ITHACA, N.Y. — This round of construction updates will focus on the neighborhoods near Cornell, namely the University Avenue corridor, Cornell Heights and Collegetown. Read on and navigate the following galleries.
For those who missed part one of this gallery series, which looked at projects on Cornell’s campus, follow the link here.
Ithaca Fire Station No. 2 (403 Elmwood Avenue)
To begin, the Ithaca Fire Station No. 2 is under construction at 403 Elmwood Avenue, on the cusp of the Collegetown and Belle Sherman neighborhoods. The new 13,400-square-foot building on the corner of Elmwood and Dryden Roads replaces two apartment houses that previously occupied the site.
The planned fire station will include resting quarters, a workout room, classrooms for training, multi-use facilities for skilled practice sessions (previously, the Ithaca Fire Department had to train at the wastewater plant during the winter), and indoor parking bays for fire apparatus. It will also host vehicular and emergency apparatus access, the usual complement of landscaping and lighting, and a rear parking lot with nine spaces.
As noted in a previous Voice update, the fire station will be fully electric, with a planned opening in Summer 2025. It replaces the existing station No. 2 at 309 College Avenue, which was built in 1968 and is functionally obsolete. Its property was sold in a competitive request for bids, and the winner, Integrated Acquisition and Development (developers John Novarr and Phil Proujansky), gave the city this corner site as well as a negotiated $5.1 million payment.
Walking past the site, the concrete foundation falls are being formed and poured, and some steel rebar can be seen poking out from the excavated site. The fire station is partially built into the hillside, so the foundation walls have a stepped appearance, as seen in the last photo.
Beyond the foundation wall are Larssen-style steel sheet pilings, serving as retaining walls to hold the soil back from the building site. As you can see in the background, before they are pile-driven into place, they are actually quite tall, and they’re manufactured to lengths of up to 118 feet.
Streeter Associates won the competitive bid process to build the new station, which is designed by Wendell – Mitchell Associates Architects, a suburban Albany firm that specializes in fire stations. Edger Enterprises is performing the construction work; Streeter is the construction manager here, and subcontracted out various aspects of the construction.
Catherine Commons (210 College Avenue)
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The Ithaca Voice is providing a few extra photos on this project, due to its sheer size. Catherine Commons stretches along two blocks on the west side of College Avenue, and is programmatically divided into two portions, “Catherine North” and Catherine South,” each consisting of three apartment buildings and totaling about 265,000 SF of space. The project is the work of longtime local real estate developers John Novarr and Phil Proujansky, who do business as Integrated Acquisition and Development Corporation.
The buildings will contain approximately 360 residential units (with a net gain of 339 bedrooms versus the previous 11 apartment houses on-site), a 2,600 square-foot commercial space along College Avenue, a 1,600 square-foot private fitness center, and a small parking lot for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and service vehicles.
The project also includes streetscape improvements, several ADA-compliant plaza spaces, pedestrian amenities, and public bus stop infrastructure. The city of Ithaca granted approvals to the project in March 2022. ikon.5 Architects is in charge of design, with Welliver as the general contractor.
The buildout is phased, but not as a simple north/south split. Two of the three buildings of Catherine South are framed, sheathed, and being faced in aluminum panels and terra cotta in a variety of colors, with Building “3b” a variety of greens with red accents, and Building “3a” a combination of grey and mustard yellow with red accents. The third building in Catherine South, the smaller, gable-roofed Building “4,” is fully framed and sheathed, with window fitting and roof installation ongoing. It has yet to receive any exterior finishes.
Meanwhile, on the Catherine North site, Building “1” is receiving its finishes of grey and salmon terra cotta with green steel accents, and Building “2a” and “2b” have green terra cotta with a lighter green steel on the sides (2a/2b and 3a/3b present as separate buildings, but they’re connected by multi-story skyways).
The marketing website boasts of community amenities such as a fitness center, high-speed internet, study lounges, bike storage, a package receiving room, and controlled (gated, essentially) access. Apartments will come furnished, and host a bevy of kitchen appliances, air conditioning, washer/dryer, granite countertops, and vinyl tile floors. Available apartments range from 310 SF studios at $2,000/month to three-bedroom units that provide 1,054 SF and cost about $1,700/bedroom.
The question is always asked: Who can afford these? Collegetown is a captive market, and Cornell’s student population has grown by 4,000 students, mostly graduate and professional matriculants, in the past decade. Banks don’t loan for big projects in Upstate New York unless the market is as solid as a rock. Catherine Commons’ initial phase of apartments will be occupied this August.
