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When Marie Kearse-Ace was young, she spent her afternoons visiting Wilson Park with her friends, eating at restaurants on Harrison Street and roller skating at the rink on Oakwood Avenue — before she was forced to leave. 

Kearse-Ace grew up in a house that her grandfather built on Renwick Place, where the parking garage for Upstate University Hospital now sits. In her neighborhood, she recalled grocery stores, hairdressers, youth centers and a sense of community all within feet of her house. 

“You saw the houses going one-by-one. (Developers) started on Almond Street taking houses. Then, all your friends were moving or preparing to, and then there were only a few left,” Kearse-Ace said. “Then, everybody was gone.”

Over 50 years ago, Kearse-Ace, along with 1,300 Syracuse residents, was forced to leave her home so the state could construct a portion of Interstate 81, a highway that splits through Syracuse’s Southside neighborhood. In the process, the community that residents such as Kearse-Ace knew so well was decimated. 

New York state is now finalizing plans to remove and replace the deteriorating section of the raised highway — called the I-81 viaduct — with a community grid of surface-level streets in the area. Although the state is still waiting on an environmental review of the project, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said the state plans to break ground on the project in 2022.

Residents such as Kearse-Ace said the community grid should reinstate the connected neighborhood that was destroyed with the construction of I-81, but they fear the project could displace more residents and split up the area once again.

“From a community perspective, if we look at this whole thing, (the community grid) doesn’t appear that it’s going to do anything other than cut straight through the neighborhood,” said David Rufus, the community organizer for the I-81 project with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Our hopes and our dreams are that there is a possibility that we have a chance to return some semblance of what we lost to these communities back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”

The New York State Department of Transportation and the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council began the official process of deciding what to do with the section of highway in 2011. Cuomo announced in a press release on April 9 that the state’s budget for 2022 will include $800 million for the estimated $2 billion project. 

Under the community grid option, the state would disperse traffic throughout streets on the grid and would reconstruct Almond Street — which currently runs under the viaduct — to have two lanes along with pedestrian and bicycle lanes, according to the release. It would also include the construction of a business loop. 

“The project aims to reverse the classic 1950s planning blunder that separated the heart of the City by providing new opportunities for inclusion and equity afforded by the construction of the community grid,” the release said. 

Though some plans for the grid are still tentative, the state should prioritize reconnecting the community through the project, Rufus said.

When the viaduct was first constructed, some families moved into public housing communities feet from the highway, while others were forced to move across the city. The construction also blocked off many of the aspects of the community that helped people stay connected. 

“When they tore the neighborhood apart, people weren’t able to get to each other,” Rufus said. “They closed off streets, they eliminated walkthroughs, drive-throughs, so there were places that people couldn’t get to.”

Kearse-Ace moved to Boston shortly after she got married. When she visits Syracuse now, she doesn’t recognize many of the areas she used to visit with her friends and family. 

“Whenever I come back to Syracuse, I always feel like I’m a visitor because I have no connection of being able to go back to my own neighborhood,” Kearse-Ace said. 

Joquin Paskel, who has lived in the Pioneer Homes public housing community by I-81 for 28 years, said the community grid should include businesses such as barbershops, restaurants and grocery stores that are owned by local residents. It should also have recreational areas such as parks and a center for children in the community, Paskel said. 

“I want to see the amenities that make our neighborhood a community,” he said.

Rufus also suggested a museum that acknowledges the history of the area’s residents and walkable streets that will allow residents to feel more connected to one another. 

“The puzzle that you’re working on putting back together should be pieces of the dismantled community in helping to bring back the life of this community and culture,” Rufus said. 

But many residents are still concerned that the community grid will do more harm than good. Some have said they’re worried large entities such as Syracuse University could expand into the neighborhoods once the viaduct is removed, especially given the aftermath of I-81’s construction. 

“One thing about life is history always repeats itself,” said Deanna Holland, Kearse-Ace’s niece who now lives less than a quarter of a mile from I-81. “And we’re always going to come up with the short end of the stick.”

For the community grid project to benefit residents rather than harm them, Rufus said the state should have a transparent dialogue about its plans and implement those the community members really want. 

“That’s what’s going to be problematic — if they’re not paying attention to what the people in the community actually need in order to get through this process,” Rufus said. “These people are on the ground, walking in the neighborhood, living and sleeping in the neighborhood.”

The state transportation department, as well as the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is scheduled to release the I-81 project’s environmental impact statement this summer for public comment.

The state needs to give the community a proper amount of time to read through the environmental impact statement and get an understanding of what effect the project will have, Rufus said. Residents should have six months to a year to evaluate and provide comment on the statement, Rufus said. 

“You can’t take this cloud of information and funnel it into a funnel the size of a pencil and expect people to absorb it at such an easy rate,” he said.

The viaduct project is an opportunity that likely won’t come again for generations, Rufus said. But it’s going to be difficult for the outcome to benefit the community if people aren’t considered the first priority, he said. 

“My hope is that the community grid becomes the stitching that sews this neighborhood back together,” Rufus said. “But it’s important that we start to look at the thread that we’re going to use and that a community that is built on love, respect and honesty is within the bindings of that thread.”

Published on May 9, 2021 at 10:28 pm

Contact Maggie: mehicks@syr.edu | @maggie_hickss