Syracuse, N.Y. – Onondaga County’s new plan for growth would create dense conglomerations of homes and shops in the northern part of the county while leaving the south to agriculture.
Plan Onondaga, or Plan On, lays the framework for how the county and its municipalities should prepare for the potential addition of 100,000 new residents when Micron Technology builds its planned chip plant in the town of Clay.
The county’s plan calls for a variety of “centers,” which includes beefing up traditional villages, adding housing to existing commercial centers, and creating new “town growth centers,” which would be nearly self-sufficient communities with homes, apartments and townhomes surrounding a retail and office core. Eight of those centers would be strung along Route 31 from Van Buren to Cicero.
The centers would be linked to each other and the surrounding communities by ribbons of natural areas, waterways, and transportation networks including new bus routes and bike lanes.
“Everything we need to do to maximize the opportunity is in front of us, and this is a road map to do it,” said County Executive Ryan McMahon.
The county will formally release Plan On today. It will mark the first update to the countywide comprehensive plan in nearly 30 years. The plan will be presented this month to the county Legislature, which will eventually hold a public hearing and then vote to approve or deny it.
The plan is general and only advisory. Towns, villages and the city of Syracuse retain the power to adopt their own zoning laws and approve or deny development projects. Some towns have been reluctant to allow large developments, like apartment complexes, and there’s often pushback from residents who want to keep the current character of their town and village.
But the county has plenty of sticks and carrots to guide development, McMahon said. The county controls the sewer system, and can approve or deny any request to hook a development to sewers, he noted. The county offers grants for everything from planning to village development. The county can offer tax breaks. The county’s planning board plays a role in reviewing and approving developments.
And the county owns the former ShoppingTown Mall, site of a potential town center development, McMahon said.
Plan On provides a road map for those decisions, urging northern towns to accommodate population growth through the creation of mini downtowns interspersed with parks and open areas.
Key to the plan is the creation of four town centers in the northern suburbs. Town centers are more than just subdivisions: They’re essentially mini downtowns, clustering people in homes on smaller lots or in apartments, making services more accessible. The idea is to prevent ever-increasing suburban sprawl, which creates large tracts of single-family homes and large yards taking up thousands of acres.
County officials say the region will need 12,000 new homes, with three of every four being apartments, to accommodate the growth that Micron could bring. The company plans to build a chip plant so massive it would directly employ 9,000 people and could spur the creation of 40,000 ancillary jobs.
The county doesn’t build homes or offices. Neither do towns or villages. Private developers do, and before they turn over the first shovel of dirt they want some assurances they’ll make a profit. One possible incentive is tax breaks, but there’s already some controversy about that: Today, the county Industrial Development Corp. holds a public hearing on whether to grant a tax break to developers planning an apartment complex in Lysander.
The new report calls for several town growth centers. The idea is to put more people closer together, so instead of individually owned 1-acre lots, the centers are surrounded by trails, woods and other natural spaces open to everyone.
The centers aren’t just buzzwords, the plan says. If the county wants to attract high-skilled workers, it has to give them what they want: compact places to live, work and shop. One key to such centers is a mix of places people can call home, from traditional one-family homes to townhouses and apartments.
As the share of households without children has climbed, people are moving away from single-family homes into apartments.
The shift from one-family homes to multi-family units like apartments and condominiums has played out in Onondaga County in the past two decades. From 2001 to 2005, the report notes, just one multi-family unit was approved for every five single-family homes.
That ratio has flipped. From 2016 to 2020, two multi-family units were approved for every single-family home.
Ground zero for change would be Clay, already the county’s largest town and future home of the proposed Micron plant. The county’s plan transforms much of Clay’s agricultural and residential land to commercial, especially along and north of the Route 31 corridor. Those commercial zones, which would include the Micron plant, extend several miles north of Route 31.
Development north of Route 31 and east of Route 481 has been limited by the lack of sewers. That’s scheduled to change: The county plans to run a major sewer line from the Oak Orchard Plan four miles to the Micron site at Route 31 and Caughdenoy Road.
Under Plan On, Clay’s northern reaches remain residential, with strips of natural areas dubbed “greenways” along the serpentine Oneida River, which forms Clay’s border with Oswego County.
The report wants Onondaga County to replicate the success of Fairfax Corner, a town center in northern Virginia. Built on a former mall parking lot, Fairfax Corner has 228 residential units, offices, stores and a movie theater. The centerpiece is a public gathering space where residents can do yoga, shop at a farmers market or browse a craft fair.
This is not the first time the county has proposed town centers. In the 2001 Onondaga County Settlement Plan, the county urged turning the defunct Fayetteville Mall into a dense development of homes, apartments and row homes; and retail, a library and even an ice skating rink in the middle. It would be, planners proposed, “a self-sufficient urban neighborhood.”
Instead, it became a strip mall, named “Towne Center.”
It’s a different era now, McMahon. The county has spent years meeting with local officials to put together Plan On, and Micron’s announcement changes everything.
“The reality is that everybody’s excited about Micron, and we built up the confidence and the teamwork through this process,” he said.
The five themes of the plan were strong centers, housing and neighborhoods, community mobility, open space corridors, and agriculture. Here are the plan’s quick summaries of each:
Strong centers: Onondaga County will strengthen the quality of life and economic stability of local communities through the development of amenity-rich, vibrant, and walkable centers.
Housing and neighborhoods: Onondaga County will support affordable, efficient, and diverse housing and neighborhoods to retain and attract future residents.
Community mobility: Onondaga County will enhance mobility by improving the safety, accessibility, and diversity of options for moving people within and between communities.
Greenways and blueways. Onondaga County will protect and expand greenways and blueways [creeks and rivers] to provide unique recreation and ecological health opportunities.
Agriculture: Onondaga County will ensure that agriculture remains a viable and integral part of the economy and a defining characteristic of the landscape.
The county paid consulting firm EDR $165,000 to prepare the plan.
