Ithaca Builds

Mapping, photos and information for Ithaca construction and development projects

A Peek Inside the Future Chain Works District

March 1, 2015 // by Jason Henderson

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800,000 square feet is a lot to comprehend, especially when separated into a total of 26 buildings, built in various interlocking shapes, at different times, with various building systems, and various ceiling heights, as is the case with the Emerson site on South Hill. Including the end zones, a football field is about 57,000 square feet, so the existing structures constitute around 14 football fields of enclosed space. These photos are from a site visit taken a couple weeks ago.

For a brief history, Morse Chain first built and occupied the site from 1906 until 1928 when they were acquired by BorgWarner, which owned the property from 1928 to 1982. In 1982, BorgWarner sold the property to Emerson Power Transmission, which continued manufacturing at the site from 1983 until its closure in 2011. Unchained Properties, LLC has negotiated with Emerson for several years and obtained an agreement to acquire the site for redevelopment. The 95-acre site is being re-named the Chain Works District, with the intention of developing the site into a “live, work, play” mixed-use district.

For development rights, the project is utilizing PUD/PDZ (planned-unit development/planned development zone) zoning to fit the zoning requirements with the redevelopment site plans, and is currently in the process of writing a Draft GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Statement) for municipal and state review. For more information about the process, see the planning page here. Some further remediation will be required on the site, but major portions have been remediated in the past few decades, and the updated environmental studies for the redevelopment project are extensive (the combined Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessments go over 60,000 pages of documentation). There was an Ithaca Times article last November on the topic.

For starters, it’s easy to forget how close the site is to downtown. The building behind this shot is building 24, slated for Mixed-Use:

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The current plan involves select demolition of the structures between the long corridor buildings (the original factory is one of them) and the newer structures to the southeast:

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07_11_14_Chain_Works_PUD_Application_and_Attachments (dragged)

 

Here’s the northern end of Building 13B, slated for workshop space (23,200 square feet). It has a 3-Ton rack crane and loading bays:

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This shot is looking northeast in Building 3/3A. Buildings 11A, 10A, 3A, 8A, 9, and 6A are being demolished to open-up the interior space on the site. Buildings 2, 3, and 4 are slated for multi-level residential with the ground floor as parking:

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Here’s another shot in 3/3A looking the other direction (southwest) down the really long interior corridor. You can see all the way to building 6:

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Moving south, here’s a shot of Building 34, slated for manufacturing. It’s massive- Buildings 33 and 34 make up 170,000 square feet, with a clear ceiling height of about 30 feet:

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If I remember correctly, this is an upper-level of Building 6/6A, at the southwest end of the long corridor:

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The wood floor planks are about a foot thick, since they were required to hold the weight of lots of heavy machinery:

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Upper-level of Building 4:

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The views are fantastic: windows on Buildings 2 through 6 lining the hillside provide a panorama from the Southwest Area, across Downtown and the lake in the background, then up to Cornell:

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This is the NYSEG substation for South Hill:

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Upper-level of Building 8:

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Building 35, very high ceiling, and two 6-ton rack cranes:

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Shot looking the other way, Building 35 and 15:

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Ground level of Building 4, which would be used for a parking level, stretching from 2 to 4:

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Here’s the overall use-concept from the presentation materials:

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For more information about the site, the project website and Facebook page contain public meeting agendas and presentation materials.

 

Chain Works District August Meeting

August 5, 2014 // by Jason Henderson

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Unchained Properties and the project team for the 95-acre Chain Works District (former Emerson site) held a second public meeting today (August 5th), primarily to discuss their approach to zoning and to give more information on proposed site layout. Mayor Myrick began the meeting by noting that the community involvement this early-on in a project bodes well for its development, and that the local economy is seeing some of the best numbers statewide as far as unemployment, job growth, and housing creation, so this project will inevitably become a major part of the change we should continue to see in the City.

Myrick and the project team explained the reasoning behind the developer’s decision to seek a Planned Development Zone (PDZ) in the Town of Ithaca, and a Planned Unit Development (PUD) in the City of Ithaca, since the parcel is split between City and Town. The PDZ and PUD are essentially the same thing: it’s a form of zoning and regulatory process that can be approved by the municipality in order to allow a project to develop outside of the current zoning on a parcel or set of parcels.

Scott Whitham of Whitham Planning and Design observed that since the current zoning for the Emerson parcel is Industrial, it would not be applicable or realistic to a large mixed-use redevelopment, as is being proposed, so the project team is submitting zoning materials to both the City and Town to consider in their PDZ and PUD processes, which carry the same requirements as a rezoning of any other area: the community has input and commentary in public meetings throughout the process, and the rezoning would fall under the requirements of the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), and review from the Tompkins County Planning Board. Once the zoning portion is complete, then the project team may submit Site Plan Review applications to the corresponding Planning Boards.

