[Ex-Ithacan]

^Well Vis, it is sprawlsville out there in Lansing. I wonder what the single family homeowners which surround the project are going to say.


Here's a guest letter to the Ithaca Journal which supports the project on Seneca Way (described in posts 1310 & 1311). it's from Mack Travis, a developer who owns a cuople of projects across State Street from the proposed new building:


Challenge plan would help keep city's downtown businesses viable

Written by
Mack Travis

If you are a neighbor living uphill from the old Challenge Industries site at the foot of State Street's hill, you may be familiar with the 1836 Walton Lithograph of Ithaca from the vantage point of East Hill. Down below in the town, one views a few church steeples and a respectable cluster of two- and three-story buildings. In the foreground, where Cornell University now stands, one looks over the livestock and farm fences down Seneca Street to the town.

If you are a member of the Ithaca City Council, you know the growth on the West End that has moved the retail center from the Commons to bigger stores there. You know the number of buildings off the tax rolls. You may have even attended the recent Sustainability Design Assessment Team (SDAT) conference. Eight architects and city planners from across the country came to Ithaca to study and recommend what we could do to improve the sustainability of our city. Their recommendation: We need to find reinforcement for retail as the major traffic generator in the central core of downtown.

That reinforcement, they reasoned, is housing. The trend today, not just in Ithaca but across the country, is for people to live downtown, close to work, shops, stores, entertainment and services. SDAT recommended a total of 1,500 units be constructed downtown.

The Challenge Building is a derelict building past saving. Between Challenge Industries and Tetra Tech, more than 250 workers and clients have left downtown. If we are not willing to face reasonable development in our downtown, many more businesses will exit. It is density alone that will make downtown economically viable. We need more housing, more offices and more specialty retail.

Bryan Warren is the third generation of the Warren Real Estate family; he built the new "Class A" brick Colonial-style building at Community Corners. He has a sterling reputation for quality projects; he has assembled the best possible local development team for his project, and he has listened to neighborhood concerns. Typical of everything Warren does, this will be a project of the highest design and construction standards, one of which all Ithacans will be proud.

As council members, as mayor, as volunteer members of the planning board and board of zoning appeals, we expect you to have the courage to lead and to make decisions for the greater good of Ithaca — its residents and its businesses. You, better than any of us, see the big picture of economic development and understand what is needed to keep downtown economically viable.

As neighbors, remember that your house was once farmland. Someone had the vision to develop East Hill as a residential neighborhood serving the community with housing. Your houses sit well aloft this proposed downtown building. The proposed Warren project on the Challenge site is a perfect blend of residential and commercial in a transition zone between East Hill residential and downtown commercial. We have an able developer, a beautiful design; we should do this project!

Travis is chairman of the Business Retention and Development Committee of the Downtown Ithaca Alliance. He and his wife, Carol, are the owners and developers of the Gateway Plaza project across the street from the Challenge site.


Here's the link: http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20110215/VIEWPOINTS02/102150308/Challenge-plan-would-help-keep-city-s-downtown-businesses-viable?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Viewpoints