Average Syracusan Strikes Back

Well I have to say that it's been a banner week for Average Syracusan. I'm sure he/she is sitting in his/her easy chair, enjoying a hearty laugh and celebrating recent victories and advances in the battle to make sure nothing new or exciting ever happens in this town.

If you're not familiar with Average Syracusan, here's a description: Average Syracusan is at least 50 years of age (but most likely over 70), has lived here his/her entire life, and lives to stop progress. Average Syracusan sees the mass exodus of young, productive, middle-class people from this area as no big deal; in fact, he/she is glad they left because they clearly don't understand how things are supposed to (not) happen around here. At the same time, he/she also complains about his/her high taxes while failing to see that the exodus of young, productive, middle-class people from this area MAY have been the reason. Average Syracusan loves SU sports but hates Jim Boeheim and thinks he should have been fired years ago; he/she hasn't formed an opinion on Doug Marrone yet but will likely hate him as well, probably by the 4th quarter of the Penn State game this September (He/she has already told Greg Paulus he's not welcome back in his hometown because he originally left to play basketball at Duke).

Also, Average Syracusan wishes the ugly, blighted oil tanks were still up where Carousel Mall is now (because at least blight pays taxes), thought the Chiefs didn't need to build a new stadium to replace crumbling Big Mac (then insisted it be built on the north side instead of downtown), and pretty much thinks that Syracuse's best days are behind her and why try to reverse this downhill slide? Oh, and despite his/her love for SU sports, Average Syracusan despises Syracuse University because they don't pay taxes and their students allegedly cause problems for the few University Hill residents who aren't SU students. If Average Syracusan had an official website, it would be this. The author longs for the good old days of the 1950s and 1960s when downtown was bustling, thinks those days are long gone, and has also pronounced anything proposed or built in the last 30 years a failure. In true Average Syracusan fashion, the author has also not updated the site in several years.

So now that you know who Average Syracusan is, why is he/she celebrating? Well, most recently it's because work has stalled on the first phase of the Destiny project, just weeks from completion. Average Syracusan has been against this project from the start, because he/she doesn't want to see a local businessman accomplish his dream of making Syracuse a tourist attraction, and an environmentally-sustainable one at that. Average Syracusan resents the fact that Bob Congel got a tax deal from the city to build the project, and has set about trashing the project at every possible opportunity. Well now, thanks to the recession and the lending crunch, Citigroup has stopped giving the project money, again just weeks before it was set to be done. Citigroup is using one of Average Syracusan's favorite ugly rumors about the project -- that it has no tenants and will just be a giant empty building -- as its reasoning.

Well if you clicked on the link, you can see what I'm talking about, as wave upon wave of Destiny naysayers has gleefully reacted to this unfortunate news. It's going to turn out even better for them than they'd ever hoped... the Carousel mall expansion won't just be a giant empty building, it will be a giant, UNFINISHED, empty building. A monument to why no developer should ever be allowed to dream big in this town and do anything to bring people here.

Also, recently, we learned that this doesn't just apply to developers, it also applies to sports team owners with similar big dreams. The Syracuse Crunch (our minor-league hockey team) wanted to play an outdoor hockey game this December at Alliance Bank Stadium, the aforementioned home of the Chiefs. Outdoor games have been huge for Buffalo and Chicago the last two NHL seasons, and having the first outdoor AHL game would no doubt bring a lot of people and attention to the area. Well, you-know-who immediately found a problem with that... that and the $350K that owner Howard Dolgon was asking for from the county to help him put this spectacle on. The money would come from room occupancy taxes which are mostly paid by out-of-town guests to our local hotels... but Average Syracusan immediately started fear-mongering that it was "our taxes" that were going to pay for the game. The county legislature, which has already shot down funding for much-needed repairs and improvements to the Crunch's home arena, nixed this one as well. When Crunch fans and the more forward-thinking among us lamented that Dolgon may well take his puck and leave, Average Syracusan responded with typical bile toward the out-of-towner Dolgon: "Let him go, we don't need him or his hockey team here!"

Now, Average Syracusan is focusing on another upcoming battle: what to do about Interstate 81. The elevated highway cuts right through the city's south side (it's the only urban area where 81 goes through the city instead of around it) and is seen as a physical and psychological barrier. It's ugly, it's under construction every other year, and it cannot stay up much longer, so New York State is looking for input as to what to do next. The highway was originally built back in the 1960s, when city leaders saw a chance to get a lot of federal dollars and wipe out a troubled neighborhood all in one shot. The most popular plan that is being suggested is to tear down 81, reroute it around the city (on the already-existing 481), and build a nice divided four-lane, tree-lined boulevard that will provide a much nicer entrance to the city from the south, and reconnect these divided neighborhoods.

As you can well imagine, Average Syracusan will have none of it. There has been letter after letter over the past week or so, all of them complaining that it will take forever to get from the south end of town to downtown or Carousel on Route 11 once 81 is gone. ALL of these letter-writers obviously missed two things: 1) the fact that 81 is getting replaced with ANOTHER ROAD that can handle the traffic (oh wait, you'll still have stop lights, oh the agony); and 2) even if they just replace the elevated highway with a new one (which is the only other option), you'll STILL have to bottleneck your way up South Salina Street when they're replacing the highway! The public debate on this one will be happening soon, and expect it to be heated.

All of this is just the preliminaries for the real fun: the upcoming mayoral election, where Average Syracusan hopes to sweep his/her hero Stephanie Miner (the leader of the opposition to Congel and so many other recent project developers) into City Hall with a mandate to change... absolutely NOTHING. That's right. They're hoping Miner will grind this city to a halt. No new projects (unless they fork over the tax money), nothing that will bring people to this fading city. Looks like I may be getting out of here at the right time... well here as in this area AND this state. Paul Krugman called the wrong state a "banana republic"; if anything, New York is now a banana republic, complete with TV footage of lawmakers fighting to break down the door to take over control of the state Senate.

Oh wait, I can hear Average Syracusan now... "Go ahead and leave, we don't need you here!" You're gonna need SOMEBODY here when you all start dying soon...