The William (108-110 College Avenue)
With 325 Dryden complete, AdBro Development (Chris Petrillose) has turned their attention to their next infill project, “The William” at 108-110 College Avenue. Similarly to its sister project, this project had a rather contentious review process and had to undergo a size reduction in order to obtain Site Plan Approval back in February 2023. It replaces two older apartment houses with a 29-unit, 44-bedroom, four-story apartment building designed by architect Jason Demarest.
As they did for 325 Dryden, Plumb, Level & Square is handling the buildout of this project. The building is fully framed, sheathed in EnergyShield polyiso foam panels, and overlaid with TyPar housewrap. The primary lapboards are being installed, with the less prominent filler boards to follow. Structural brackets indicate where future balconies will be attached to the building. The black material is Grace Ice and Water Shield, rubberized asphalt more typical to roofing underlayment, and here meant to provide more durable protection from drips and drops below the balconies.
The marketing website shows a variety of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, and extolls fully-furnished units with in-unit washer/dryer, smart TVs, and wi-fi, along with community study rooms and a fitness center. Ads on Zillow show the units will go for $1,600-$2,300/bedroom, utilities not included, with occupancy in time for the Fall 2024 semester.
Roitman Chabad Center (102 Willard Way)
Cornell’s Roitman Chabad (ha-BAHD) Center, servicing students of the Jewish faith, is undergoing a buildout of a two-story, 10,000-square-foot addition to their Tudor mansion on the corner of Willard Way and Lake Street. The plans include a new commercial kitchen, a Pesach kitchen, a 140-person dining hall, a 50-seat community room, classrooms, men’s mikvah (ceremonial bathing room), and covered ground-level parking.
The project has been in the works for several years, though the COVID pandemic delayed its review for a spell, when the future of in-person higher education was murky. Project plans were approved in 2022, with revisions approved last year.
The masonry elevator core and stairwell have been assembled and steel framework is ongoing for the commercial-grade structure. Concrete has been poured for new staircases on the sloped site. Steel trusses on a small building like this are uncommon, but large group assembly spaces are a heavy-duty use. Signage in front of the Chabad house as well as the Chabad website show the project about 75% of the way towards achievement of a $7.5 million fundraising goal, and state the new building will be completed next spring, though a Cornell fundraising site states January 2025.
Petrie Construction’s regional office in suburban Syracuse is handling the buildout. The architectural work, with historical nods toward the century-old Tudor home that has housed Chabad for many years next door, was performed by Jason Demarest. Demarest previously designed the woman’s mikvah towards the rear of the property.
200 Highland Avenue
Modern Living Rentals, led by local landlord and developer Charlie O’Connor, is not an attention-seeking type of development company. Most of their projects are renovations. When they do new construction, it’s small and intended to blend in with its older surroundings. Such is the case with 200 Highland Avenue in Cornell Heights, which was approved by the Planning Board back in February.
The project consists of a new 3,518 square-foot apartment house on a previously vacant swath of land that would comprise one three-bedroom and two five-bedroom units.
Since Cornell Heights is a historic district, architect Mike Barnoski of local design and build firm Trade Design Build riffs off of the existing house next door, while seeking a modern materials treatment with a green roof and more generous fenestration. Building in historical districts in Ithaca is always a delicate balance of blending in, without mimicking older structures.
The house takes advantage of an ambiguity in the zoning code where technically it’s an addition to the house next door, through a shared basement connected by a passageway (which former Planning Board Chair Rob Lewis playfully called “a party tunnel”). This allowed more flexibility in design than cutting off a new building lot would have.
The building is framed and sheathed in plywood ZIP panels, and the rough openings for windows are still being carved out of the frame. The house next door will also be getting a renovation. A small project with wood framing like this may be ready for its first renters by August if the buildout goes smoothly. Nextier Bank of Pennsylvania provided a $980,000 bundled loan for this project and renovations at other MLR properties.
What’s Coming Next
In Collegetown, there are a few projects that have tentative schedules but are yet to begin construction. “The Ruby,” a 35-unit project at 228 Dryden Road, has been taken over by Visum Development, which the rumor mill reports is having some issues with codes, even though the project is fully approved.
Approved plans for a 35-unit apartment building at 121 Oak Avenue are dead, and while the existing houses at 109 and 111 Valentine Place have been taken down to make way for a new 25-unit, 40-bedroom apartment building by Novarr/Proujansky, no construction has taken place in over a year. Even Collegetown’s high-priced rentals have struggled to make financing work since interest rates were hiked up last year.
Modern Living Rentals seems likely to have better luck with its six-unit, 18-bedroom infill project at 601 East State Street. Cornell Hillel has plans for a new campus center at 722 University Avenue, but they appear to have turbulence with early zoning board discussions for variances. Ithaca Gun’s site has been cleared of on-site contaminated soil, but as mentioned by the Industrial Development Agency last month, the project has a financing gap and is unable to move forward for the time being.