Syracuse, N.Y. – Two years ago, dozens of Syracuse city workers moved out of City Hall Commons to make way for a redevelopment of the picturesque, seven-story flat-iron building in Hanover Square into apartments.
The 130-odd city workers moved to One Park Place, a building two blocks away, where the city pays about $500,000 a year in rent. The plan was to offset that cost by selling City Hall Commons and putting it back on the tax roll, letting private developers pay the cost of maintenance and much-needed renovations.
But the plan stalled. Like many housing projects that rely on state funding, the conversion of City Hall Commons is taking longer than planned.
City councilors have expressed frustration that the sale of the building, which they voted to approve nearly two years ago, has not been finalized. But the buyers say their plan to create mixed-income apartments requires a complex stack of funding that they are still working to secure.
The Common Council approved selling the building for $850,000 in December 2023. A purchase agreement was signed in March 2024.
Under the contract, developers Luke Esposito and Adam Fumarola, principals in Hanover Real Estate Development, were given until Nov. 11 of this year to close the deal. But they have not yet secured funds to convert the building into 39 apartments, a project they estimated would cost $13.2 million.
City officials recently extended the deadline for another year, said Matthew Oja, the city’s assessment commissioner. Fumarola, the developer, said his team is making progress and plans to complete the project.
“We are confident in the path forward,’’ Fumarola wrote in an email.
At a recent Common Council meeting, councilors were disappointed to learn that the city still owns the building.
“So we still own it,’’ Councilor Rasheada Caldwell said. “We’re paying rent over there (at One Park Place), but we still own this. We have to do something.”
“We do,’’ agreed Oja.
Plans to sell City Hall Commons started to gel in 2020 when the Common Council demanded that the cash-strapped city raise money by selling property that it no longer needed. City Hall Commons was considered a prime target, along with the former Syracuse Developmental Center.
The city has made deals to sell both properties, but the sales are more likely to provide much-needed new housing than they are to bolster the city’s bottom line. A Long Island developer will pay about $5.2 million for the Syracuse Developmental Center site, but the city is bonding for $18.8 million to pay for roads and other infrastructure to assist the development of 260 new affordable apartments.
At City Hall Commons, the city stands to gain $850,000 from the sales price but has taken on new rent obligations to replace the office space.
The flat-iron building at the corner of Warren and Washington Streets is postcard pretty but needs extensive work, Oja said. It was built in 1869 with four stories. In 1894, the owners added another three stories to make it a seven-story building. Its triangular shape resembles an old-fashioned, cast-iron clothes iron.
Fumarola said in an email that he and Esposito are making “steady progress’’ in their efforts to refine the design, estimate costs and line up financing. Considering the age of the building and the extent of work required to make it into modern, accessible space, the lengthy run-up to construction is “very typical,” he wrote.
The project is particularly challenging because the developers have committed to making the structure a mixed-income building, with a mix of market-rate, workforce and affordable apartments that would target residents with a wide variety of incomes. That approach is trickier to find funding for than an all-low-income building, city officials and Fumarola said.
“Our unique unit mix does add a layer of complexity to the capital planning process,’’ Fumarola wrote. “We are actively and continually evaluating various local, state, federal and private funding sources.”
High interest rates and uncertainty in the market have made it difficult to obtain commercial financing this year, said Katelyn Wright, executive director of the Greater Syracuse Land Bank.
Esposito has had a contract with the land bank since October 2021 to purchase and renovate the so-called Green Mansion at 366 W. Onondaga St., a grand historic house that will be converted to commercial space and apartments. Wright said the developer has finally been able to assemble financing for the project, and she expects the sale to close within 30 days.
“The attorneys are working on it,’’ she said.
But Wright said commercial lenders have shied away from multifamily developments this year, making it extra difficult to get projects done.
Oja said city officials hope the City Hall Commons project can come together before the new deadline of Nov. 11, 2026.
In the meantime, the city has two ground-floor commercial tenants in the building, paying a combined $1,620 a month in rent. CNY Arts rents the atrium space on the north side of the building, and Frenchy’s Wave Lengths hair salon operates out of a storefront on the east side.
The rest of the building is vacant.
Staff writer Tim Knauss can be reached at: email|Twitter| 315-470-3023.
