Copyright syracuse.com
Syracuse, N.Y. – Why is County Executive Ryan McMahon optimistic that housing growth will meet the challenge that Onondaga County faces in the years to come? In response to that question, he often refers to the “pipeline” of future projects that are being prepared for development. “Our pipeline of planned units countywide has never been stronger,” McMahon said in March at his State of the County address. “We have over 17,000 units at some stage of planning.” But many of those units are at such an early stage of planning that McMahon’s office doesn’t feel comfortable providing details about them. When syracuse.com asked for the list of housing units in the pipeline, county officials provided a list of future projects totaling just over 8,000 units – about half of the pipeline McMahon usually talks about. The rest are projects that are still tentative enough that it would be premature to list them, said Justin Sayles, a county spokesman. Some are still conceptual, without final plans, and some have not been made public, he said. In that light, it’s not clear whether McMahon’s pipeline guarantees the upsurge in housing production that Onondaga County needs. Builders and developers face financial and regulatory hurdles that make it difficult to predict when, or if, their projects will succeed. Even the best projects often take years of planning before they can start construction. Some never get there. According to the list of future projects provided by the county, there are 6,624 units of housing, including single-family homes and multifamily complexes, currently being reviewed by local planning boards. But it’s hard to predict how many years it will take until people can move into those homes. For example: The list includes 68 affordable apartments planned by the nonprofit La Liga on the West Side of Syracuse. The project was first proposed two years ago but has not yet secured the necessary state funding or scheduled a ground-breaking. Another example: The list shows 461 apartments and 55 townhouses to be built on the site of the former Syracuse Developmental Center near the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. If the developers can close on financing for the first phase of that project in December – a contingency that still awaits final city approval – they could build 261 apartments and 27 townhomes by 2029. There is no timeline for building the remaining 200 apartments and 28 townhomes, which include market-rate units that developer Chris Albanese said last week will be “more challenging.’’ The county pipeline also includes Metro North, a mixed-use development with 220 housing units first proposed three years ago. The town rejected the developer’s request for a zone change in January 2023, and the developer has not returned to the planning board in a year or so, Chairman Mark Marzullo said. There is a lot of uncertainty in the pipeline. The county list also includes 1,336 dorm rooms at Syracuse University, 400 of which were created in the former Sheraton University hotel. Assuming the massive Micron Technology project spurs growth in the county population as forecasted, we’ll need to complete an average of 1,700 housing units each year from now until 2040, according to an analysis last year by the county’s housing consultant, CZB LLC. That’s more than 80% higher than the 926 new units the county has averaged annually over the past decade. The county added just 588 new houses and apartments in 2024. In the three years since the Micron announcement in October 2022, some 1,838 housing units have been built, county officials say. In addition to future projects, the county’s pipeline list includes projects completed from 2022 through 2024. There are 1,440 units listed as currently under construction, according to the county list. Some were recently completed, like the 66-unit Residences at LeMoyne Manor and the 21 condos at the former St. Matthew’s School. But others won’t be done for a couple of years. The two biggest projects in construction are Twin Ponds, a 309-unit apartment complex in Manlius; and The Rosie, a 286-unit complex on East Genesee Street in Syracuse. Both are tentatively scheduled to be completed in 2027. It’s difficult to predict how many units will be completed in 2025. Several high-profile development proposals are not on the list sent to syracuse.com, presumably because they are still tentative. Those include plans to renovate two dead malls – ShoppingTown Mall in DeWitt and Great Northern Mall in Clay – into mixed-use properties with hundreds of apartments each. Hart Lyman Companies, which controls Great Northern, recently split with its former development partner, Conifer Housing, and began looking for a new partner in July. At ShoppingTown, a court recently cleared the way for Onondaga County to take full control of the mall after a long legal struggle. The county had proposed a large mixed-use development there, but McMahon said he is considering adding light manufacturing to the site, along with housing. Staff writer Tim Knauss can be reached at: email|Twitter| 315-470-3023.
