The Connective Corridor project entered a new phase earlier this week when Syracuse University and the city of Syracuse announced that design team Field Operations with Clear has been selected to unite the downtown and university communities, while highlighting the cultural venues and public spaces in between.

‘It offers a potential to energize the district along the way with new commercial and real estate development,’ said Tim Carroll, director of operations for the city of Syracuse, who served on the design selection committee. ‘It’s a big idea in a community that often doesn’t embrace big ideas.’

Field Operations with Clear’s initial design, called ‘the Syracuse L,’ presented an L-shaped loop that stretched from the university area to Armory Square. The looped path featured a bus route, as well as pedestrian and bicycle paths that wrap around and contain many of the artistic and cultural venues of Syracuse.

‘They realized that this can be more than just a transportation corridor,’ Carroll said. ‘There can be economic development opportunities along the corridor.’

Field Operations is a large landscape architecture firm based in New York City that often works on similar urban design projects. Clear, a local landscape architecture firm, is owned and operated by Julia Czerniak, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture.

‘Our team was trying to create a kind of identifiable figure in the city,’ Czerniak said. ‘That’s why we renamed the Connective Corridor the ‘L.’ The ‘L’ could be in people’s minds as the actual connective route between the university and downtown. The ‘L’ could become the logo for the project. The ‘L’ can start to work in many different scales, many different ways to get people to understand the project, support the project and to want to be a part of the connective corridor.’

Clear is working on several projects in other cities that are facing challenges similar to those in Syracuse.

‘I think that it’s a really interesting time for the post-industrial city, really the shrinking city,’ Czerniak said. ‘Because cities in the rust belt, like Syracuse … all share a similar sort of phenomenon which is the loss of population and the loss of density of their urban cores.’

John Renock, the senior vice president of corporate operations for the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority, who served on the design selection committee, said Czerniak’s local perspective was evident in her team’s approach to the design.

‘They had a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses that we have in the community,’ he said. ‘She lent a good deal of strength to their presentation. She’s seen what’s taking place in Syracuse and what is needed.’

City and university officials emphasized that they have selected only a design team, not a final design. A committee of cultural, community and business leaders is being organized to work with the team to create a final design that addresses the needs and concerns of the community.

The team was selected through the process of a design competition, in which four final teams were asked to produce a proposal of what they might create if selected to design the Connective Corridor.

A symposium was held at the Everson Museum of Art in September where the four final teams presented their ideas to the public and answered questions from the community members who attended.

The eight-member design selection committee interviewed the final design teams and ranked them based on how well they addressed the major considerations of the project: transportation, technology use, lighting, safety and security, green space and aesthetics.

Their recommendation was then approved by Mayor Matthew Driscoll and the Syracuse Common Council, said Eric Persons, the director of Chancellor’s Initiatives as SU.

‘Field Operations really approached the project comprehensively,’ Persons said. ‘They looked at kinds of assets we already have, the parks, existing architecture and cultural institutions, and focused on those distinct areas.’

Field Operations with Clear will be leading the team that includes ARUP, a transportation, environmental and civil engineering firm; L’Observatoire International, lighting design specialists and Donald J. Leopold, chair and distinguished teaching professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who specializes in the research of trees that can withstand an urban environment.

‘(The team) recognized that you could transform public spaces or improve public spaces to encourage people to come out and be a part of the city,’ Persons said.

Representatives from the university, city and design team all stress the importance of community engagement throughout the design process.

‘No decision is made in a vacuum in a project of this scale and scope,’ Czerniak said. ‘It’s instrumental to hear what people have to say. It’s instrumental to make people feel like it’s their own, because in the end, it’s the public, or publics, should we say, that will be using it, that will be investing in it and that will make it a success, so it’s really an essential component of the project.’

Published on November 1, 2006 at 12:00 pm