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Craig Jensen of Chaintreuil | Jensen | Stark Architects summarized some items from the previous presentation: several buildings would likely be demolished to create open spaces between mixed-uses, and the design team is studying similar projects that have incorporated adaptive reuse practices on former industrial sites. The 1/2 mile distance to downtown (closer than Collegetown) will make non-automotive transportation options an attractive prospect.

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In addition to working on the zoning proposal for this site, Noah Demarest of Stream Collaborative is working on combining the two Town and City Zoning Codes to conform with the Town Zoning & Comprehensive Plan and the forthcoming City of Ithaca Comprehensive Plan. The combination would be adapted into a Form-Based Zoning Code, with Transect Zones rather than the existing zones and codes we have today, which can be over-complicated and use-based, and contain more amended content than original content.

Transect and Form-based zoning seeks to establish allowable building massing as a priority over accepted uses, and emphasizes a logical transition from rural areas to urban centers, mimicking the transitions found in natural geography. More information is available from the Form-Based Codes Institute and the Center for Applied Transect Studies (which was founded by Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who wrote the first form-based code for the town of Seaside, Florida). The zoning code suggested here is adapted from SmartCode template, which is a Transect-based subset of form-based codes.

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Transect-Based Zones are as follows: T1 (Natural) included in project, T2 (Rural) not included, T3 (Neighborhood Edge Zone) not included, T4 (Neighborhood General Zone) included in project, T5 (Neighborhood Center Zone) included in project, T6 (Central Business District Zone) not included.

The existing topography affects these zone decisions: a 15% or greater slope is not realistically developable, so there are several areas, especially towards the south end of the site that would not be developed.
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The question and answer session brought-up traffic concerns on surrounding streets. The Project Team has employed Steve Ferranti of SRF Associates to study the current and historic traffic and transportation patterns, along with trip generation estimates based on the proposal as part of the SEQR process. The team noted that mixed-use projects generally have different peak patterns than single-use, which should help with congestion. Concerns about environmental remediation and removal needs surfaced, which will be studied in detail by the team’s environmental consultant LaBella Associates throughout the same SEQR process, in both rezoning and site plan review. The response from the public was again, quite positive overall.

City Discusses Future Zoning of Waterfront, Carpenter Business Park Area

December 12, 2013 // by James Douglas

At last night’s Planning and Economic Development committee meeting, council members took a look at an initial proposal for rezoning the land that includes Carpenter Business Park, that of Community Garden fame, as well as Aldi, Rick’s Rental World, and Palisade.

There are two main elements of the potential change. Firstly, the proposed WF-3 zone would scale back the allowable industrial activity from potentially heavy industrial uses (think chemical processing or manufacturing) to light industrial (think food processing), and secondly, residential units as part of mixed-use buildings between two and five stories would be permitted.

Despite Ithaca’s tight housing market, there was push-back from several council members who were not convinced that either housing would be appropriate (or even legally permissible) in proximity to the industrial facilities present near the land in question, or that the City should be zoning away its scarce industrial space.

With those concerns noted, the committee still unanimously approved that the proposal be circulated for review. It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes actually occur with the now mostly vacant land in Carpenter Business Park. There was a lot of talk during the community gardens discussion over the need for the City to think proactively about the desired uses of the land in question. We’ll get a better sense next month, after circulation and review, of how the City will proceed.

Here’s a map and memo for the proposed change.

Cherry Street Crossfit Renders

December 8, 2013 // by Jason Henderson

Here’s the site render and site plan image for the future 10,368 square-foot Crossfit & Boxing gym at 241 Cherry Street by Mad4Cherry, LLC. The site plans here were done by TG Miller, and the preliminary building plan documents from STREAM Collaborative. The building would be situated between Evaporated Metal Films Corp and e2e Materials in the Cherry Street Industrial Park.

Site Render:

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Site Plan:

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RFEI Documents for the IURA’s Cherry Street Parcel

October 9, 2013 // by Jason Henderson

Here are the RFEI (Request for Expression of Interest) documents for the IURA’s (Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency) Cherry Street Parcel, first announced back in June. The IURA’s homepage has links to the full application, engineering reports, and support documents- the deadline was last September, the 27th, so there may be applications in the review process at the moment.
Embedded below is the RFEI report, a GIS map, and a survey showing the 2.25 acre subdivision of the original 8 acre parcel the City plans to retain (it’s a section of wetland). The RFEI report explains the IURA’s objective, the site description, the selection process, zoning specifics, and the desired format of respondents. Hopefully we’ll hear soon whether or not there is a potential project here- I haven’t seen anything in the meeting minutes yet.