maul were Camillus Mall, Fayetteville Mall, and Penn Can Mall.

Beyond Carousel, Solvay Process Company once sat on the southern shore of Onondaga Lake. Ernest Solvay developed his process for making soda ash in Belgium in 1861. The Solvay family licensed the process in 1884 to create an American company they would own half interest in. The company was so vital to the area that the surrounding village was named Solvay in its honor in 1894.

Solvay Process merged with four others in 1920 to become Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation, shortened to Allied Chemical Corporation in 1958 and simply Allied Corporation in 1981. Allied was once the world's largest producer of ammonia in the 1930s. Allied went through more mergers, becoming AlliedSignal and finally part of Honeywell. The original family name and international operations continue to exist today as Solvay SA, the world's largest supplier of soda ash. In the US, the Solvay Process is no longer used, having been supplanted by massive trona deposits in Wyoming, a cheaper and more efficient source of soda ash.

The plant closed in 1986, but its legacy is an extremely contaminated Onondaga Lake, considered by many sources the most heavily polluted lake in the country. The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation lists Solvay Process as one of the primary sources of the lake's problems. The state has demanded that Honeywell pay for a cleanup plan that may cost in excess of a half billion dollars when completed.

Solvay's offices were located in a large, turreted building nicknamed "the Castle." Solvay Paperboard demolished the 2000 despite howls of protest from preservationists, citing the high cost of rehabilitating and maintaining the structure.

The White City amusement park was also on the southwestern shore. It was a tourist destination during Syracuse's golden age of resorts, opened May 30, 1906. With 30 different rides, it was Syracuse's most spectacular amusement park. On its opening day, over 41,000 people attended. While daily attendance at the New York State Fair can top 100,000, the earlier figure is impressive considering people of the era lacked long-range personal transportation, so visitors from outside the immediate area had to travel by railroads, which had limited capacity. Unfortunately, White City's popularity dwindled after the first two years and the park struggled for a few more years before closing in 1915. Another resort from the era was Iron Pier, which stood from 1890-1907 on a strip of land on the southern shore of Onondaga Lake. Today, the land separates Carousel Center's parking lot from the lake.

The Syracuse Yacht Club had its original clubhouse not far from White City. Unfortunately, the wooden house, built on pilings on the lake, was completely consumed in a fire.