Congratulations New York State, you screwed up again! Can anything ever come to fruition in New York State? Hardly. Even in New York City, which gets somewhere around 99 percent of our tax money, nothing actually happens. The Freedom Tower hasn't even been started yet!
A little quote from Wikipedia:
New York's legislature is notoriously dysfunctional. The Assembly has long been controlled by the Democrats, the Senate has long been controlled by the Republicans, and there is little change in membership election to election. From 1984 until 2005, no budget was passed on time, and for many years the legislature was unable to pass legislation for which there was supposed to be a consensus, such as reforming the so-called Rockefeller drug laws. In 2002, 16,892 bills were introduced in the New York legislature, more than twice as many as in the Illinois General Assembly, whose members are the second most prolific. Of those bills, only 4 percent, 693, actually became law, the lowest passing percentage in the country. In 2004 over 17,000 bills were introduced. New York's legislature also has more paid staff, 3,428 than any other legislature in the nation. Pennsylvania, whose staff is the second largest, only had 2,947, and California only 2,359. New York's legislature also has more committees than any other legislature in the nation.
Until last year, state senators and congressmen weren't even required to be present in Albany to vote!
Meanwhile in Upstate New York, in my wonderful City of Syracuse, a.k.a "Neverland" nothing is progressing at all. Here's a little sample:
DestiNY USA: This meanwhile 20-billion-dollar (no typo) project was first announced on April 30, 2000. To sum it up, nothing has happened. While I am one of the biggest supporters of the project, unfortunately the city, county, and state can't agree on anything. Supposedly steel has now been ordered to start building the first expansion to the Carousel Center.
In 2004 DestiNY also announced a research and development project. Unfortunately this is stalling on a weekly basis because a couple businesses don't want to move. These businesses include a truck stop and the only company in the United States that produces those feet-measuring devices you see at shoe stores.
The project also includes a monorail and, will basically turn Syracuse into a huge tourist destination. Unfortunately the New York State Government keeps postponing finance-supporting hearings on DestiNY because, well its members rather go swimming.
OnTrack Extension: This has been planned since many years. OnTrack is Syracuse's commuter rail line. It has been around since 1994, and it is has been planned since its conception to extend the line across a road and connect it to the regional transportation center, which is served by Amtrak, Greyhound, and Trailways. This one is a no-brainer in a city such a city where most people still use cars. Hmmm... When do people not have cars... When they're using long-distance transportation. Maybe then somebody would actually ride OnTrack. Financing was supposedly approved in 2004 to start building this tiny bridge over Park Street bridge, but I haven't seen or heard anything since. The bridge was actually started back around 1998, but the freight company now known as CSX complained that its bridge's supports were being weakened.
New Convention Center Hotel / Hotel Syracuse:: Cities governments and their county’Äôs government often do not get along. As a result, a complete waste of resources occurs, as each has a presence of pride that it will not give up. For example, the city of Syracuse announced in December 2004 that a bank had paid off the debt of the recently bankrupt and closed Hotel Syracuse, the largest and oldest hotel in the city. It will now be sold to a developer and renovated for millions of dollars.
The government of Onondaga County, in which Syracuse lies, had announced about a month after the Hotel Syracuse’Äôs closing that it would build its own hotel near the Hotel Syracuse, a decision which kept this hotel closed. As a result, city and county are working on their own, separate plans, with virtually no cooperation. The two projects seem to cannibalize each other, as it seems both the city renovating the old hotel and the county building a new hotel, will lead to a superfluous number of rooms within one city block of each other. No progress has been made on either project.
New Building Downtown: In August 2003, the following story appeared in the Syracuse Post-Standard:
"The biggest construction project in downtown Syracuse in more than a decade will kick off next year and, by the time it is completed 18 months later, it will have transformed the core of the city's center, Mayor Matt Driscoll said.A preliminary drawing released by the city shows a seven-story building containing 40 apartments, 20 condominiums, 40,000 square feet of retail space and a 950- to 1,000-car parking garage to be built on the east side of the 300 block of South Salina Street.
The $30 million structure will replace a hodgepodge of six buildings of varying heights that have retail space on their first floors but are mostly vacant on their upper levels."
Nothing was heard about this project until late 2004, when this project was put "on hold." In 2005 it was announced that the project would be scaled back, but still built. We'll have to wait and see if this happens.
S.C.A.T. I seriously hope the name will be changed, as it means feces in slang! Anyway, I wrote about it in Is Syracuse Neverland? Part II It's too early to really criticize this gondola transportation network yet, as it was only been envisioned a couple months ago, but I have my doubts, based on the above history.
Syracuse-Toronto 'SkyDream' Gondola The Syracuse platforms are nearly complete, but those damn Canadians are behind again! See the full story here.
Update: In true Syracuse-fashion, there is another update! After I wrote this entry, I was looking for images. I coincidentally stumbled across an article from today that headlines the News 10 Now website. It's called "Another plan for Hotel Syracuse".
"'The renovation of the tower building and 191 hotel rooms. Renovation of the first two floors of the historic building. The retail and the lobby area,' Economic Development Director David Michel is t "An Israeli based holding company is finalizing a deal with the Chicago Bank that now owns the hotel property to launch a $19 million project. alking about converting the Addis Building into housing. And then, the last item is the renovation of the hotel parking garage.They're still finalizing their plans for the rest of the historic building, but they envision perhaps a few more boutique style hotel rooms and residential condominium units."
That's Syracuse for you.
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